Tag: Services

AI will have huge impact on Indian jobs: Former U.S. chief data scientist D.J. Patil

AI will have huge impact on Indian jobs: Former U.S. chief data scientist D.J. Patil

He advises young professionals to prepare and train themselves in new technologies The emergence of Artificial Intelligence and automation is going to have a huge impact on jobs in the country, says former U.S. chief data scientist D.J. Patil.

“Everybody talks about self-driving cars, but we don’t talk about boring stuff, (like) bank tellers,” Mr. Patil told his co-panelist Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani during a fireside chat at an event in Bengaluru. “I recently went to a hotel and they didn’t have lawn mowers anymore, they had robots.”

Mr. Patil said that in the tech sector, where he is really concerned […]

Is Productivity Growth Becoming Irrelevant?

Is Productivity Growth Becoming Irrelevant?

LONDON – As the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow noted in 1987 , computers are “everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Since then, the so-called productivity paradox has become ever more striking. Automation has eliminated many jobs. Robots and artificial intelligence now seem to promise (or threaten) yet more radical change. Yet productivity growth has slowed across the advanced economies; in Britain, labor is no more productive today than it was in 2007.

Some economists see low business investment, poor skills, outdated infrastructure, or excessive regulation holding back potential growth. Others note wide disparities in productivity between leaders and laggards […]

Will a robot take your job?

Will a robot take your job?

taskmate robot BALTIMORE —

Robots taking over the world might sound like science fiction, but just how far from reality is it?

A new report by professional services firm Price Waterhouse Coopers predicts robots will take over 38 percent of American jobs by 2030.Take, for example, the "taskmate" robot that bevels the edges of a metal rod just like a human would do in a machine shop. One might imagine it would take a robotics engineer hours, even days, to program this multi-step task. Not so."I can teach you how to use this in 10 minutes. If you can play […]

Automation: end of employment or the chance to do more?

Automation: end of employment or the chance to do more?

Automation is a hot-button topic at the moment and the concerns around it are not entirely misplaced. However, the anxiety on the issue misses one critical point.

Wholesale automation of certain tasks might actually free us up to do more rather than put us all out of a job.

Researchers at the University of Oxford recently surveyed 352 experts in artificial intelligence to get a grasp of when AI will surpass human intelligence. The results were worrying to say the least — it seems AI has a 50-50 chance of being able to beat us at everything within 45 years.We won’t […]

Employment 4.0: bug, not feature

Employment 4.0: bug, not feature

India is at the nightmare scenario of 50% of the labour force generating 11% of GDP. Photo: Bloomberg In the US, 31% of workers are now self-employed, freelancing or in gig economy work. But India is ahead of the US; about 75% of our labour force meets the same criteria. Uber is in the news for the wrong reasons but platform companies like it have already changed labour markets in rich countries and the model will influence even poor-country labour markets like India in the long run. But we’d like to make the case that a) India’s huge self-employment […]

Come friendly robots and take our dullest jobs

Come friendly robots and take our dullest jobs

We are currently going through one of those periodic phases of “automation anxiety” when we become convinced that the robots are coming for our jobs. These fears are routinely pooh-poohed by historians and economists. The historians point out that machines have been taking away jobs since the days of Elizabeth I – who refused to grant William Lee a patent on his stocking frame on the grounds that it would take work away from those who knitted by hand. And while the economists concede that machines do indeed destroy some jobs, they point out that the increased productivity that […]

The economics of retirement

The economics of retirement

Sir; – It is extremely worrying that the Economic and Social Research Institute, together with the Citizens’ Assembly, should suggest extending the retirement age to 70. It is no surprise that the Minister for Social Protection agrees with the latest findings; politicians and their advisers appear especially ignorant of the enormous economic change wrought by advanced technology in the 21st century. Extending retirement age is about a wrong as it is possible to get. In 20 years, and possibly a lot sooner, people will retire in their fifties for the simple reason that unless they do, there will not […]

Best/worst jobs: Or, the future is here!

Best/worst jobs: Or, the future is here!

We have seen the future when it comes to the best jobs to have. Unsurprisingly, they are almost all generated by the digital age in which we live, and the field of health care that allows us to continue living provided you can afford it — but that’s a story for another day.

The business magazine Kiplinger’s online edition announced its 10 Best Jobs for the Future last week. As the magazine’s Stacy Rapacon points out, “best” for Kiplinger’s takes into account such factors as growth, salary and education required for such positions. “Worst” is exactly the opposite: small or […]

Are robots really going to steal our jobs?

Are robots really going to steal our jobs?

PwC analysis suggests that a third of UK and German workers will be at risk by 2030, but other research claims that robots are job creators. We look at both sides of the debate

Automation is nothing new. Industries all over the world have been subject to advances in technology over the course of centuries, even millennia.

Such advances through history, however, have often been met with resistance, especially when human capital is on the line in the short term. Indeed, being dubbed a Luddite stretches back to the early 1800s when handloom weavers protested against the mechanisation of the […]

Automation , AI will transform tomorrow’s workforce

Automation , AI will transform tomorrow's workforce

While the use of automation and artificial intelligence technologies is increasing, they will become widely used in the coming years and have a profound impact on the workforce and job security. Many low skill jobs will be lost. Some new highly skilled jobs will be created. Most jobs will be impacted to some degree.

That is the message from a new report from Forrester analyst J. P. Gownder, “Automation Technologies, Robotics, and AI in the Workforce, Q2 2017,” which warns that millions of jobs are at stake as we change how tasks are performed.

Gownder says automation technologies are already reshaping […]