The High-Tech Poorhouse

The High-Tech Poorhouse

A man on the street in Newark, NJ. Tony Fischer / Flickr We live in what legal scholar Frank Pasquale has called a “scored society.” Corporations and governments collect unprecedented amounts of data about us — our habits, our histories, our beliefs, our desires, our social networks. Machine learning algorithms parse that data to assess our worthiness for public benefits, for jobs, for loans, for insurance, and for suspicion in the criminal justice system.

The rich are not exempt from this reality, but it’s the poor and working class who are most endangered by it. Predictive policing algorithms launder racial […]

Becoming more human

Becoming more human

I learned about a new website recently. The site willrobotstakemyjob.com determined, well, how likely it is that a robot will take your job. It picked up a lot of attention, and lots of people typed their career into the search engine to see if they were about to be replaced. Cashiers have a 97 percent chance of being replaced; pastors, on the other hand, have a 0 percent chance. Despite the fact that Christianity won’t be replaced by Robotology any time soon, I’m still concerned about the changes technology is causing in the employment landscape of the U.S. Where […]

Point of No Return — Automation is a good-news, bad-news deal

Point of No Return — Automation is a good-news, bad-news deal

Front Page

Point of No Return

ViewPoint The “infinite monkey theorem” suggests that a monkey randomly striking keys on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will, at some point, produce a given text — such as the complete works of William Shakespeare or a cover-to-cover redux of “War and Peace.” I’m familiar with this theorem, at least partially, because it keeps me aware that I can be easily replaced at any given time by a caffeine-fueled, talented monkey. Or a talent-less monkey. Or, really, a house plant.None of us particularly like the feeling […]

The impact of job automation in South Africa

The impact of job automation in South Africa

Brick-laying robot. A new report shows that most jobs in South Africa can be automated. Over one third of jobs in South Africa can be automated thanks to digital technologies on jobs and economies, a new report released by research firm Accenture that highlights the impact of job automation in South Africa has shown.

The report dubbed, Reworking the Revolution: Are you ready to compete as intelligent technology meets human ingenuity to create the future workforce? shows that investing in digital technologies can help the country experience a major economic growth.

“By investing in intelligent technologies and human-machine collaboration, […]

S. Africa Says Automation May Swipe 35% of Jobs

S. Africa Says Automation May Swipe 35% of Jobs

The research indicates that one in three jobs in South Africa (5.7 million jobs) is currently at risk of total automation. T he impact of digital technologies on jobs and economies is an important topic for South Africa as new local research indicates that more than a third of jobs in this country may be automated.

An Accenture report, “Reworking the Revolution: Are you ready to compete as intelligent technology meets human ingenuity to create the future workforce?”, indicates that by investing in intelligent technologies and human-machine collaboration, businesses could boost revenues by 38% by 2022 and raise employment levels […]

How Will AI Change Work? Here Are 5 Schools of Thought

How Will AI Change Work? Here Are 5 Schools of Thought

Yaroslav Kushta/Getty Images The future of the workforce is one of the biggest issues facing CEOs today. It’s abundantly clear to all that artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and advanced robotics make it possible for machines to take on tasks that once required a person to do them. How should companies prepare, strategically, to thrive in this world?

Views on what to expect vary dramatically. By some accounts, almost half of all jobs in the U.S. economy could be made obsolete. Others have described how intelligent machines will actually create jobs — including entirely new categories of jobs. Some people […]

‘Reskilling’ Top Of Mind At World Economic Forum In Davos

Two massive macroeconomic trends are colliding at this snowbound congregation of the world’s economic leaders: the insistence on providing a fair work environment for women and minorities, as well as the adverse impacts automation and artificial intelligence (AI) have on the global workforce.

Setting the tone: last November’s The Global Gender Gap Report 2017 from the World Economic Forum (WEF), which sounded the alarm over results that progress toward parity between men and women in technical roles had dropped since the report from the previous year. “In 2017, we should not be seeing progress towards gender parity shift into reverse,” […]

7 Jobs That Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Soon Overtake

7 Jobs That Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Soon Overtake

PHOTO: Shutterstock It is inevitable that a certain number of jobs are going to be lost to artificial intelligence. However, it is also clear that a lot of other jobs are going to be created as new roles around AI emerge. Instead of insisting on the fact that certain jobs will go away, it would probably be more accurate to describe the employment market as one in which the roles and type of work we do is changing dramatically. Impact Of AI

As industrialization took hold in the 19 th and 20 th century we lost some jobs but […]

When Robots Take Over Our Jobs, It’s Women Who Will Lose Out Most

When Robots Take Over Our Jobs, It’s Women Who Will Lose Out Most

Jobs at Risk

It’s no secret that the world of work is set to change irreversibly as more industries start to implement automation and artificial intelligence. A new study published by the World Economic Forum finds that women are set to be hit the hardest.

In the United States, 1.4 million jobs will be vulnerable to disruption by 2026 due to technology and other factors. The report analyzed some 1,000 types of jobs throughout the country, covering 96 percent of total employment. It showed that 57 percent of those whose jobs are at risk are women. This statistic sheds light […]

How Automation Affects Employment

How Automation Affects Employment

Here is an excellent essay written by a Year 12 student on the title "Examine the possible impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on both the pattern of employment and rate of unemployment in countries such as the UK." One hundred and fifty years ago, and it would have been unfathomable to assume technology could have assimilated into every corner of our lives as it has now done. It has transformed productivity, help raise the material living standards of even the impoverished, and created employment in sectors that were unheard of not so long ago. In the late 18th […]