Tag: software

A bot on your office computer could be sizing you up

A bot on your office computer could be sizing you up

SINGAPORE – Imagine a bot on your work computer that tracks your every click and keystroke, helping determine which of your tasks could be handled by one of its robot brethren.

Call it automating automation. It’s McKinsey & Co.’s entry into robotic process automation, which is spreading “robots” from the factory floor to the office cubicle as advancing technologies make it easier and more economically feasible for software to perform cognitive tasks now done by humans.

It’s transforming office work across the world, including in the Philippines’ offshoring business processing centers, which employ more than a million people and generate annual […]

Will Automation Decimate Rural Areas?

Will Automation Decimate Rural Areas?

News

A McKinsey report released last week finds rural areas will be the most negatively affected by the next wave of automation, but right- and left-leaning experts on technology and labor economics disagree, calling the report “speculative.”

According to McKinsey’s analysis, automation will hit rural areas hardest through shrinking wages and fewer job opportunities, partly because rural communities have lagged in economic development and growth compared to urban areas since WWII. Automation may displace nearly 40 percent of U.S. jobs by 2030 according to the report, and of the 512 counties that will see the most displacement (25 percent), 429 are […]

The Next Wave of Innovation Will Come From America’s Forgotten Communities

The Next Wave of Innovation Will Come From America's Forgotten Communities

Photo by Clément Falize on Unsplash In a New York Time’s article titled Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two , written by Eduardo Porter in February of this year, it was argued that the technology sector is breaking our economy in ways that are destabilizing our society, at large. In his piece, Porter argued that while the technology sector has promised a future where we’ll be capable of doing meaningful work we care about while being paid livable wages, we’re really just getting lulled into a world where robots do all the work and a small […]

The Robot Apocalypse Has Been Postponed

The Robot Apocalypse Has Been Postponed

DeAgostini/Getty Images

Like many non-Democrats with an interest in both public policy and supernatural religion, I have two favorite 2020 Democratic candidates: Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang.

Williamson is interesting because she helps reveal the spiritual shape of political ideas. Yang is interesting because he’s eager to think well outside the existing policy consensus and propose ideas that don’t fit naturally into either party’s current box.But just as I don’t actually share Williamson’s specific theological perspective, I have a core disagreement with Yang: His biggest policy proposal, a guaranteed basic income for every American, is a response to a disruption that […]

Are Robots Coming for Our Jobs? Careful, It’s a Trick Question

Are Robots Coming for Our Jobs? Careful, It’s a Trick Question

The robots are coming, and they’ll probably take your job when they get here.

Oh wait—have you heard that recently? As recently as, say, yesterday? In the news, or from a coworker, or in a sinister dystopian movie, maybe?

Sounding the alarm about job losses to automation has become commonplace—in fact, it’s more of a nonstop siren these days. Multiple Democratic presidential candidates are featuring their plans to combat Big Tech and solve technological unemployment as talking points of their campaigns. Dread of a robot-dominated future is mounting.One of the most widely-referenced and panic-inducing figures on the topic came from a […]

Why you don’t hear Trump or Farage talking about the tech revolution

Why you don’t hear Trump or Farage talking about the tech revolution

This week’s nightmare is the arrival of Boris Johnson; the autumn brings the Brexit watershed. Soon after, the 2020 US election takes shape, compounding the sense that politics everywhere is in a state of complete unpredictability. All that is clear, perhaps, is that the forces gathered around Brexit, Donald Trump and the various brands of European populism still think things are going their way .

For some people, everything comes down to the failures of neoliberalism and its inbuilt globalisation, and the long aftershocks from the crash of 2008. Others, with very good reason, focus on racism and bigotry, and […]

How Automation Makes Life – Not Just Work – More Human

Robotic process automation (RPA) is one of the most transformative technologies of the century, allowing enterprises to eliminate tedious tasks, freeing workers to focus on the higher-value, strategic work that only humans can do, and dramatically increasing efficiency and reducing costs in the process.

Businesses have long recognized the potential of RPA to transform the future of work, with the global market emerging as an estimated $100 billion opportunity according to KeyBanc Capital Markets. Gartner further estimates that by 2020, 40 percent of large enterprises will have deployed RPA software.

However, why should the benefit of RPA be confined to the […]

Episode Summary

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss workplace automation and the technologies that will make it happen — from robotics to artificial intelligence (AI) to machine learning. The McKinsey Global Institute released a new study on the topic this month, “A Future that Works: Automation, Employment and Productivity”, which contains some interesting insights.For instance, almost every occupation has the potential to be at least partially automated, and it’s likely that more occupations will be transformed than automated away. However, people will need to work in conjunction with machines as a part of their day-to-day activities, and in […]

I, robot

I, robot

If you visit a website called willrobotstakemyjob.com, you can discover the probability of automation, at some point in the future, rendering your job either obsolete or safe. Since the Gazette is for lawyers, I can save you the bother – it is 4%.

This compares with a mere 0.8% for priests, 11% for journalists, 67% for bus drivers, and 94% for accountants and auditors, which perhaps goes a long way towards explaining why the ‘Big Four’ auditing and accountancy firms are making inroads into the legal space!

The calculation is based on a methodology developed by Oxford University researchers looking at […]

What Happened to Weirton? Part 5: Moving Forward

What Happened to Weirton? Part 5: Moving Forward

A crowd of attendees at the Festival of Nations at the Millsop Community Center in Weirton If someone had a crystal ball, they could tell you exactly what the future holds for Weirton. Sadly, there are no magic tools to make this a short story. But, with a bit of help from the gift of gab, I’ll tell you about the current trajectory of the area.

As it’s already been established, Weirton Steel offered a seemingly unbreakable backbone of employment, high wages, and community identity to the city and the nearby stretch of the Ohio Valley. The mill helped Weirton […]