Tag: Services

Rise of the Robots

Rise of the Robots

Technology continues to displace workers… will jobs losses be as bad as some think?… why investors in technology win whatever the outcome

For 23 years, it was the same routine…

Tollbooth operator, Larry Collins, would greet drivers on the Carquinez Bridge in the San Fransico Bay area… perhaps make change as he collected the toll… maybe offer directions… rinse and repeat.In March of 2020, as Covid-19 cases exploded, that routine ended.Collins was told not to come in to work the next day. For health safety reasons, the tollbooths were closing. Instead, technology was taking over the job.In this case, […]

Book Review: The spectre of permanent technological unemployment haunts SA

Book Review: The spectre of permanent technological unemployment haunts SA

Before I finished this review, I filled a vehicle with petrol at my local service station. An apt name, because services are indeed provided. An attendant will pump the petrol and wash your windscreen. Oil, water and tyre pressure can also be checked.

First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

This was the state of affairs when I grew up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. I did not pump “gas”, as we call it, myself but a number of my friends and acquaintances had part-time or summer jobs doing so. It was a significant source of employment […]

Frito-Lay workers resolved their labour battle – the next front will be automation

Frito-Lay workers resolved their labour battle – the next front will be automation

Linda Nazareth is host of the Work and the Future podcast and senior fellow for economics and population change at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa.

If the only way to get Fritos into bowls (leaving aside whether that should even be a goal) is to force people to work long hours in overheated factories, something apparently needs to give. For the workers at the Frito-Lay factory in Topeka, Kan., who staged a strike last month, what needs to change is their working conditions and, presumably, the deal they struck with parent company PepsiCo Inc. will help with that.

Over the […]

Time to recover the sabbath, says new report

Time to recover the sabbath, says new report

(Photo: Unsplash/Joel Muniz) Home working, zero hours contracts, the switch to home deliveries and online retailing, and an ‘always on’ culture – the world of work is changing fast and massively.

The Covid pandemic has accelerated changes and turbo-charged trends that make the old ‘nine to five’ office-based routines seem a far, distant memory.

Now UK faith-based think tank Theos has come up with key proposals aimed at helping modern-day workers survive and thrive despite both the current changes – and the major challenges coming down the track. One proposal suggests ‘recovering the sabbath.’In a new report, ‘Just Work: humanising the […]

Introducing my next legal counsel: Artificial intelligence lawbot

By Daniel Shin

As Artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more deeply integrated into our day to day life, many jobs doing simple and repeated tasks might quickly disappear. Advanced jobs that require professional knowledge or experiences may be also replaced by the adaptive deep learning machine and only the top human elite might survive.

Artificial intelligence may even eventually replace lawyers. It is yet hard to imagine how lawyers could be replaced by AI. Lawyers or judges are only as good as the information they receive. AI has the great potential to analyze the information it receives without human prejudice or personal […]

No Clear Answers Yet in Monday Shootout in Yakima

No Clear Answers Yet in Monday Shootout in Yakima

The Yakima Valley Special Investigations Unit continues to search for answers and evidence in a shooting between a suspect and Yakima Police on Monday.

41-year-old Andrew Gonzales remains in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle after being shot by police and after being involved in another shooting before police arrived. Police were called to the 700 block of North First Street at about 12:20AM Monday where they found Gonzalez walking in the area bleeding from gunshot wounds. He ran to an alley with police following him and he opened fire on a patrol vehicle. Officer Dominic Dannan was […]

New reality driving digital worker in Dominican Republic

New reality driving digital worker in Dominican Republic

One of the conclusions of the National Consultation on the future of vocational-technical training in the country was that the new reality of work and worker had created the figure of the digital worker and the self-employed worker (such as Uber) who use technology in the digital economy.

The consultation carried out by Infotep and representatives of different productive sectors of the country showed that these workers combat their unemployment by working on-demand, without a contract, without labor benefits, without social security, making their temporary employment precarious.

Given this reality, the National Consultation determined that Dominican legislation should provide coverage for […]

New world order requires its workers to be skilled differently

New world order requires its workers to be skilled differently

Graduates await to be awarded in a previous graduation ceremony Last week, the Indo Pacific Business Summit held a conference on Future of Jobs: Skilled Workforce to meet Employment Opportunities in the New World Order where I was privileged to be part of the speakers.

During the discussion, it emerged that over the past decade, a set of ground-breaking and emerging technologies have signalled the start of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0).

In order to capture the opportunities, companies have embarked on a reorientation and transformational drive, leveraging on digitisation and technology. More importantly as a result of Covid-19, the […]

Your View: How smaller families can benefit our country

Your View: How smaller families can benefit our country

This need not be cause for alarm. and continued socioeconomic inequities, this represents an extraordinary opportunity. We can downshift and focus on creating a greater society — as opposed to a larger one.

Yet alarms are being raised that somehow our future prosperity hinges on an ever-larger number of people. Most Americans clearly understand that is not true for their own families. And it is neither true for our own region, nor for our nation. John Seager (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO) Population declines should not be seen as a negative, the writer asserts. (Dreamstime/TNS/TNS) Americans have managed to adapt — and often […]

Google’s parent Alphabet to launch a new robotics and AI firm- Intrinsic

Google’s parent Alphabet to launch a new robotics and AI firm- Intrinsic

Source: The Verge Google is one of the most innovative technology companies in the industry and it has grown way beyond just being a search engine company. There are projects that Google keeps under its own name while some are kept under Google’s parent organization- Alphabet Inc. The parent company is known to procure more futuristic businesses and projects such as Waymo and Verily and according to the company’s latest announcement on Tuesday, Alphabet Inc. is ready to launch its new robotics and Artificial Intelligence project called, ‘Intrinsic’.

Intrinsic is a business of the future as it deals with advances […]