Tag: Services

GARY MACDOUGALL: Society’s right to work

GARY MACDOUGALL: Society’s right to work

A typical auto manufacturing production floor will have thousands of industrial robots lined up doing multiple tasks. ©(Submitted photo)

Many years ago as a young reporter I felt underpaid and overworked. I had a crisis of faith in terms of my chosen field of employment.

Looking back, I was likely being paid about what I should have earned, given my education and experience.Unlike myself, many young people in the 1960s had chosen the booming economy of southern Ontario to find employment. The cars they drove when they returned home for summer vacations made me chafe at my lot in […]

Trump’s Job Promise – Can He Build A Wall Around Automation?

Trump’s Job Promise - Can He Build A Wall Around Automation?

Moving through the 21st Century, automation, not aliens, has been the driving force in unemployment. Trump waived his magic “wall” wand over his rust-belt Cinderellas that eked out an electoral win with fears of minorities and foreigners, but can he build a wall around job automation? Will jobs be the measure of human worth in this century and beyond when machines will do more, faster, and better?

Trump squeaked into office by wooing white blue collar voters in the former industrial states and in coal country with the idea that he would kick start their manual labor-intensive economies. Factory jobs.

Even […]

Trump’s Job Promise – Can He Build A Wall Around Automation?

Moving through the 21st Century, automation, not aliens, has been the driving force in unemployment. Trump waived his magic “wall” wand over his rust-belt Cinderellas that eked out an electoral win with fears of minorities and foreigners, but can he build a wall around job automation? Will jobs be the measure of human worth in this century and beyond when machines will do more, faster, and better?

Trump squeaked into office by wooing white blue collar voters in the former industrial states and in coal country with the idea that he would kick start their manual labor-intensive economies. Factory jobs.

Even […]

How AI startups can affect employment

How AI startups can affect employment

Automation of jobs due to technology advancements is a well-known issue. In his 2016 State of the Union Address, U.S. President Barack Obama warned that technology “doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated.”

Obama was not the first U.S. President to be concerned about automation, however. John F. Kennedy in 1962 said that the major domestic challenge of the decade was “to maintain full employment at a time when automation … is replacing men.”

Despite these concerns, automation did not lead to quick and total job losses — neither in the 1960s, […]

How AI startups can affect employment

How AI startups can affect employment

Automation of jobs due to technology advancements is a well-known issue. In his 2016 State of the Union Address, U.S. President Barack Obama warned that technology “doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated.”

Obama was not the first U.S. President to be concerned about automation, however. John F. Kennedy in 1962 said that the major domestic challenge of the decade was “to maintain full employment at a time when automation … is replacing men.”

Despite these concerns, automation did not lead to quick and total job losses — neither in the 1960s, […]

With automation (not trade or immigrants, as Trump claims) taking jobs, it’s time to consider a universal basic income

LFPress.com – Opinion – Work In Progress?

The main message of 2016 was that we are entering a period of economic and political upheaval comparable to the industrial revolution of 1780-1850, and nothing expressed that message more clearly than Donald Trump’s appointment of Andrew Puzder as secretary of labour — even though it’s clear that neither man understands the message.

Puzder bears a large part of the responsibility for giving space for Trump’s election promise to “bring back” America’s lost industrial jobs: seven million in the past 35 years. That’s what created the Rust Belt and the popular anger that put […]

What can governments do when jobs run out?

What can governments do when jobs run out?

As automation makes more jobs redundant, policymakers cannot put off discussing universal basic income as an option. (Shutterstock image) Martin Ford writes in the Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future that around 47% of total employment in the US, around 64 million jobs, have the potential to be automated perhaps within a decade or two. Europe is already facing a crisis of jobs. Youth unemployment in Italy stands around 36% while it is nearly 44% in Spain. Thanks to offshoring and automation, we are seeing a polarisation in the labour market that is […]

How technology will destroy low-wage and middle class jobs the world over

How technology will destroy low-wage and middle class jobs the world over

Rise of the Robots underlines that we have to rethink the assumption that education and reskilling on the job will lead to better prospects. (Shutterstock) It’s likely that machines will be smarter than us before the end of the century – not just at chess or trivia questions but at just about everything, from mathematics and engineering to science and medicine.” – Gary Marcus, professor at New York University

There is an ongoing crisis of jobs in India and the world that does not provoke as much discussion as it should. The Labour Bureau revealed this year that India added […]

RA Mashelkar: “Automation to replace 69% jobs a serious concern”

RA Mashelkar: “Automation to replace 69% jobs a serious concern”

© Leading scientist and former CSIR chief, Dr RA Mashelkar explains the emerging technological scenario, the subsequent job losses and how to deal with it, in this interview with National Herald

India has seen a jobless growth in the last few years. According to Labour ministry data, around 1.2 crore people enter the workforce every year; however, in 2015, only 1.35 lakh jobs were created. In this backdrop, spontaneous disruption in technologies is set to soon debilitate jobs massively, which our policymakers don’t seem to be factoring in. In an interview with Sebastian PT , leading scientist and former […]

We must do something about jobs for young people in a world of automation

We must do something about jobs for young people in a world of automation

As technology advances and changes our economy, young jobseekers will bear the brunt of changes in the labour market. With the increasing automation of jobs traditionally occupied by young workers and professionals, a whole generation could face a dystopian future if policymakers fail to act.

A report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia argues that a new wave of automation is allowing machines to “replicate aspects of human thought” . Classical economists as far back as Adam Smith argued that technological advancements and economic change go hand in hand , but the latest shift seems set to change […]