Tag: robot

The continent enters the Robot Age

The continent enters the Robot Age

The future’s now: The shop floor robot has arms that are changed for different functions. (Oupa Nkosi, M&G) Science fiction writers predicted robots. They didn’t predict that they would look so boring. At the Africa Automation Fair in Johannesburg this week, there were no cyborgs on display, or R2D2-lookalikes scuttling between the stands. Instead, some of the most powerful machines were little more than black boxes with small screens and glowing lights, connected to a thicket of wires.

“Now you can control your factory from your phone. You don’t even need to be there,” said Unitronics salesman Dewald Potgieter.

He sells […]

Mitigating the Effects of Automation on the Workforce

Mitigating the Effects of Automation on the Workforce

There’s no doubt that robotics and automation are changing the way businesses operate and impacting workplaces and job descriptions in myriad ways. Given the ability of automation to reduce costs, improve quality as well as output all at the same time, its adoption is set only to increase. In fact, the adoption of automation replacing jobs is predicted to gain momentum in 2017, with twice as many employers (at 31%) embracing automation compared to 2016 (at 15%). Will its growth affect employment and will the growth in productivity come at the cost of workers and their jobs? This is […]

Mindless mining

Mindless mining

Rio Tinto has a special relationship with the University of Sydney. The multinational mining corporation is one of the world’s largest, generating US $34 billion of revenue in 2016. In 2007, Rio Tinto partnered with the University to undertake a joint research project, the Rio Tinto Centre for Mine Automation (RTCMA), which sits under the University’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics. RTCMA was charged with creating Rio Tinto’s ‘Mine of the Future’, which involves automating all aspects of a mine’s operation.

The project was established as a 12 year partnership, which means it’s nearing the end of its tenure. Over […]

Here are the Canadian towns and cities that could lose the most jobs to robots

Here are the Canadian towns and cities that could lose the most jobs to robots

These jobs are safe from robots, according to one economist Small-town Canada is where computers and robots will likely take up the largest proportion of work currently carried out by human beings, a new report finds.

Some 40 per cent of Canada’s work activities could become obsolete because of automation, but some communities are much more vulnerable than others, according to the Toronto-based Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship (BII+E).

READ MORE: These are the jobs that are safe from the robot workplace invasion Smaller centres that are highly dependent on manufacturing, mining and agriculture and forestry will likely suffer […]

Zombie robot argument – apparently automation doesnt have any impact on jobs at all?

Zombie robot argument - apparently automation doesnt have any impact on jobs at all?

I’d like to see that as well. In the article it says: Yes, automation has led to job displacements in particular occupations and industries in the past, but there is no basis for claiming that automation has led—or will lead—to increased joblessness, unemployment, or wage stagnation overall. Implying that in certain industries automation has led to to job loss. My postulation is that we are going to continue seeing increasing industries experience automation overhauls. What happens to those individuals that experience job loss due to that? They claim in the key points that new jobs are created in different […]

In the age of disruption, what are the new rules of negotiating salary?

In the age of disruption, what are the new rules of negotiating salary?

If Robotic Process Automation is truly reducing the number of jobs, is salary negotiation a risk that a jobseeker should take? In a recent Harvard commencement speech, Mark Zuckerberg addressed his alma mater’s fresh graduates for “establishing a ‘social infrastructure’ for the world” as “generation-defining public works projects” that involve people towards a socially beneficial cause. Much like the recent technologies being developed at Facebook, his belief in a future with no job shortages despite automation was built not only “to create progress, but to create purpose”.

However, at a time when the World Bank data suggests that 69% of […]

RISE of the ROBOT

RISE of the ROBOT

A four-part look at how robots are changing the way we work. First up, robots aren’t killing jobs, they’re creating new ones and more of them
— at least at a GE Aviation plant in Quebec

By Drew Hasselback in Bromont, Que.
About 180 robots here are doing work that humans used to do at a GE Aviation plant that makes parts for jet engines. But they haven’t replaced the humans. Indeed, the opposite is true. Since a new, automated section of the plant ramped up at the start of the decade, the number of people working here […]

“Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism”: Has the Time For Universal Basic Income Finally Come?

The phrase fully automated luxury gay space communism is the meme-culture embodiment of the left’s traditional aspiration toward utopia. Like other forms of postmodern commentary, fully automated luxury gay space communism internalizes a dialectic of irony. Willful naiveté acts as its animating self-contradiction. The effect is to evoke sincerity while seeming to undercut it, pointing toward a social horizon to giggle at while chasing.

The dialectical nature of fully automated luxury gay space communism squares nicely with the contradictory status of technology in Marxian economic theory. Marx identified technological progress as one of capitalism’s fundamental sources of agitation. Capitalists extract […]

The robots are coming for our jobs but Deloitte’s COO doesn’t think it’s that scary

The robots are coming for our jobs but Deloitte's COO doesn't think it's that scary

Herwig Prammer/Reuters The robots are coming for our jobs.

As reported by Business Insider’s Elena Holodny , 47% of total US employment is at high risk of automation in the next ten to twenty years, according to an Oxford report .

To be sure, that doesn’t mean that those jobs will definitely be automated.A top executive at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, or Deloitte as it is commonly called, thinks the coming wave of automation is not something people should fear.Frank Friedman is the global chief operating officer of the 172-year-old financial firm known for its audit and consulting services. In his […]

Labor Markets in the Age of Automation

Labor Markets in the Age of Automation

BERKELEY – Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics are powering a new wave of automation, with machines matching or outperforming humans in a fast-growing range of tasks, including some that require complex cognitive capabilities and advanced degrees. This process has outpaced the expectations of experts; not surprisingly, its possible adverse effects on both the quantity and quality of employment have raised serious concerns.

To listen to President Donald Trump’s administration, one might think that trade remains the primary reason for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, has declared that the possible technological […]