Tag: productivity

Deckle McLain: Rise of bots can’t be ignored in economy

Deckle McLain: Rise of bots can't be ignored in economy

Zoom Robots and software bots are poised to dominate routine work; thus, steps to keep jobs in the United States may not improve the availability of work as much as hoped, the claims of 2016 presidential contenders notwithstanding. Some experts say bots are now shrinking the total number of jobs for all time. Two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, have concluded that since 2000 productivity has increased while employment has declined, reaching a significant gap by 2011. Nevertheless, sanguine experts believe that after painful adjustments automation will create as many jobs as […]

Why we must embrace digital disruption and ensure no worker is left behind

Why we must embrace digital disruption and ensure no worker is left behind

An industrial robot holds a sports car at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago. The jobs of the future are likely to be in areas where machine thinking and robotics imitate human thought. Photograph: Xinhua / Barcroft Images Disruption in the workforce is hardly a new phenomenon. Mechanisation of manufacturing, mass production and the advent of the internet and computers have all changed the way that work is done.

Earlier waves of industrialisation have primarily affected low-skilled manual labour and past improvements in technology have typically made jobs at the lower end of the skills spectrum obsolete – for […]

Investing in robotics and automation: Why bother?

Investing in robotics and automation: Why bother?

In the second of our new series of articles about investing in robotics and automation, Brian Gahsman, managing partner and chief investment officer at GBSfunds.com , explains why his company, Gahsman Branton, is interested in investing in the robotics and automation market

Organovo (ONVO)PTC Inc. (PTC)Keyence (6861 JP)04080120160

Source: Gahsman Branton Check out realtime stock prices for companies in the robotics, automation and relating computing sectors Robotics and Automation News: What is it about investing in the robotics and automation sector you find attractive? Brian Gahsman: Years ago, one of my main focuses of investment was […]

The human omission

It’s hard to conceive of a more fundamental topic than the future of work. Economists have grappled with it for centuries. Now slow growth, rising inequality and rapid technological change have raised a new, urgent question. Will robots free us from boring labour, or will they leave many workers permanently redundant?

Ryan Avent’s “The Wealth of Humans” manages to be both optimistic about innovation and gloomy about its consequences. This wide-ranging and highly readable book echoes famous tracts by tackling the biggest challenges facing the human race. The title is a nod to Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” – […]

The human omission

It’s hard to conceive of a more fundamental topic than the future of work. Economists have grappled with it for centuries. Now slow growth, rising inequality and rapid technological change have raised a new, urgent question. Will robots free us from boring labour, or will they leave many workers permanently redundant?

Ryan Avent’s “The Wealth of Humans” manages to be both optimistic about innovation and gloomy about its consequences. This wide-ranging and highly readable book echoes famous tracts by tackling the biggest challenges facing the human race. The title is a nod to Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” – […]

Basic Income Might Be The Answer To Society’s Productivity Crisis

Basic Income Might Be The Answer To Society's Productivity Crisis

With the decline of manufacturing jobs, and the onset of automation to take over almost all kinds of work, society is on the hunt for a long-term, scalable solution to our future productivity.

What will happen to displaced workers? How will mass unemployment hurt our increasingly globalized economy?

One concept, a universal basic income, has been debated by thinkers as far back as the 16th century . The theory suggests that a flat income, given to every citizen regardless of employment or societal status, will allow society to pursue the work it really believes in. Can a monthly universal stipend help […]

How to Protect Workers From Job-Stealing Robots

How to Protect Workers From Job-Stealing Robots

A robot and a human work side by side. There is a lively debate happening across various corners of the internet and the hallways of academia: In the coming decades, will advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) render human labor unnecessary?

At first blush, economic data suggest little reason to worry. American businesses in recent years have needed more and more humans: 15 million new private-sector jobs have been created since early 2010. At the same time, what economists refer to as labor productivity (economic output per human hour worked) has grown disappointingly slowly. If robots were on track to replace […]

Automation will end the dream of rapid economic growth for poorer countries

Automation will end the dream of rapid economic growth for poorer countries

Humanoid robots working side by side with employees on an assembly line at a factory. Photograph: Issei Kato/REUTERS For a long time – at least since the economic emergence of South Korea in the 1960s – many low-income countries have been able to achieve rapid economic growth through industrialisation.

The process usually starts with low-end manufacturing (apparel, footwear, plastics) and entails large numbers of workers moving from low productivity smallholder agriculture to high productivity export manufacturing.

Industrialisation has helped to drive an unprecedented convergence between rich and poor country wealth levels. By the early 2000s, 83 developing countries were achieving growth […]

How Can Henry Ford Help Modern Manufacturing?

How Can Henry Ford Help Modern Manufacturing?

Workers on a Ford assembly line, circa 1913. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) Doing more with less is a common phrase in industry today. It seems like everyone is doing the work of two or three people either because they feel they have to, or they feel it’s necessary for job security. However, overworked employees may not be as focused. They’re also more prone to making costly mistakes and miss the social interactions and connections that lead to creative or innovative solutions. Is working harder and longer the answer to our economic problems, or a slippery slope that is causing […]

University receives $1 million grant to improve collaborative robotics

University receives $1 million grant to improve collaborative robotics

The envisioned intelligent material delivery system: a robot will sense when skilled workers need materials, and deliver them in advance. This will help reduce worker frustration, stress, and talent loss, and save approximately $1.7 million dollars an hour by reducing work stoppage problems, according to UC San Diego. Engineers at the University of California San Diego have been given $1 million to research how to improve the way robots interact with people in US factories

Laurel Riek, a roboticist at the UC San Diego, will lead a three-year, $1 million project funded by the National Science Foundation to help […]