Tag: Services

Living in a bubble: Y Combinator’s basic income study is merely a result of white unemployment

Living in a bubble: Y Combinator’s basic income study is merely a result of white unemployment

Workers arrive for a shift at the reopened Chrysler Warren Truck Assembly plant in Warren, Michigan, U.S., on Monday, June 29, 2009. Photo credit: Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg via Silicon Valley’s interest in basic income is based on a false prophecy of tech destroying jobs and wouldn’t be explored if those affected weren’t mostly white

Y Combinator made an announcement last Wednesday that it would pursue a short-term, exploratory study into the concept of a ‘ basic income ,’ a no-strings-attached form of welfare that would be allotted to every citizen of a given city or country. Residents of increasingly […]

Swiss Manufacturers Cut Jobs that Sector Warns Won’t Come Back

Swiss Manufacturers Cut Jobs that Sector Warns Won't Come Back

. Visitors say views through the glass floors in Schindler’s Auckland Sky Tower elevators offer one of the most exhilarating lift experiences in the world. Zurich

But for the Swiss workers who make the elevator parts, their uncertain future might feel as dizzying as the 220-meter drop underfoot as Swiss industry accelerates job cuts to mitigate the impact of the galloping franc.

Six decades after opening, Schindler’s hometown factory in Ebikon that decades ago employed hundreds will be scaled back to under 100 employees by the end of 2017.They will focus on special orders the company said would secure the […]

Will automation destroy jobs?

Will automation destroy jobs?

MT at 50: Carl Benedikt Frey, co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, gives his expert view on the effects of automation on jobs – and the news isn’t all bad.

Carl Benedikt Frey of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford has become (with colleague Michael Osborne) the leading authority on the automation of jobs. Their methodology focuses on how reliant tasks are on human aptitudes such as social perceptiveness, persuasion, originality and manual dexterity. We asked him about the impact automation will have in the future. What will determine the pace of […]

Why I’m Not Worried About Robots

Google “robots taking our jobs” and you will get 10.3 million hits.

A series of terrific books (such as Rise of the Robots , The Second Machine Age , and The Industries of the Future (can you share other titles?), have rode the wave (and encouraged) our worries about automation and jobs.

Who isn’t worried about driverless cars and truckerless trucks?The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are 233,700 taxi and chauffeur drivers. At last count, Uber has 160,000 active drivers. What will happen to all these people who make their living driving when cars drive themselves?A recent Medium article […]

How the rise of the robots will affect your job

How the rise of the robots will affect your job

MT at 50: We’re heading for the fourth industrial revolution where more and more jobs will be automated – from care assistants to check-in staff. So how can we manage the march of the machines?

The residents of the Colony Club, an assisted-living home near Fort Lauderdale in Florida, are fond of Zora, the little redhead who helps them with their daily exercises, tells them a story or two, takes them on a walk, reads them the weather forecast and will even dance them the Macarena if they ask.

And she works for virtually nothing, after an initial payment of […]

Swiss manufacturers cut jobs that sector warns won’t come back

Swiss manufacturers cut jobs that sector warns won't come back

By Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi

ZURICH, June 7 (Reuters) – Visitors say views through the glass floors in Schindler’s Auckland Sky Tower elevators offer one of the most exhilarating lift experiences in the world.

But for the Swiss workers who make the elevator parts, their uncertain future might feel as dizzying as the 220-metre drop underfoot as Swiss industry accelerates job cuts to mitigate the impact of the galloping franc.Six decades after opening, Schindler’s hometown factory in Ebikon that decades ago employed hundreds will be scaled back to under 100 employees by the end of 2017.They will focus on special orders the […]