Tag: robot

Obama adviser warns that robots could worsen inequality

Obama adviser warns that robots could worsen inequality

Artificial intelligence is an innovation that must be pursued, President Obama’s top economic adviser said Thursday, but greater automation of work could increase income inequality and push some people out of the workforce if the right policies are not implemented.

Speaking at New York University, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman said he rejected very pessimistic or highly optimistic views of the effects that automization will have on work, saying that labor markets can adjust to technology making certain work obsolete. But those same changes, he said, have also resulted in extra inequality in the past, and that dynamic […]

Robots threaten 137m Asian jobs in automated future

Robots threaten 137m Asian jobs in automated future

Technologies including 3D printing, wearable technology, nanotechnology and robotic automation are predicted to disrupt the sector Robots and automation could endanger the jobs of more than half of workers in five South-east Asian countries over the next two decades, according to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) study.

It found that those working in the garments industry were particularly vulnerable, but jobs in other industries were also found to be at high risk.

About 137 million workers – approximately 56 per cent of the salaried workforce from Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – fall under the high-risk category, the study […]

Millions of SE Asian jobs may be lost to automation in next two decades: ILO

More than half of workers in five Southeast Asian countries are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation in the next two decades, an International Labour Organization study found, with those in the garments industry particularly vulnerable.

About 137 million workers or 56 percent of the salaried workforce from Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, fall under the high-risk category, the study showed.

“Countries that compete on low-wage labor need to reposition themselves. Price advantage is no longer enough,” said Deborah France-Massin, director for the ILO’s bureau for employers’ activities. The report said workers have to be trained […]

Top Economist Makes Case For Why New Laws Are Destroying Jobs

Top Economist Makes Case For Why New Laws Are Destroying Jobs

McDonald’s automated kiosk (REUTERS/Rick Wilking) A former top federal economist warned in an opinion piece Wednesday government policies are often counterproductive to the jobs they’re meant to save.

Industries phase out employment opportunities naturally due to factors like robotics and automation. Lawmakers have proposed policies to preserve and improve jobs, but often, those ideas backfire. International Trade Commission Former Chief Economist Peter Morici said a better approach is to prepare people for the jobs not easily replaced.

“The robotics and artificial intelligence revolution is all around us,” Morici wrote in a piece for Fox News. “Tasks requiring complex manual dexterity have […]

If automation is the future, what comes next?

If automation is the future, what comes next?

Tanner Mirrlees Instead of hiring workers, many companies are employing new technology. No job seems safe from automation.

The factories of the world are filled with gigantic robotic arms programmed to put together everything from BMV luxury automobiles to Apple iPhones. Assembly lines are working with fewer blue collars.

Distribution warehouses, like those run by Amazon.com, employ robotic dollies to fill and carry shelves of books and beauty accessories to the small human workforce that packs these goods into the boxes mailed to our doors.Customer service is being designed away by user-friendly interfaces that shift tasks once done by paid workers […]

Automation will not just hit IT but these 10 jobs, too. Are you part of any?

Automation will not just hit IT but these 10 jobs, too. Are you part of any?

With land, machinery, chemicals and seeds becoming expensive and technology providing cost-effective labour solutions, the days of the individual farmers are numbered. Automation has everyone on the edge. According to a recent report by US-based research firm ‘HfS Research’, India’s IT services industry, which employs around 3.7 million people, will lose 6.4 lakh jobs to automation in the next five years.

The report further adds that the IT industry worldwide would see a net decrease of 9% in headcount, or about 1.4 million jobs, with countries such as the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States also taking hits […]

A post-employment society is looming

If the government sent you a check for $961.58 every two weeks — $25,000 a year — for the rest of your life, with adjustments for inflation, would that be enough for you to walk away from the working world forever?

How about $20,000 a year? $15,000? $10,000?

And there’s another side to that question. If you could get $25,000 a year to stay home, how much would you demand before showing up for work?These aren’t rhetorical questions. For those of us dependent on paychecks to put food on the table and sleep indoors every night, this could be our future, […]

Future proofing your job

Future proofing your job

On Monday night, ABC Four Corners ran a ripper report entitled “Future Proof” , which examines the future of work in Australia and whether we are preparing our children properly for the future.

The report features a bunch of experts and commentators, some of who believe that up to 40% of current jobs (5 million) could disappear within 15 years as technological change takes hold, although many of these will be replaced by new jobs in areas that we probably haven’t even thought of.

Below are some key extracts from the transcript , beginning with the pessimistic news: GEOFF THOMPSON: Today […]

Robots are responsible for low wages, Trump and the Brexit

Robots are responsible for low wages, Trump and the Brexit

For decades, economic textbooks have highlighted the golden relationship between productivity and wages. As workers are able to produce more, employees reap the gains in the form of higher wages.

But this is no longer the case. View gallery . Wages and productivity climbed in lockstep between 1950 and 1980. However, there is a striking divergence between the 1980s and today. Even with the unemployment rate near multi-decade lows, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen highlighted concerns about the lack of wage growth and underemployment during her speech at Harvard last month.

“We’re close to an unemployment rate that I think most […]

Book review: The Rise Of The Robots

Book review: The Rise Of The Robots

The Rise Of The Robots—Technology And The Threat Of Mass Unemployment: By Martin Ford, Oneworld Publications, 334 pages, Rs.599. If the Industrial Revolution introduced the assembly-line production concept in factories, the 1950s and 1960s saw companies like General Motors introduce robotics on shop floors. These developments, however, will pale in comparison to what is in store for the human workforce a few decades from now, given the acceleration in capabilities of software automation and artificial intelligence (AI) driven predictive algorithms.

The Rise Of The Robots—Technology And The Threat Of Mass Employment by Martin Ford is a well-researched attempt to […]