Tag: productivity

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 […]

NEW TECHNOLOGY POSES NEW PERIL TO ARRAY OF JOBS….

NEW TECHNOLOGY POSES NEW PERIL TO ARRAY OF JOBS....

The current productivity numbers do not reflect it yet, but could soon impact employment in a multitude of fields. Is your current job, or the career you are currently studying for, going to be around when the new wave of technology hits? You could find yourself being replaced by automation, and that day might be closer than you think.

I want you to think in terms of clerical work and professional services. Technologies like the Web, artificial intelligence, big data, and improved analytics, are all made possible by the ever increasing availability of cheap computing power and storage capacity. Many […]

Living in a bubble: Y Combinator’s basic income study is merely a result of white unemployment

Living in a bubble: Y Combinator’s basic income study is merely a result of white unemployment

Workers arrive for a shift at the reopened Chrysler Warren Truck Assembly plant in Warren, Michigan, U.S., on Monday, June 29, 2009. Photo credit: Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg via Silicon Valley’s interest in basic income is based on a false prophecy of tech destroying jobs and wouldn’t be explored if those affected weren’t mostly white

Y Combinator made an announcement last Wednesday that it would pursue a short-term, exploratory study into the concept of a ‘ basic income ,’ a no-strings-attached form of welfare that would be allotted to every citizen of a given city or country. Residents of increasingly […]

Will A Robot Take Your Job?

Will A Robot Take Your Job?

A new estimate says that robots will perform more than half of all jobs by 2045. But don’t panic. (AP) A new estimate says that robots will perform more than half of all jobs by 2045, leaving the frightening prospect that millions of once solidly middle-class people will be left idle and jobless.

“If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?” is the alarming question asked by Rice University professor Moshe Vardi , who is the source of the new estimate.

It’s a legitimate question. And Vardi answers it, claiming that the advent […]

Will automation destroy jobs?

Will automation destroy jobs?

MT at 50: Carl Benedikt Frey, co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, gives his expert view on the effects of automation on jobs – and the news isn’t all bad.

Carl Benedikt Frey of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford has become (with colleague Michael Osborne) the leading authority on the automation of jobs. Their methodology focuses on how reliant tasks are on human aptitudes such as social perceptiveness, persuasion, originality and manual dexterity. We asked him about the impact automation will have in the future. What will determine the pace of […]

Why I’m Not Worried About Robots

Google “robots taking our jobs” and you will get 10.3 million hits.

A series of terrific books (such as Rise of the Robots , The Second Machine Age , and The Industries of the Future (can you share other titles?), have rode the wave (and encouraged) our worries about automation and jobs.

Who isn’t worried about driverless cars and truckerless trucks?The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are 233,700 taxi and chauffeur drivers. At last count, Uber has 160,000 active drivers. What will happen to all these people who make their living driving when cars drive themselves?A recent Medium article […]

Weird Science: Robots Poised to Take Half the World’s Jobs in 30 Years

Weird Science: Robots Poised to Take Half the World’s Jobs in 30 Years

This picture taken on November 24, 2015 shows visitors watching a robot (C) demonstration during the World Robot Conference in Beijing Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University in Houston, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that, "We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task." He added, "I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: if machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?" ‘I’m Not Just Any AI’: Meet the World’s […]