Tag: software

The robots are here, but creativity can fend them off

The robots are here, but creativity can fend them off

There’s no doubt data and artificial intelligence are changing the face of employment. According to a recent study, 45% of American jobs are at risk of being automated within 20 years.

For evidence, look no further than the autonomous vehicle — a technology we already see on our roads. Is it implausible to imagine a world without taxi and ride-sharing drivers, truck and delivery drivers, or ship and airline captains?

Few debate the impact that analytics, machine learning and related technologies will have on nearly every facet of our economy and, as a result, the way we work. Many argue the […]

Labour pains: our rapidly changing workplace

Labour pains: our rapidly changing workplace

While Australian manufacturing never fully recovered from that tumult, the US, at least, had Apple and Microsoft leading the charge as its manufacturing base atrophied, with “Silicon Valley” now a byword for the digital economy. Australia continued, largely, to live off the back of a mining boom driven by China’s historic economic expansion, while investment in innovation lagged, and today is half that of countries like the US and Germany.

We hear a lot about the jobs of the future, usually from American media outlets gushing out a range of blue-sky predictions. What’s the next big thing? What will […]

Thought travel

Thought travel

Let me begin with an excerpt from the latest book of a great thinker in our time, Yuval Noah Harari:

“On December 7, 2017, a critical milestone was reached, not when a computer defeated a human at chess—that’s old news—but when Google’s AlphaZero program defeated the Stockfish 8 program. Stockfish 8 was the world’s computer chess champion for 2016. It had access to centuries of accumulated human experience in chess, as well as decades of computer experience. It was able to calculate seventy million chess positions per second. In contrast, AlphaZero performed only eighty thousand such calculations per second, and […]

Advanced Manufacturing Disrupts the Location Process

Advanced Manufacturing Disrupts the Location Process

Broadly speaking, advanced manufacturing can be defined as the inclusion of new, more efficient manufacturing methods enabled by technological innovation. The adoption of technology-driven automation in manufacturing has been omnipresent since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, but the rapid pace of advancements — especially around robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and 3-D printing/additive manufacturing — is changing the industrial landscape faster than ever before. When the time comes to select a physical location for a new advanced manufacturing facility, these technological shifts are manifesting themselves in an updated approach to location strategy, specifically when it comes to hiring profiles, […]

SEEK boss warns mid-level jobs will disappear

Middle-ranking jobs are the ones disappearing, he said.

"My theory, and I hope I’m wrong, is that once there is a downturn there will be a justification to automate roles rather than re-hire people," Mr Bassat said.

Mr Bassat said he was particularly worried about the kinds of "unoriginal businesses" which dominate the Australian economy, singling out the big banks which are all laying off staff.National Australia Bank has committed to a $1 billion cost-cutting drive, aiming to reduce headcount by 2000 a year for three years, whereas Commonwealth Bank is expected to shed about 4000 roles from asset sales alone, […]

Tech Jobs Are Evolving — Are We Keeping Up?

Tech Jobs Are Evolving -- Are We Keeping Up?

Technology by nature advances quickly. As a transportation industry analyst observed : If a Ford Mustang had evolved as quickly as the pace of computer innovation over the last 35 years, it would now get a reliable 3,666,652 miles per gallon and cost less than $5,000 to acquire. The exponential progression of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and advanced analytics means that technologies of the future are now part of our everyday lives . This means we use them at work — and at home — every time we search on Google, use Uber, get on a […]

What’s Worse Than Being Replaced By a Robot?

What's Worse Than Being Replaced By a Robot?

Conversations around artificial intelligence and automation tend toward the apocalyptic. In January, the Brookings Institution reported that more than 35 million Americans hold jobs with "high exposure" to automation. These vulnerable professionals – occupying roles in production, food service, and transportation – could already see at least 70% of their day-to-day tasks replicated by a machine. It’s clear that these machines will soon graduate from replicating tasks to replicating entire jobs, even mechanizing entire industries. The report anticipates this massive shift and concludes with a call to action. To "mitigate coming stresses," it reads, organizations will need to pursue […]

Automation & AI won’t make low-skilled jobs disappear

Automation & AI won’t make low-skilled jobs disappear

Representational image | Photo: Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg Whether AI and automation will create, eliminate or modify jobs, and how much, is the central question of a never-ending debate. In 2013, the Oxford academic duo Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne published a study titled “ The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization? ”, which estimated that 47% of American jobs are at high risk by mid-2030.

Last year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released The Future of Jobs 2018 report, stating that algorithms and intelligent machines are expected to create 133 million new roles globally while […]

Replaced by a robot? Workers less upset about machines taking over

Replaced by a robot? Workers less upset about machines taking over

Would you rather be replaced by a machine – or by another human? A university study delivers surprising results Would you rather be replaced by a machine – or by another human?

In the changing world of work, employees are said to feel more threatened by fellow humans taking over their jobs than by robots displacing them, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

While people generally view artificial intelligence and automation as a threat to employment, they tend to feel less upset about a robotic/AI takeover when their own jobs are on the line, said […]

The Puzzle of Economic Progress

The Puzzle of Economic Progress

Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images Current academic research – into the impact of new technologies, the economics of innovation, and the quality of management, for example – may be providing ever more pieces of the puzzle. But many crucial questions about economic progress remain unanswered, and others have not yet even been properly posed.

CAMBRIDGE – Do we know how economies develop? Obviously not, it seems, or otherwise every country would be doing better than it currently is in these low-growth times. In fact, cases of sustained rapid growth, like Japan beginning in the 1960s, or other Southeast Asian countries a decade […]