Tag: productivity

Robots Free Humans from Repetitive Tasks

Robots Free Humans from Repetitive Tasks

Print The holiday season is the busiest time of the year for online shopping. On Cyber Monday and Black Friday this year, Amazon sold more than one billion items, and Black Friday shopping sales totaled $9.8 billion . A typical Amazon Hub facility in Port Wentworth, Georgia processed more than 90,000 packages during the busy buying weekend, up from the typical 50,000 packages.

During the holiday season, Amazon (and all big retailers) ramp up hiring, but Amazon has been hit with complaints and lawsuits about unsafe working conditions. State labor regulators have fined Amazon for a workplace that exposes employees […]

Automation, algorithms and the need to adapt: how is AI reshaping the world of work?

Automation, algorithms and the need to adapt: how is AI reshaping the world of work?

In this episode of Real economy, Euronews travels to the Netherlands to looks at Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its implications in terms of productivity and privacy. Picture of a human and of a robot on a stage during a conference Euronews goes to the Netherlands, to see how Dutch supermarket Picnic is attempting to revolutionise the online grocery sector with highly automated centres in Utrecht , which are full of AI tech.

The company says that the adoption of AI has created lots of new quality jobs, for instance in fields like data analysis, while removing much of the hard […]

The Automation of General Intelligence

The Automation of General Intelligence

An illustration of Henry Case and Molly Minions from Neuromancer, painting by Juan Giménez. We want to ask the right questions. How do the tools work? Who finances and builds them, and how are they used? Whom do they enrich, and whom do they impoverish? What futures do they make feasible, and which ones do they foreclose? We’re not looking for answers. We’re looking for logic.
—Logic Magazine manifesto, 20171 We live in the age of digital data, and in that age mathematics has become the parliament of politics. The social law has become interwoven with models, theorems […]

Automation, algorithms and the need to adapt: How AI is reshaping the world of work

Automation, algorithms and the need to adapt: How AI is reshaping the world of work

In this episode of Real Economy, we’re asking what AI means for the world of work. Might it make those tricky tedious tasks easier, or is it actually coming for your job? And if you’re not in the firing line just yet, could you be working next to a bot sometime soon?

Right now, there’s a lot of talk globally about Artificial Intelligence. On Friday 8 December, member states and the European Parliament reached a preliminary deal on the AI Act, the world’s first attempt to regulate the fast-evolving technology in a comprehensive, ethics-based manner.

The EU’s move to legislate AI […]

What we’re reading about productivity growth and jobs

What we’re reading about productivity growth and jobs

Employees who work on a production line Productivity is the key driver of economic growth, accounting for more than half the differences across countries in GDP per capita.

There are long-standing debates, however, on the effect of productivity growth on jobs. Higher productivity enables firms to expand production, employment, and wages – but it also reduces the number of workers needed to produce a given amount of output, possibly decreasing the demand for workers. New technologies further disrupt how productivity-enhancing investments translate into jobs.

Hence, the link between firm-level productivity growth and jobs is shaped by two opposite effects: > A […]

Universal basic income and the gig economy: A combined policy approach to alleviate the challenges of AI

Universal basic income and the gig economy: A combined policy approach to alleviate the challenges of AI

Much has been said about the economic impact of AGI, some of it is already been felt
But not much has been proposed about solutions
Specifically, what approaches should policy makers take? Here, I propose that policy makers should encourage two key trends – together which could alleviate the issues of AI – The Gig economy and Universal Basic Income. The first trend is the Gig economy. The term “sharing” or “gig” economy refers to a growing trend, especially among young people, to eschew traditional asset ownership, such as houses and cars, in favour of a more flexible, experience-driven […]

Empowering Tomorrow’s Workforce: Need for Upskilling in the Era of AI

Empowering Tomorrow’s Workforce: Need for Upskilling in the Era of AI

By Pradeep Narayanan, President, NIIT Digital and Growth Initiatives, NIIT Limited

The world of work is being disrupted by change like never before. As job definitions and requirements change, skills that were once considered sufficient are now in need of a refresh. Amongst many factors, one that adds a significant tailwind to the ongoing change is Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI). AI has already begun to have a transformative impact on the work environment; this will only magnify as AI’s impact accelerates in the years and decades ahead.

Much of the discourse till now has been around AI and how […]

Stop and Look: How AI and Automation Are Redefining Our Path to the Future of Jobs

Stop and Look: How AI and Automation Are Redefining Our Path to the Future of Jobs

Stop and Look: How AI and Automation Are Redefining Our Path to the Future of Jobs

Sam Shamsan

· Follow 2 min read·5 hours ago The AI Revolution and Post-Labor Economics We are on the cusp of an AI Revolution, a cognitive labor transformation that raises fundamental questions about the future of work and the economy. Post-labor economics, a term I’ve coined, refers to a future where human labor is largely redundant, thanks to AI, quantum computing, robotics, and other forms of automation. This shift necessitates a radical rethinking of our relationship with work, money, and business. The […]

Displacement Effects of Automation: Urban vs. Non-Urban Perspectives

Displacement Effects of Automation: Urban vs. Non-Urban Perspectives

An article recently published in the journal npj Urban Sustainability explores the displacement effects of automation technologies on urban versus non-urban labor markets. They argue that while automation displaces jobs across all settings, the impacts are unequal. Displacement primarily hits low-skilled workers in non-cities who may exit the workforce entirely. In cities, reinstatement and a shift towards higher-skilled, better-paid occupations offset adverse effects – potentially widening inequality. Study: Displacement Effects of Automation: Urban vs. Non-Urban Perspectives. Image credit: IM Imagery/Shutterstock Recent advances in AI, machine learning, robotics, and other technologies have raised longstanding fears about technological unemployment. Historically, automation […]

Hicks: Manufacturing matters, but not for creating jobs

Hicks: Manufacturing matters, but not for creating jobs

Ball State University MUNCIE, Ind. – We are coming up on election season quickly, so it is again time to evaluate claims about economic policy. This isn’t a partisan process; candidates across the board tend to make claims that might trouble a close observer of the economy.

I will focus on claims that might plausibly lead to counterproductive policies. I begin with the many claims about manufacturing, and its role in our economy. Michael Hicks Indiana is the most manufacturing-intensive state in the Union. This seems important, but we have fewer factory jobs and a smaller manufacturing GDP than California. […]