Tag: Technical

How Automation in Africa Will Affect the Skills Needs of Employers

How Automation in Africa Will Affect the Skills Needs of Employers

By Naomi Simiyu and Audrey Cheng

Most children entering primary school right now will work in jobs that don’t exist today. According to the World Economic Forum this applies to 65% of all children entering primary school worldwide. The situation is even more dire in Africa where 80% of people between ages 20 and 30 will work in positions that do not exist today . African economies can adapt by focusing on lifelong learning in technical, cognitive and social/behavioural skills that youth need for a technologically advanced world—now and for the future.

An Increasingly Automated Africa It is estimated […]

7 reasons in favour of universal basic income – is Britain ready?

7 reasons in favour of universal basic income - is Britain ready?

The concept of universal basic income – an unconditional payment for all in a society – is one that goes back centuries, but what are the main arguments in its favour? 1. Automation

As more and more jobs become automated – that is they are done by machines rather than humans – the main benefiters will be those who own the machines while human workers will face mass unemployment. Why pay staff to serve tables in restaurants when it becomes cheap enough for robots to do the same job and not get tired? Why pay cab drivers when […]

7 reasons in favour of universal basic income – is Britain ready?

7 reasons in favour of universal basic income - is Britain ready?

The concept of universal basic income – an unconditional payment for all in a society – is one that goes back centuries, but what are the main arguments in its favour? 1. Automation

As more and more jobs become automated – that is they are done by machines rather than humans – the main benefiters will be those who own the machines while human workers will face mass unemployment. Why pay staff to serve tables in restaurants when it becomes cheap enough for robots to do the same job and not get tired? Why pay cab drivers when […]

There’s No You in AI

There’s No You in AI

This thoughtful piece on what ‘robots’ are going to do to employment by Kevin Drum might be published in Mother Jones (and it comes with quite a few Mother Jones flourishes), but take the time to read it, (very) stiff drink in hand.

Drum’s focus is less on robots (as conventionally understood) than on Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is improving exponentially, a product of both better computer hardware and software. Hardware has historically followed a growth curve called Moore’s law, in which power and efficiency double every couple of years, and recent improvements in software algorithms have been even more […]

Lessons from history for the future of work

Lessons from history for the future of work

Children working in a cotton mill in Macon, Georgia, in January 1909. Today is not the first time that people have worried that machines will render human labour obsolete, making a few very rich and the majority very poor.

Since the Industrial Revolution, mechanization has been controversial. Machines pushed up productivity, raising incomes per capita. But they threatened to put people out of work, to lower their wages and to divert all the gains from growth to the owners of businesses. The stocking-frame operators of Nottingham, UK (the Luddites), wrecked improved knitting machines that threatened their jobs. Mobs burnt down […]

Are machines coming for our jobs? Probably not

Are machines coming for our jobs? Probably not

Open this photo in gallery: Getty Images/iStockphoto The Terminator isn’t likely to come from the future to wipe out humanity, but rather to eliminate human jobs – or so the steady stream of forecasts and headlines suggests.

Most recently, the United Nations last month warned of robots and artificial intelligence destabilizing the world through the mass automation of work. In response, or rather in preparation, the UN is opening the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics think tank in The Hague to study the potential threat.

The warning follows a host of reports in the same vein, such as a widely […]

Worries about premature industrialisation

Worries about premature industrialisation

BANGLADESH EXPORTS 60% more ready-made garments than India, a country with over eight times its population. On the busy roads of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, white vans nose through the traffic on “Emergency Export Duty”, according to the ambulance-like letters painted on their sides. The success of this quintessentially labour-intensive industry helped make Bangladesh a lower-middle-income country in 2014, according to the World Bank’s classifications.

But some think that Bangladesh’s garment industry now faces a new problem almost as grave as the traffic: the threat of automation. Robots are already common in other kinds of manufacturing, but still rare in clothes-making. […]

Tech Leaders Call AI and Automation a Threat to Human Life

Tech Leaders Call AI and Automation a Threat to Human Life

People everywhere are concerned about technology’s impact on jobs and the economy, but was entrepreneur Elon Musk channeling his inner Luddite when he warned attendees at a National Governors Association meeting in Nevada last Summer about the economic disruptions that automation and artificial intelligence will cause? It wasn’t a casual slip. For good measure, he also sounded the alarm about the threat AI could pose to human life on Earth. In an interview with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval from a state where Tesla is building a highly automated electric car engine “gigafactory” near Reno, Musk warned that “until people […]

McCumber column: Tech schools are driving force behind modernization (copy) (copy)

McCumber column: Tech schools are driving force behind modernization (copy) (copy)

Congratulations to Baraboo High School graduate Chris Dalhoff for winning the Automation Challenge 2.0 with his partner Eric Laylon of Madison. The national recognition not only brought $60,000 in prizes to Madison Area Technical College, it has opened up employment opportunities for these two young men.

More importantly, congratulations to Dalhoff’s dad. According to Jake Prinsen’s article in the Sept. 30 Baraboo News Republic, it turns out that, in this case, father does know best. It was dad that advised the future automation technician to consider taking automation courses at MATC. Through his dad’s advice, he learned factories are not […]

On automation and the future of work: A short-read Q&A with economist Daron Acemoglu

As the next generation of robots arrives in the workplace, will they enable workers or replace them? According to MIT’s Daron Acemoglu, one of the most frequently cited economists in the world, this distinction is the difference between technology that raises workers’ wages versus tech that reduces overall employment and stifles wage growth.

Daron Acemoglu is a professor of economics at MIT, a frequent contributor to Foreign Policy Magazine, and co-author of the book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty . He joined me to discuss his recent research and what technological innovation means for the […]