Automation Technologies and the Future of Work

Last year, McKinsey launched a multi-year study to explore the potential impact of automation technologies on jobs, organizations and the future of work.“Can we look forward to vast improvements in productivity, freedom from boring work, and improved quality of life?,” its initial article on the study asked, or “Should we fear threats to jobs, disruptions to organizations, and strains on the social fabric?”

Most jobs involve a number of different tasks or activities.Some of these activities are more amenable to automation than others.But just because some of the activities have been automated, does not imply that the whole job has […]

Robots are after our jobs: what can we do?

Robots are after our jobs: what can we do?

Photo: The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images Will smart automation, intelligent software bots and brainy robots take away our jobs anytime soon?

Pose this question to any Indian working in a company where unions are strong, or to any Indian who has a government job, or to the majority of Indians who work in the unorganized sector—those who drive taxis, trucks pull handcarts, hawk goods on footpaths or are employed as maids—and you will, in all probability, be looked at askance or even dismissed as an uninformed prophet of doom.

The reaction may not be surprising in emerging countries like India, […]

Chris Christie’s Minimum Wage Veto Was Based On Right-Wing Media Myths

Chris Christie’s Minimum Wage Veto Was Based On Right-Wing Media Myths

Christie Blocks New Jersey From Becoming Third State To Raise Wages To $15 Per Hour

Gov. Christie Vetoes Minimum Wage Increase Claiming It Would Hurt Businesses. Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) announced he would veto legislation raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour in an August 30 statement, claiming businesses could not handle the wage increase. New Jersey’s legislature approved a bill in June that would gradually lift the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2021, making it the third state to raise wages to that level after California and neighboring New York: New Jersey Governor Chris […]

Robots and AI eating into job market for predictable and routine work

Robots and AI eating into job market for predictable and routine work

Robots and early AI are already proficient enough to displace vast tracts of predictable physical work and data process and collection tasks in the US. The effect of automation may see more and more tasks taken away from humans, across a wide range of professions, either creating more time for different tasks – or seeing a reduction in FTE. Management of people remains an area with a low automation potential – given current technologies.

Automation has the potential to free humanity from the fetters of repetitive, physically demanding and, often, unpleasant work. The loss of such work, particularly where […]

Creativity will save us from the robots, QUT professor predicts

Creativity will save us from the robots, QUT professor predicts

The creative industries will have a resurgence in the age of of programmatic and the increasing role of digital in communications, a leading academic has predicted. Professor Stuart Cunningham of the Queensland University of Technology said the value of an Arts degree was increasing as robots and automation looked set to kill a host of careers with foundations in the digital space.

Cunningham predicts that workers in the future will have to have a working knowledge of digital and understand what is happening “under the hood’, but as robots assumed roles traditionally held by humans, the opportunities would grow for […]

Despite fears, Mexico’s manufacturing boom is lifting U.S. workers

Despite fears, Mexico's manufacturing boom is lifting U.S. workers

Workers assemble the Forte sedan on the floor of a Kia plant in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, which began production in May. (Natalie Kitroeff / Los Angeles Times) Enrique Zarate, 19, had spent just a year in college when he landed an apprenticeship at a new BMW facility in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. If he performs well, in a year he’ll win a well-paid position, with benefits, working with robots at the company’s newest plant.

Within a decade or so, most of the BMW 3 series cars that Americans buy will probably come from Mexico, built by people like Zarate.

“When you […]

CMV: Automation will continue to increase productivity and minimize employment, but the U.S. will NEVER see anything like a basic income.

CMV: Automation will continue to increase productivity and minimize employment, but the U.S. will NEVER see anything like a basic income.

Hi /u/SajunBecker . I’m wrapping up my master’s degree this year and have taken a decent number of courses pertaining to labor economics and macroeconomic development. Thus, if you’d like any more detail than what I’m providing (going to try to keep things short, for everyone’s sake), please feel free to ask! 🙂

So, basically there’s a few things going on here. First, as a few others have already pointed out, we do technically have some forms of pseudo-basic income (social security, AFDC, Food Stamps, subsidized housing programs, etc. are all efforts to combat unemployment and poverty and thus efforts […]

Automation in the workplace – friend or foe?

Fifty-six per cent of New Zealanders ‘definitely’ think their job will be impacted by artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in the next 10 years, according to recruiting experts Hays.

In the online poll of 497 people, a further 24 per cent said that ‘maybe’ their job will be impacted. The final 20 per cent do not believe their job will be impacted at all.

So is AI and automation your friend or foe? The answer, says Hays, depends on your willingness to adapt your skills."Rather than destroy jobs, automation and artificial intelligence can be expected to instead change roles, allowing workers […]

The Shifts — Great and Small — in Workplace Automation

The Shifts — Great and Small — in Workplace Automation

Despite valid concerns and anxiety about machines displacing workers, human labor isn’t going away any time soon. Tasks that cannot be substituted by automation are generally complemented by it. There have been periodic warnings in the last two centuries that automation and new technology would wipe out large numbers of middle-class jobs.

In the early 19th century, for instance, a group of English textile artisans, known as Luddites, famously protested the automation of textile production by seeking to destroy some of the machines. A century later, concern rose again over “The Automation Jobless,” as they were called in the title […]

Dan O’Brien: The hopes and fears around artificial intelligence

Dan O'Brien: The hopes and fears around artificial intelligence

Partly explaining the pessimism is fear of change and the unknown. Another reason is what economists call the “lump of labour fallacy” — the idea that the number of jobs in an economy is fixed, and therefore more automation must in turn mean fewer jobs…’ (Stock picture) ‘Artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." That is how no less a figure than physicist Stephen Hawking has described the risks posed by intelligent machines capable of thought and action. Medical Coding Programs allalliedhealthschools.com Start Now! Find Medical Billing & Coding Programs. Request Info Today Work at Home […]