Tag: Services

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 […]

A Universal Basic Income For When the Robots Come

A Universal Basic Income For When the Robots Come

Doug Clinton is managing partner with venture capital firm Loup Ventures. [Editor’s note: Doug Clinton, for nine years an analyst with Piper Jaffray, recently departed the firm to help found Loup Ventures, a venture capital outfit focusing on technologies such as vertical and augmented reality and artificial intelligence, along with his colleague Gene Munster. Today he offers up a viewpoint on a "universal basic income," a topic that, as my Gabe Alpert wrote in Barron’s Next last week, has been a focus of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.]

Over the next several decades, human labor will be augmented then replaced […]

The Jobs AI Will Take Over First

11th July 2017: The robotic revolution is set to cause the biggest transformation in the world’s workforce since the industrial revolution. In fact, research suggests that over 30% of jobs in Britain are under threat from breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

With pioneering advances in technology many jobs that weren’t considered ripe for automation suddenly are. RS Components have used PWC Data to reveal how many jobs per sector are at risk of being taken by robots by 2030, a mere 13 years away. Did you think you were exempt from the robot revolution?

The top three sectors who are […]

The Dark Side of Automation: Impact on Subprime Auto Borrowers

Self-driving cars, car sharing and subscription-based vehicle services: these are destined to affect the auto industry in ways that will make the current sales slump and shift from cars to SUVs seem like a bump in the road. Predictions vary widely as to when the sea change in how we think about cars and how they fit into our lives will come, but its inevitable arrival is often portrayed as part of a brighter, safer, cleaner and more efficient tomorrow. Rilsonav / Pixabay The dark undercarriage of this issue is the insidious effect that the technology, including artificial intelligence, […]

9 forces shaping the future of IT

9 forces shaping the future of IT

Credit: InfoWire.dk IT is on the precipice of unprecedented change. Every company, now in the business of technology, is experiencing glimmers of larger shifts to come: automation, decentralized technology budgets, rapid adoption of cloud-based services, and most recently, artificial intelligence as a business necessity.

Thanks to these emerging and converging trends, technology is increasingly freeing workers from routine tasks, from the warehouse to the C-suite. Massive amounts of data are being ingested in real time, as business decisions are beginning to be offloaded to machines, leaving more time to focus on planning, pursuing leads, and adopting new technologies.

IT stands at […]