Tag: Services

Major challenges facing our young people, graduates and students today

Major challenges facing our young people, graduates and students today

The workplace is ever-changing. Employers are demanding increasing flexibility, adaptability, short-term contracts, and project-based work, while workers are increasingly demanding job security, higher wages, and better work conditions.

Both from the supply and demand side of the work equation, we are experiencing very challenging times ahead for both employers and workers within the context of increasing business competition, automation, and aging population.

Unfortunately, this gap will only increase over time in the future.Without a doubt, there will be more over-qualified job seekers and graduates going after fewer available job vacancies due mainly to automation and the aging population. As a result, […]

The White-Collar Job Apocalypse That Didn’t Happen

The White-Collar Job Apocalypse That Didn’t Happen

Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Ron Kincaid remembers what it was like to worry that his job would be sent overseas.

Globalization had ravaged American manufacturing, and now, in the first years of the new century, economists were warning that offshoring — the relocating of work to other countries — was coming for white-collar jobs like his as well.For Mr. Kincaid, the evidence seemed close at hand; he overheard conversations through his boss’s open office door about which foreign contractors should take over which jobs at the automobile finance company where he worked. He remembers the meeting where an […]

Peterborough letter: Automation will change our world … are we ready?

Peterborough letter: Automation will change our world ... are we ready?

Re: Make automation a 2019 federal election issue when politicians come knocking , Sept. 20

Thank you for including this article in the Examiner.

The concept that Craig Wallace is describing involves jobs, or employment. There are two ways to perceive a job: one, as an activity that produces either a product or a service; and two, as a way for a person to make money. To understand the impacts of automation the two must be separated.Our society, and by extension, our economy, has been evolving faster than ever, and will hopefully continue to do so. Computers and smart phones […]

AI Gets Real in Professional Services

AI Gets Real in Professional Services

Remember when researchers predicted that professional services jobs in industries like insurance, tax and accounting, and finance and legal would soon be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI)? That was in 2013 when AI was just starting to peak on the hype cycle , and headlines like “Your Next Accountant Will Be a Robot” and “The Robots are Coming for Wall Street” were being cooked up daily.

Today, six years into the evolution of AI in professional services, it’s safe to say that the dystopian version of the future has not materialized. In fact, according to the latest data from the […]

AI assists human intelligence – it doesn’t replace it

AI assists human intelligence – it doesn’t replace it

Technological developments bring forth visionary predictions of questionable value. This reminds me of an opinion in the Talmud that prophecy in our times had degenerated into the occupation of fools – such as predictions of flying cars or swarms of drones delivering merchandise.

But here we turn our attention to a serious subject. Given the increasing power of “artificial intelligence” software, will automation replace human workers at a rate that leads to social instability? I don’t think so. In fact, the question implies a mistaken notion of what artificial intelligence does.

There is hardly an area of industrial activity that has […]

How automation will change our workforce

How automation will change our workforce

Around the world, there is increasing interest and concern about the potential effect of technology, specifically automation, on employment. Since releasing our Megatrends report in 2018, we’ve undertaken modelling to help several clients understand the effect of automation on their area . In this article, we consider how technology has affected employment historically, where it’s heading, and use our work for ATEED in Auckland as a case study to highlight the potential future changes. Technological change isn’t new

Technological change has been a constant force throughout history and, despite often being perceived as a threat to workers at the […]

The future of work will be far less frightening when there’s more women in AI

The future of work will be far less frightening when there’s more women in AI

The future is here. Open a web browser. Pick up a newspaper. Search for stories about artificial intelligence and the future of work. While scholarship on the topic is getting increasingly nuanced , you’re still likely to confront dire warnings about how smart machines are coming to take our jobs . Like, all of them.

Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk says mass automation is “ the scariest problem ” facing society because “what’s going to happen is robots will be able to do everything better than us … I mean all of us.” AI pioneer and venture […]

Automation leading to fewer midskill jobs such as bookkeepers, IT support workers: Hays

Midskill jobs are declining in many industrialized countries as firms turn to automation, according to a report released by staffing firm Hays plc and Oxford Economics.

“Rapid technological development has enabled machines and software to complete many routine and increasingly non-routine tasks, according to the report. “As the cost of these machines and programs falls, they become increasingly close — and sometimes superior — substitutes for the humans who previously completed the tasks, leading to employment losses in vulnerable occupations.”

Midskill jobs include bookkeepers, paralegals and IT support among others.Technological advances in communication have also enabled further offshoring by industrialized counties, […]

Automation And The Crisis Of Work

Automation And The Crisis Of Work

Technology, like natural selection, has no goal.

When it comes to the impact of automation (robots, AI, etc.) on jobs, there are two schools of thought: one holds that technology has always created more and better jobs than it destroys, and this will continue to be the case.

The other holds that the current wave of automation will destroy far more jobs than it creates, but the solution is to tax the robots and use these revenues to distribute the wealth to everyone who no longer has a livelihood. In either case, we’ll get richer: if […]

Save the Robots

Save the Robots

New York’s mayor has a plan to address the displacement of workers through automation: Bill de Blasio wants the federal government to enact a “robot tax.” De Blasio’s proposed law stipulates that when a company introduces labor-saving automation, such as a forklift on a loading dock, it would have to pay the federal government five years’ worth of payroll taxes for each worker that the innovation displaces. The employer would have to find new jobs for the workers at their same pay or give them severance. Further, the law would invent a new federal agency to determine which jobs […]