Tag: robot

Where have all the good jobs gone?

Where have all the good jobs gone?

The good jobs are disappearing. Those that predated the digital revolution are dropping away altogether or being replaced by low-paying service jobs and other less secure employment. These include part-time jobs, freelance contracting and gig opportunities. The number of Americans working under these arrangements rose by 9.4 million from 2005 to 2015; 48 million Americans are now in low paying jobs.

This growing job shift is transformational. For employers, it offers new efficiencies and greater flexibility. Workers are cheaper and fewer can demand benefits. Employers can staff-up as needed; workers take the risks.

Momentous technological advances exert a steady and downward […]

Human Games: Can We Beat the Bots?

Human Games: Can We Beat the Bots?

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are reshaping the workplace and the economy. Can humans successfully compete?

As the worldview envisioned by futurists and science fiction writers in the 1950’s and 60’s takes shape, a global economy still shaken by the Great Recession is riding the rails straight into what some call the “Second Machine Age” or “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

Second, fourth, however you count it—the real question is whether meaningful human employment is poised to come in last. Earlier , we discussed news on the future of work presented at the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Switzerland in […]

Manufacturing jobs return to US during election year – but not quite like before

Manufacturing jobs return to US during election year – but not quite like before

An employee works on an assembly line producing automobiles at a factory in China. Photograph: China Stringer Network / Reut/Reuters When Fred Robinson moved to his cottage in 1960, it was on little more than a dirt lane surrounded by cotton fields. For 42 years, like so many others in Cleveland County, North Carolina, Robinson made his living turning that cotton into cloth, manning a weaving machine at the local Dover mill. His starting salary, in 1949, was 97 cents an hour.

In a familiar story, nearby textile mills closed – and with them went the jobs. From when Robinson’s […]

42% of Canadian jobs at high risk of being affected by automation, new study suggests

42% of Canadian jobs at high risk of being affected by automation, new study suggests

More than 40 per cent of the Canadian workforce is at high risk of being replacedby technology and computers in the next two decades, according to a new report out Wednesday.

The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship at Toronto’s Ryerson University said in its report that automation previously has been restricted to routine, manual tasks. However, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and advanced robotics now means that automation is moving into "cognitive, non-routine tasks and occupations, such as driving and conducting job interviews."

The report said the top five occupations — in terms of number of people employed in them — […]

Robots likely to affect 40 pct Canadian jobs: study

A humanoid robot "Wabian-2R", developed by Japan’s Waseda University professor Atsuo Takanishi walks for a demonstration at Takanishi’s laboratory in Tokyo on October 22, 2013. (AFP/file photo)

TORONTO, June 15 (Xinhua) — As much as 42 percent of Canadian workforce is at high risk of being affected by automation and replaced by technology and computers in the next two decades, a new report showed Wednesday.

Automation previously has been restricted to routine, manual tasks, the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship at Toronto’s Ryerson University said in its report.However, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and advanced robotics now mean that automation is […]

42% of Canadian jobs at high risk of being affected by automation, new study suggests

42% of Canadian jobs at high risk of being affected by automation, new study suggests

This May 2016 photo shows an Otto driverless truck at a garage in San Francisco. A new report suggests technology and computers could put 42 per cent of Canadian jobs at risk in the next two decades. (Eric Risberg/Associated Press) More than 40 per cent of the Canadian workforce is at high risk of being replacedby technology and computers in the next two decades, according to a new report out Wednesday.

The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship at Toronto’s Ryerson University said in its report that automation previously has been restricted to routine, manual tasks. However, breakthroughs in artificial […]

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 […]

Amazon’s Successful Automation Boosts Employment — For Now

Amazon’s Successful Automation Boosts Employment — For Now

Amazon’s automated warehouses continue to show how rapidly smart machines are taking over tasks that were performed by humans. A few years ago, workers pushed carts for miles around the warehouse picking out items for customer orders. Huffpo reported in 2011, “Some workers at Amazon.com’s Allentown, Pennsylvania warehouse are reportedly willing to contend with working at a brutal pace in dizzying heat so long as it means having a job.”

Was that only five years ago? It shows how quickly an industry can change when modern automation is applied.

Now the Amazon warehouse is immersed in tech, and other companies are […]

The Wrong Inequality Solution: No One Has Anything

The Wrong Inequality Solution: No One Has Anything

Robots are presented at the Robotics event Innorobo in La Plaine Saint-Denis on May 26, 2016. / AFP / ERIC PIERMONT (Photo credit should read ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images) The approach to the inequality question has typically been how to either create or redistribute wealth so that those at the bottom of the economic ladder have more. Inherent in that approach is an assumption that societies have the time and choice to lift up those without, compressing the difference between haves and have-nots.

But there’s another approach, one that we seem blindly headed for, that could largely reach a reduction in […]

Relax, a robot might not take you job after all

Relax, a robot might not take you job after all

Worried about being replaced by a robot? According to some recent forecasts many workers should be. There are gloomy predictions that even high-wage, knowledge jobs in finance, law and medicine won’t be spared amid the relentless rise of smart machines.

A striking 2013 study by Oxford University academics Carl Frey and Michael Osborne said 47 per cent of all employment in America is "at risk" of being replaced by computers and algorithms in the next 10 to 20 years. Earlier this year a CSIRO put the proportion of Australian jobs vulnerable to automation at a worrying 44 per cent.

But now […]