Tag: robot

Betweet the Lines: E-ZPass and the Impending Robot Takeover

Betweet the Lines: E-ZPass and the Impending Robot Takeover

I’m soon going to have to decide if a pull towards convenience outweighs my fear of a total robot takeover of the world as we know it.

I may get an E-ZPass transponder.

The decision should be made simpler by the fact that the state of Massachusetts isn’t giving any of us much choice . Anyone who uses the Mass Pike without one will pay close to double what E-ZPass subscribers pay when new toll system goes live in late October.Most of the people I’ve talked to about this haven’t seemed all that perturbed, and most of them have E-ZPass already. […]

Deckle McLain: Rise of bots can’t be ignored in economy

Deckle McLain: Rise of bots can't be ignored in economy

Zoom Robots and software bots are poised to dominate routine work; thus, steps to keep jobs in the United States may not improve the availability of work as much as hoped, the claims of 2016 presidential contenders notwithstanding. Some experts say bots are now shrinking the total number of jobs for all time. Two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, have concluded that since 2000 productivity has increased while employment has declined, reaching a significant gap by 2011. Nevertheless, sanguine experts believe that after painful adjustments automation will create as many jobs as […]

Why we must embrace digital disruption and ensure no worker is left behind

Why we must embrace digital disruption and ensure no worker is left behind

An industrial robot holds a sports car at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago. The jobs of the future are likely to be in areas where machine thinking and robotics imitate human thought. Photograph: Xinhua / Barcroft Images Disruption in the workforce is hardly a new phenomenon. Mechanisation of manufacturing, mass production and the advent of the internet and computers have all changed the way that work is done.

Earlier waves of industrialisation have primarily affected low-skilled manual labour and past improvements in technology have typically made jobs at the lower end of the skills spectrum obsolete – for […]

Investing in robotics and automation: Why bother?

Investing in robotics and automation: Why bother?

In the second of our new series of articles about investing in robotics and automation, Brian Gahsman, managing partner and chief investment officer at GBSfunds.com , explains why his company, Gahsman Branton, is interested in investing in the robotics and automation market

Organovo (ONVO)PTC Inc. (PTC)Keyence (6861 JP)04080120160

Source: Gahsman Branton Check out realtime stock prices for companies in the robotics, automation and relating computing sectors Robotics and Automation News: What is it about investing in the robotics and automation sector you find attractive? Brian Gahsman: Years ago, one of my main focuses of investment was […]

The human omission

It’s hard to conceive of a more fundamental topic than the future of work. Economists have grappled with it for centuries. Now slow growth, rising inequality and rapid technological change have raised a new, urgent question. Will robots free us from boring labour, or will they leave many workers permanently redundant?

Ryan Avent’s “The Wealth of Humans” manages to be both optimistic about innovation and gloomy about its consequences. This wide-ranging and highly readable book echoes famous tracts by tackling the biggest challenges facing the human race. The title is a nod to Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” – […]

The human omission

It’s hard to conceive of a more fundamental topic than the future of work. Economists have grappled with it for centuries. Now slow growth, rising inequality and rapid technological change have raised a new, urgent question. Will robots free us from boring labour, or will they leave many workers permanently redundant?

Ryan Avent’s “The Wealth of Humans” manages to be both optimistic about innovation and gloomy about its consequences. This wide-ranging and highly readable book echoes famous tracts by tackling the biggest challenges facing the human race. The title is a nod to Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” – […]

Disappearing factory jobs driving Iowa voter angst

Disappearing factory jobs driving Iowa voter angst

Small business owners and former employees say they continue to struggle to get by after hundreds of manufacturing jobs left Mason City, but city officials insist the jobs are there. Buy Photo MASON CITY, Ia. — It used to be hard to find a seat at the Kozy Korner.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the bar opened its doors at 6 a.m. to serve overnight workers as they finished their shifts in factories on the city’s north end. On Thursdays and Fridays, the Kozy kept piles of money on hand to cash workers’ paychecks. People lined up to play pool, […]

Humans today, robots tomorrow

Humans today, robots tomorrow

Photo by William Harvey On Sept. 19 the College of Architecture hosted Nick Srnicek, author of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. Srnicek spoke about the future of automation and its economic impact upon modern capitalistic systems as a part of the Department of Architecture fall lecture series.

Over the next 20 years, general purpose automation will likely be integrated into every field of industry. Srnicek said a world like this would inhibit high unemployment rates.

“Various establishments have said 47 percent of present U.S. jobs could be automated over the next two decades…A similar study for the […]

Basic Income Might Be The Answer To Society’s Productivity Crisis

Basic Income Might Be The Answer To Society's Productivity Crisis

With the decline of manufacturing jobs, and the onset of automation to take over almost all kinds of work, society is on the hunt for a long-term, scalable solution to our future productivity.

What will happen to displaced workers? How will mass unemployment hurt our increasingly globalized economy?

One concept, a universal basic income, has been debated by thinkers as far back as the 16th century . The theory suggests that a flat income, given to every citizen regardless of employment or societal status, will allow society to pursue the work it really believes in. Can a monthly universal stipend help […]

Does automation destroy jobs? It doesn’t.

The trouble with this argument is that it poses a question – Will automation affect employment in the future ? & attempts to answer it purely by looking at historical data – but that is entirely missing the point.

The central question to answer (& in all my time spent with Futurology – I’ve never even once heard anyone come up with an answer) is – in a future where AI & Robots can do most jobs, how can humans compete with then in an economy that has free market capitalism as its guiding economic principle.

In the past displaced workers […]