Tag: Services

The Doomed Fallacy of Jobs and Growth (Part 2)

The Doomed Fallacy of Jobs and Growth (Part 2)

Jobs. You just have to say the word and objections to anything seem to evaporate. A slight lift in the employment figure and the nation breathes a sigh of relief. But why, in a time of rapid automation, does work still dominate our thinking? In Part 2 of this series (you can read Part 1 here ), Mike Dowson challenges our assumptions about jobs.

If you arrived from outer space, and plugged a human language translator into Earth’s chatter, you’d probably notice something odd. It appears we humans believe our well-being depends on the possession of a ‘job’.

This might […]

Automation in the transition region

Automation in the transition region

Technological innovations are quickly shifting the balance between activities performed by humans and tasks performed by machines. Indeed, recent research by Frey and Osborne (2017) suggests that nearly 50% of all jobs in the US face a high risk of being automated in the foreseeable future. In developing countries the risk of automation may be even higher, with up to 70% of jobs at risk (World Bank 2016, Nedelkoska and Quintini 2018). The percentage of jobs that are at risk of robotisation and automation may be particularly high in manufacturing. In this column, we highlight the core findings on […]

Automation in Asia. Are They Prepared?

Automation in Asia. Are They Prepared?

In the course of recent years, automation abilities have expanded definitely. Through incorporated work processes and data platforms, a wide scope of opportunities has made it feasible for organizations to automate their day to day and vital procedures so as to expand effectiveness.

Obviously, the majority of that is hypothetical. For tech organizations, particularly those in the fast-developing Asia Pacific region, one concern matters most importantly: is automation justified, despite all the trouble? All the more explicitly, by what means can the idea enable me to enhance incomes and develop my business while keeping up or bringing down operating resources?

The […]

Coping with automation

Coping with automation

The final version of the World Development Report (WDR) 2019 of the World Bank released at the end of November 2018 landed like a bombshell. It was a powerful refutation of the World Bank’s own 2016 WDR, which declared that the proportion of jobs threatened by automation was 69 per cent in India and 77 per cent in China. With such startling figures, the 2016 WDR figures stunned not only India but the entire world.

True, automation based on interrelated processes of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT) – with some secondary processes like 3D printing in manufacturing […]

What The Future Of Work Means For Cities

What The Future Of Work Means For Cities

George Jetson at work NOTE: This is an excerpt of Planet Money’s newsletter. You can sign up here .

Two weeks ago, MIT’s David Autor gave the prestigious Richard T. Ely lecture at the annual meeting of American economists in Atlanta. Introduced by the former chair of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke as a "first-class thinker" who was doing "path-breaking" work on the central economic issues of automation , globalization , and inequality , Autor strolled up to the microphone with a big smile. His talk was about the past and future of work, and he focused especially on […]

Dawn Ellmore Employment reviews Microsoft global race for AI patents

Dawn Ellmore Employment reviews Microsoft global race for AI patents

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a buzzword for a distant future. It’s increasingly becoming part of just about every sector. Start-ups and established companies alike are charging ahead with AI patents all around the world, and it looks set to continue increasing.

Data at the start of 2018 showed that innovative disruptors intensified their efforts to gain IP rights for all kinds of technological developments, ranging from blockchain platforms to AI. In particular, the increase in patents awarded for machine learning technology increased dramatically, according to a survey by IFI Claims Patent Service s. Data shows the patent category […]

The Quiet Ways Automation Is Remaking Service Work

The Quiet Ways Automation Is Remaking Service Work

Hotel workers march in front of a Marriott hotel in San Francisco in October. When blue-collar workers go on strike, demands like wage increases and better hours are usually the objective. But when nearly 8,000 Marriott International employees marched outside hotels for two months in late 2018, one request stood out among the rest: protection against the automated technology that’s remaking the hotel industry.

Marriott employees are right to worry. Over the past few years, the service industry has started hacking worker schedules by outsourcing human duties to machines. Automated experiments include robots that take over bartending and salad-making duties […]

GENERATION OF AUTOMATION: IS YOUR JOB IN DANGER?

GENERATION OF AUTOMATION: IS YOUR JOB IN DANGER?

Humanity has made great strides in the technical world and, as of late, those strides have begun affecting the livelihood of people directly. Technology, (specifically A.I.) has seen vast advancements in recent years, so much so that for some industries the threat of redundancy is becoming ever more real.

According to original research from MoneySuperMarket, driverless vehicles are growing in capability and becoming more popular among firms that traditionally employ large numbers of drivers. Such a transition could trigger large-scale redundancies by as early as 2020. But, which jobs are in danger of being automated first?

Is Your Job At […]

Rewriting the future of work

TORONTO – Much has been written about the “future of work,” and much of it makes for gloomy reading. Study after study predicts that automation will upend entire industries and leave millions unemployed. A 2013 paper by two Oxford professors even suggested that machines could replace 47 per cent of jobs in the United States within “a decade or two.” Conclusions like these sustain the narrative that the future will inevitably be jobless. And yet this view is favored primarily by the corporate sector and supported by negative trends in the so-called gig economy; workers and trade unions have […]

Rewriting the future of work

Rewriting the future of work

Automation does not mean that human work must disappear, only that it could become more productive. Photo: Bloomberg Much has been written about the “future of work,” and much of it makes for gloomy reading. Study after study predicts that automation will upend entire industries and leave millions unemployed. A 2013 paper by two Oxford professors even suggested that machines could replace 47 percent of jobs in the United States within “a decade or two.”

Conclusions like these sustain the narrative that the future will inevitably be jobless. And yet this view is favored primarily by the corporate sector and […]