Tag: productivity

Robots, Jobs and Productivity in the Manufacturing Industry

Robots, Jobs and Productivity in the Manufacturing Industry

Reprinted with Permission

The Association for Advancing Automation recently published a white paper discussing the impact of industrial robotics on productivity and employment in the manufacturing industry. We would like to share our thoughts about its main findings.

Figure 1 below illustrates the evolution of robot shipments and employment for almost 20 years. The relationship between those two is clearly visible. As the robot shipments slowed down (blue bars), like in 2001-2002 and 2007-2010, so did nonfarm employment (green bars). . The industrial robot shipments are linked with the growth in manufacturing labor productivity, as it can be seen in […]

Five things we’re getting wrong about the future of work

HR needs to reframe its thinking on technology, millennials and data, experts tell the Future Works conference

HR has much to learn from the academics, policy experts and economists who gathered at last week’s Future Works conference, hosted by The Economist, where they collectively laid bare the host of challenges facing every leader – and employee – as the working world undergoes a transformation, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Here are five myths about the future of work that they collectively debunked during their discussions.

The relationship between tech and jobs is straightforward More automation means […]

How tech is reshaping work values and goals

How tech is reshaping work values and goals

Companies can find talent. They just can’t attract it. Fifteen years ago, corporate was king, and bigger was better. Companies such as Bank of America , Qualcomm , Cisco Systems , Intel , Sun Microsystems and Merck were top companies desired for employment. That mindset has evaporated. Today Stryker , Baptist Health South Florida , Workday and Genentech are among the 100 best companies to work for, according to Fortune Magazine .

Small is beautiful

Worker preferences are changing. It’s no longer good enough to tout social responsibility and entice talent with the sparkle of high earnings. Employees want […]

Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income by Independent Trader

It wasn’t long time ago when Swiss had a referendum about universal basic income (UBI). They rejected it. The initiators of the campaign for UBI wanted a minimum salary to be paid to everyone regardless of their age, occupation or level of income. The UBI was aimed to replace pensions and benefits thanks to which numbers of bureaucrats would decrease. One argument for such a change is advancing automation and the end goal is to disconnect salary from work.

The Swiss economy is one of the most efficient economies in the world. Robotised manufacturing […]

Re-educating Rita

Re-educating Rita

IN JULY 2011 Sebastian Thrun, who among other things is a professor at Stanford, posted a short video on YouTube, announcing that he and a colleague, Peter Norvig, were making their “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course available free online. By the time the course began in October, 160,000 people in 190 countries had signed up for it. At the same time Andrew Ng, also a Stanford professor, made one of his courses, on machine learning, available free online, for which 100,000 people enrolled. Both courses ran for ten weeks. Mr Thrun’s was completed by 23,000 people; Mr Ng’s by […]

Will new technologies put us out of work? A peek into the future

Will new technologies put us out of work? A peek into the future

Over the past year, questions about how emerging technologies will impact employment have taken on a new tenor. Will robots take over our jobs? One thing is indisputable: automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will displace workers in the IT and business process outsourcing services industry.

But this is not a new trend.

+ Also on Network World: The 6 hottest new jobs in IT + Such tectonic shifts have occurred every few decades over the last two centuries. With each wave of new technology and each accompanying paradigm shift, jobs have disappeared. During the Industrial Revolution, people feared the loss […]

Things I didn’t know: Global economic thoughts from Ford’s ‘Rise of the Robots’

Things I didn’t know: Global economic thoughts from Ford’s ‘Rise of the Robots’

Here are some things I learned from Martin Ford’s fascinating book, Rise of the Robots .

— Jobs that go overseas tend to come back, but in automated form. Thus the U.S. textile industry rebounded between 2009 and 2012, with exports rising 37 percent. “The turnaround by automation technology is so efficient that it is competitive with even the lowest-wage offshore workers.” The problem is when the jobs come back, they are filled by robots , so productivity increases, but not employment. Play Video

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How robots will change the world

How robots will change the world

Artificial intelligence and robotic technologies could lead to mass unemployment. Our economy will need profound changes to avoid social unrest, says Simon Wilson. Will robots take over?

No – but they might steal your job. The rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), sensor development and other areas mean that robots are acquiring a range of skills – from diagnosing disease to driving cars to understanding natural language – that used to be the preserve of humans. That doesn’t mean that robots are about to become self-aware and take over, like Skynet in the Terminator films.

In real life, robots and […]

Ironman Suits Coming To Factory Floors

Ironman Suits Coming To Factory Floors

To compete with robots, workers need lots of help. The future of manual work is an exoskeleton suit that gives its wearer superhuman powers. And it’s coming faster than you might think.

Consultants have been pessimistic about the future of employment. The World Economic Forum recently estimated more than five million jobs will be lost worldwide as middle-income, white-collar workers are made redundant by advances in artificial-intelligence software. To make matters worse, blue-collar work has been in decline for decades, a victim of globalization and automation.

Taken together, finding work in an office complex will be no more likely than getting […]

The digital economy needs defending from the hard left and the far right

The digital economy needs defending from the hard left and the far right

Matt Hancock, Minister for the Cabinet Office Automate work, humanize jobs. That needs to be the mantra of the digital economy, according to Matt Hancock, who as Minister for the Cabinet Office in the UK government, has responsibility in part for fostering the digital revolution.

Hancock set out his stall at the 2016 Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture. For the benefit of non-UK readers, Sir Keith Joseph was a British politician, whose long career saw him serve as a minister under four Conservative Party Prime Ministers – Harold McMillan and Alec Douglas-Home in the 1960s, Edward Heath in the 1970s and […]