Tag: Services

Automated workforce Tax robots for stealing jobs?

Automated workforce Tax robots for stealing jobs?

It’s not yet clear whether, with the rise of artificial intelligence, workforce automation will lead to an overall rise or drop in human job creation. If death and taxes are the only two things that a person can count on, should the latter apply to robots as well, as they take over jobs traditionally done by humans?

That’s the argument put forward by University of Geneva professor and tax lawyer Xavier Oberson.

Oberson argues that as robots take over more and more jobs – particularly in the industry and service sectors – there will be a rise in unemployment […]

Job creation vital for India to escape middle-income trap

Job creation vital for India to escape middle-income trap

The Indian economy has been witnessing a flux of good news lately. The GDP growth for the October-December quarter stood at seven per cent, beating all expectations of the negative impact of demonetisation. Stock markets hit their highest in two years, and the rupee stood at a three-month high. Representational image. Thinkstock However, scepticism over the true reflection of the demonetisation impact in growth figures has been widespread. Japanese financial holding company Nomura rightly pointed out that the figure fails to capture the negative impact on the unorganised sector as it is largely based on organised sector data.

Nevertheless, obsession […]

“The robots are coming”: How will automation affect London’s economy?

“The robots are coming”: How will automation affect London’s economy?

A robot on its way to work on Regent Street. Image: Getty. Labour assembly member Fiona Twycross on the rise of the robots.

The vision of the world of work being run by robots and machines is familiar from futuristic sci-fi films, but advances in technology could mean that a new post-industrial revolution is closer than we think.

Automation – the application of new technology to produce and deliver products and services – is not a new phenomenon: in London, for example, the tube and DLR already have driverless technology. However, the pace at which further automation is expected could […]

Brand human: why efficient automation will not always be best for business

Brand human: why efficient automation will not always be best for business

As study after study predicts huge swaths of jobs will be wiped out by automation in the coming decades , there’s one factor that might just throw a spanner in the works of the robot workforce takeover: the marketing power of brand human.

Just as Fair Trade and organic branding initiatives have convinced consumers to pay a higher price for products and services that might not be produced in the most coldly efficient way possible, businesses are realising the potential to carve out a niche in the face of growing disenchantment with the rise of the machines.

Marketers have identified a […]

Automation and robot-proofing your career

Automation and robot-proofing your career

STOCKTON — For more than 40 years, robots have been at work in U.S. factories doing mainly routine, repetitive work. While the number of manufacturing jobs has gone down in this country, productivity has gone up. Here in the Central Valley, automation has been important in distribution centers, such as Amazon.com, where robots often retrieve items from shelves for shipping, for example.

“Everything from wrapping pallets to self-programming robots,” said San Joaquin Partnership CEO Michael Ammann who recently saw the latest in manufacturing and distribution center automation on display at a Southern California trade show.

For example, vision software can now […]

Shifting Obligations for Employers with Advancement of AI-driven Automation and Rise of Independent Workers

Shifting Obligations for Employers with Advancement of AI-driven Automation and Rise of Independent Workers

McDougall-NLR Law Firm SEO Webinar, March 14, 2017, 3pm EDT As I continue to follow developments regarding the future of work, I recently attended an event co-sponsored by Cornell/ILR’s Institute for Workplace Studies in NYC and the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) addressing MGI’s report last Fall entitled Independent Work: Choice, Necessity and the Gig Economy . The report examines the increasing numbers of self-employed, freelance and temporary workers in the U.S. and Europe which are currently estimated to comprise 30 percent of the working-age population and rising. The report notes that many workers have chosen this autonomous path as […]

Lawrence Summers says Bill Gates’ idea for a robot tax is “profoundly misguided”

Lawrence Summers says Bill Gates’ idea for a robot tax is “profoundly misguided”

Should robot workers be taxed like human workers? (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) In a recent interview with Quartz , Bill Gates floated an idea for mitigating the impact of automation technology on human jobs: tax the robots. Governments could use the revenue, he argued, to fund social safety-net programs and support jobs that still require human empathy and understanding.

But Harvard economist and former US Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers calls the suggestion “profoundly misguided.” In a Washington Post op-ed published March 5, he laid out his reasons for his skepticism. Taxing technologies is a slippery slope

Summers argues that […]

Robots Aren’t Out to Get Us All

Robots Aren’t Out to Get Us All

Editor’s Note: This commentary is part of a bi-monthly column in partnership with South Texas Money Management . Are people in danger of being replaced by robots? Concerns regarding automation and worker displacement, which have been around for centuries, have experienced a recent uptick. Most of these concerns are misplaced, particularly if effective policies are in place.

The real wealth of a country consists of the output of goods and services that its countrymen and women have access to. The fear that automation will destroy jobs rests on the assumption that there is a fixed amount of goods that buyers […]

A ‘robot tax’ is not the way to save jobs

A 'robot tax' is not the way to save jobs

© Getty Images When two diametrically opposed figures such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Benoît Hamon, the Socialist candidate in the French presidential election, both come out in favor of a "robot tax," that should set the alarm bells ringing.

The tax is supposed to restore the balance between man and machine. However, there are better paths we can go down than this.

Unemployment The two gentlemen are right to be concerned. In their famous 2013 study, Michael Osborne and Carl Frey of Oxford University concluded that "about 47 percent of total US employment is at risk from automation."Later […]

Automation is Taking Over One of the Most Popular Professions

Automation is Taking Over One of the Most Popular Professions

Truck driving is the most popular job for people in most US states and the advent of the self-driving truck is going to completely disrupt that profession.

Universal Basic Income is one way to address the upcoming worker displacement that’s coming from automation.

Late last year, I took a road trip with my partner from our home in New Orleans, Louisiana to Orlando, Florida and as we drove by town after town, we got to talking about the potential effects self-driving vehicle technology would have not only on truckers themselves, but on all the local economies dependent on trucker […]