Tag: robot

Four work trends affecting technology and digital businesses

Lawyer Kevin Barrow analyses the findings of a new survey into how AI, contingent working and other emerging trends are affecting companies

Osborne Clarke’s recent report on the future of work in the technology and digital business markets is based on interviews with senior figures at four leading companies – Accenture, Dyson, MetaPack and Siemens – and includes evidence from many others. The report explores four themes: growth of artificial intelligence (AI); use of contingent workers; skill shortages; and the impact of millennials in the workplace.

How are companies embracing AI, robotics and automation? The evidence is, not surprisingly, […]

Are Fulfillment Centers the New Steel Mills?

Are Fulfillment Centers the New Steel Mills?

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images A worker prepares to test robotic technology and vision systems at an Amazon fulfillment center in California. Are fulfillment centers the new steel mills? That’s a question suggested by a feature in Sunday’s New York Times .

The story about the warehouses, which e-commerce companies use to ship goods to customers, proposes they may be an alternative for the growing number of people who can no longer find stable work at places like steel mills, factories, and mines that used to sustain communities outside of big cities.

Reporter Natalie Kitroeff writes that these warehouses “have fueled a boom […]

U.S. Employment Comparison 2017: Restaurant Jobs vs Manufacturing Jobs

U.S. Employment Comparison 2017: Restaurant Jobs vs Manufacturing Jobs

iStock/6okean

The shift to restaurant jobs vs manufacturing jobs represents a new American economy, one that may ultimately weaken the middle-class.

President Donald Trump ran his campaign on a promise to “Make American Great Again.” Embedded in that catchphrase was the veneration of an old America, one where the country made things. Trump extolled the virtues of American manufacturing and well-paid blue-collar jobs that allowed people with less education to rise up to the middle-class all the same.But the reality is that manufacturing is struggling to claw its way back to the prominent role it once filled in the American economy. […]

Robot revolution is coming to a town near you

Robot revolution is coming to a town near you

We have lived with robots in various forms for a while, but the robot revolution is coming, and Britain’s business lobby smells opportunity.

The problem is that around one in five UK jobs threatened by automation, so the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has urged Theresa May to launch a commission to examine the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on productivity.

The captains of industry want the commission to start as early as the beginning of next year, and to identify new ways of increasing productivity and economic growth.Accountancy firm PwC warned in March that more than 10 million workers may […]

I always thought my boss was a robot

You: “You alright?”

Boss: “Good morning Joe, I trust you slept well and the commute was satisfactory.”

This could be a regular welcome if we start to work for robot bosses, and new research has shown that almost a third of British employees would be happy to do just that.FreeAgent, supplier of cloud accounting software, polled 1,000 workers about their attitudes towards having a robot as a boss, and 31% said they would be happy with it. Also, 42% of them said they would be comfortable taking orders from a robot.Other findings included that 11% of the workers felt a robo-boss […]

How AI and robots are eating desperately-needed jobs in India

How AI and robots are eating desperately-needed jobs in India

If I were under the age of 40, a category that encompasses approximately 65 percent of Indians, I would be absolutely terrified right about now. For that matter, if I were below or above those ages, I would also be petrified.

If ever a country faced the prospect of a dystopian future marked by gangs of unemployed youth in the millions wandering about creating mayhem, pillaging and plundering for lack of anything else to do, it’s India — unless it is able and willing to do something about it very quickly and efficiently.

AI and robotics are part of this story […]

Commentary: What To Do Against the ‘Nightmare Scenario’?

By Stephen R. Ruth, Schar School of Policy and Government, Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University

We should fear Artificial Intelligence. Not in the future but now. Ask Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook. She announced that her company, with its over 2 billion users, built software it cannot fully control. “We never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way,” Sandberg said, “— and that is on us.” Facebook’s operating systems had allowed Russian operatives to create accounts and ads aimed at influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The gigantic network seems to have created systems […]

Is Technology Really Going to Destroy More Jobs Than Ever Before?

Is Technology Really Going to Destroy More Jobs Than Ever Before?

No Need To Panic

You’ve probably heard that a robot is going to take your job. It’s an oft-repeated refrain, heralded in article headlines and speeches from luminaries such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking . Some experts predict that anywhere from 38 to 57 percent of jobs could be automated in the next few decades, depending on who you ask , and the jobs aren’t limited to any one industry. Automation threatens to eliminate or limit jobs such as waitstaff, truck drivers, factory workers, accountants, cashiers, and retail employees, according to a recent report from PBS .

But to […]

Will You Still Have a Job When the Robots Arrive?

Earlier this fall, the organization hosted a panel discussion that hoped to answer a foreboding question: Will you still have a job when the robots arrive?

Envision a world in which companies only employ the most educated sliver of the population, while artificially intelligent machines have filled everyone else’s jobs. Humans are powerless in a world controlled by algorithms and those who code them.

Members of the Kennedy School student organization AI Initiative worry about that very future. Earlier this fall, the organization hosted a panel discussion that hoped to answer a foreboding question: Will you still have a job when […]

Science must examine the future of work

Science must examine the future of work

Automation will take away jobs, but a bigger question is how many it will generate. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times began beating its rivals to report earthquakes, using an algorithm to convert announcements from the US Geological Survey (USGS) to breaking news within a few minutes. This June, it announced that a magnitude-6.8 quake had shaken Santa Barbara, California. That was certainly news to the distinctly unshaken residents of Santa Barbara; the earthquake the newspaper was reporting on had actually happened in 1925. The paper’s Quakebot had misinterpreted an update to the USGS seismic database and published its […]