Tag: software

Future Automation

Great for the robots, but what about people?. The Future of Jobs Report aims to unpack and provide specific information on the relative magnitude of these trends by industry and geography, and on the expected time horizon for their impact to be felt on job functions, employment levels and skills. Universal Basic Income may be our only way out. 133, Sector No. Learn about Azure Automation, a cloud automation service for process automating those long-running, error-prone, frequently repeated tasks with Windows PowerShell. In this talk about the future of work, economist David Autor addresses the question of why there […]

‘Robotic process automation is the beginning, expect further disruption in technology and services’

‘Robotic process automation is the beginning, expect further disruption in technology and services’

White collar automation has been happening for a very long time. Robotics is a cool name for efficient software that has led to the creation of a new stream called Robotics Process Automation (RPA). RPA eliminates mundane and tedious tasks freeing workers to focus on higher value work. Since the 4-5 years of its evolution, RPA is now the buzzword for CTOs and CFOs as it delivers 30-40 percent savings and operational efficiency in the first year of adoption and continues to improve efficiencies thereafter. Some of the leading industries adopting RPA in the West are financial services, healthcare […]

The Informal IT School and UiPath launches an RPA specializing course in Cluj and Iasi

The Informal IT School and UiPath launches an RPA specializing course in Cluj and Iasi

The Informal IT school (SIIT) partners with the first Romanian unicorn, UiPath, the world leader in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enterprise software market to create an RPA course that will start this autumn in Cluj and Iasi. Entries are open on scoalainformala.ro. “Not long ago we were talking about the technologies of the future when we were talking about terms such as robots, artificial intelligence or machine learning. Here is the time to put these terms in place. UiPath has created a software ecosystem with unprecedented applicability, but especially an extra-fast learning accessibility. I think RPA is one […]

Higher Productivity Is Good for Workers

Higher Productivity Is Good for Workers

(Ralph Orlowski/REUTERS) For most of our history Americans have supported increased productivity, even if it led to economic disruption and worker displacement. Unfortunately, over the last decade that support has weakened. Productivity gains are now portrayed as a tool for greedy corporations to jack up their profits at the expense of workers. Moreover, workers are now seen as so fragile that all automation must be feared. So, rather than support productivity, the dominant narrative favors redistribution and protection from change.

The emergence of this new “productivity doesn’t benefit workers” narrative matters because government policies in a wide array of areas […]

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 […]

When Computers Create Code, Who Owns It Is a Question Worth Billions

When Computers Create Code, Who Owns It Is a Question Worth Billions

Juhari Muhade via Getty Images NEW YORK— Google’s DeepDream has generated artwork; the What-If Machine created the characters and story for a West End Musical ; music composed by programs was performed in the London Symphony in 2012. We talk about jobs that may be lost to automation, but there is scant attention paid to who owns the intellectual property created by machines.

Artificial intelligence technology no longer allows us the luxury to vacillate. With the advent of AI, software and computers will be creating a number of programs and original works.

But in many parts of the world, IP […]

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 […]