Tag: Services

‘It was bound to happen’: Machines are coming to the Vegas Strip — and they may take jobs

'It was bound to happen': Machines are coming to the Vegas Strip — and they may take jobs

Ford wants to use walking robots to help self-driving cars deliver packages. USA TODAY

LAS VEGAS – The coming of the machines is inevitable. And this city knows it.

MGM Resorts International this year plans to install at Las Vegas resorts an unknown number of automated beverage systems programmed to mix hundreds of different drinks – all at the touch of a button.It’s a job that for many years depended on the hands of living, breathing service workers. But as the incoming technology moves closer to Southern Nevada casinos, rank-and-file union workers can’t say for certain whether machines will force them […]

Is Universal Basic Income Coming? (infographic)

Is Universal Basic Income Coming? (infographic)

Is a Universal Basic Income a good idea? The Great Recession drove the wealth gap up significantly worldwide, and the very poor are struggling to regain their footing. Technology is exacerbating this problem as automation threatens to take a large percentage of the world’s unskilled labor positions in just a few short decades, leaving many to question how society can continue to sustain itself under these circumstances. Universal basic income is one possible solution, and the idea has been around longer than you may think.

Thomas Moore called for a universal basic income in Utopia, wondering what the societal benefit […]

The age of Machine Intelligence is here: Are you ready?

The age of Machine Intelligence is here: Are you ready?

Mike Walsh addresses the National Automatic Merchandising Association show in Las Vegas. Are you prepared for the Age of Machine Intelligence? That’s a time when machines anticipate consumers’ choices before they are made. That age is nearer than many people realize, according to author/futurist Mike Walsh, who said business leaders need to understand how the new reality impacts the decisions they make.

The National Automatic Merchandising Association show, held last week in Las Vegas, made an appropriate setting for Walsh’s message, given the number of exhibits and education sessions featuring artificial intelligence. While these new technologies impact many industries, the […]

How Women Can Advance In The Highly Automated Workplace Of The Future

How Women Can Advance In The Highly Automated Workplace Of The Future

There is potential for women to advance in the workplace if they are prepared for a more automated future. (Photo credit: Getty) Getty

The bots are coming. Automation is already starting to replace jobs. Robots and computers are not only taking over routine physical work activities, but they can now tackle more complicated tasks like driving and sensing emotions. And they’re cheaper than humans too. As a result, research suggests that about half of the work humans currently do will be automated by 2055. But how will female employees fare in our automated future? A new McKinsey study found that […]

Automation is Here. How Are You Leveraging It?

Automation is Here. How Are You Leveraging It?

Automation Technology 5558c5b706074 CPA firms are in the midst of a transition. For years, research firms and thought leaders have been predicting the disruption of the profession through automation. That disruption isn’t a vision for the future – it’s here now. In 2017, Gartner has forecast a transition period, lasting through 2020, in which AI would eliminate 1.8 million jobs. However, it also predicted the creation of 2.3 million jobs.

Currently, technology is creating ever-expanding opportunities for automation in accounting firms and changing the expectations of clients, employees and partners. So right now, we need to decide how we will […]

Automation and jobs: The risks women face

Automation and jobs: The risks women face

The report also states that women could gain 20% more jobs in the wake of technology-driven growth, outperforming men by 1%. (Reuters photo) The inevitability of automation in the workplace has long triggered fears of human redundancy. In its third report on automation and the future of work, McKinsey Global Institute analyses how the march of artificial intelligence and machine learning impacts women’s employment.

Its findings, from studying a mix of ten mature and emerging economies, including India, are rather bleak. The report estimates that an average of 20% of working women in these countries (a total of 107 million) […]

Universal Basic Income, Automation and the Future of Jobs

Universal Basic Income, Automation and the Future of Jobs

The nature of work has changed dramatically since the 1950s.

In that glorious post-war period, work was primarily a man’s purview, while women did so-called "invisible" work – taking care of children, maintaining the home and cooking.

It wasn’t unusual for a man to retire 40 years laterfrom the same employer he started with. That employer picked up the worker’s health and life insurance, and some employers even paid school tuition for their workers’ children. There was a sense of continuity. The 1950s Source: Pixabay Welcome to today. It’s rare for a worker to stay at a single job for longer […]

Automation to disproportionately affect women in healthcare

Automation to disproportionately affect women in healthcare

An emergency department in 2030 is poised to look much different as automation takes hold, and those changes are likely to disproportionately affect women in healthcare, according to a new report.

Automation will displace as many as 1 in 4 female workers across all sectors, or 160 million women, but that will be offset by an increase in demand and productivity, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute. That does not account for "frontier" jobs that one could not even imagine today, said Kweilin Ellingrud, a senior partner at McKinsey and co-author of the report.

"It is scary […]

What is the fifth industrial revolution and how will it change the world?

What is the fifth industrial revolution and how will it change the world?

New technology is just the tip of the fifth industrial revolution iceberg (Picture: Brittany Hosea-Small/AFP/Getty Images) There were nearly two centuries between the first and second industrial revolutions.

We’re now living in either the third or fourth industrial revolution (also known as Industry 4.0), depending on who you talk to, and we’re ‘on the cusp’ of the fifth one.

With the third only fully getting underway in 2012, according to the Economist , that’s a lot of industrial revolutions for a decade.The first mechanised the textile industry, the second created the means for mass production and the third is around the […]

High Oxford researcher talks the chance of automation on employment

If you’ve been following the conversation about technological unemployment and the threat of robots and A.I. stealing jobs, you may have come across the prediction that 47% of current jobs in the U.S. are at risk of automation. That figure comes from a widely cited 2013 paper, titled “The Future of Employment.”

One of that paper’s co-authors, Dr. Carl Benedikt Frey, has now expanded on the thesis in a new book. Frey is co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment at the U.K.’s prestigious Oxford University. His new book, The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in […]