Tag: Technology

How Will Robotics and AI Evolve?

How Will Robotics and AI Evolve?

Precambrian marine life. Source: Ghedoghedo / CC BY-SA 3.0 At certain points in prehistoric epochs, the evolution of life experienced an explosion of diversified organisms within a relatively short time. The so-called Cambrian explosion is the best-known of these diversification events. Scientists have debated the scope and possible causes for the explosion for decades. Fossil records show that between 505 and 542 million years ago, all of our existing biological taxa appeared, forever altering the global ecosystem.

AI and robotics systems may become pervasive in society in the same way. Hundreds of years in the future, historians could look back […]

Make Way for Cobots, the Collaborative Robots

Make Way for Cobots, the Collaborative Robots

Technology Robots collaborate and assemble blocks during a demonstration at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo. Automated technology need not replace humans—instead, it can enhance workers’ natural abilities and help make them more efficient.

This is the third article in a weeklong series about artificial intelligence. The previous installments can be read here and here .

Workers don’t have much good to say about robots. They see automation as a threat to their employment, something that will eventually eliminate their jobs and hand the work over to some new robotic creation.They’re not wrong. Unprecedented expansions in computational power, explosions […]

A radical trade prescription from the Federal Reserve: Stop complaining about China, and pay U.S. workers better

A radical trade prescription from the Federal Reserve: Stop complaining about China, and pay U.S. workers better

One doesn’t normally look to the Federal Reserve System for radical economic prescriptions, but it’s a good place to find reasoned economic analysis. A recent economic brief from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis offers both: a solid explanation of the U.S. trade deficit, and advice to stop blaming China for the decline in U.S. manufacturing.

What makes this radical isn’t its substance per se, but its variance from Trump administration orthodoxy. Under the sway of Peter Navarro, an economist from UC Irvine, the Trump White House has treated the U.S. trade deficit with China as the whole economic […]

With automation threatening NY jobs, Gillibrand wants to help affected workers

With automation threatening NY jobs, Gillibrand wants to help affected workers

In this Aug. 3, 2017, photo, packages ride on a conveyor system at an Amazon fulfillment center in Baltimore. While jobs have been lost in brick-and-mortar stores, many more have been gained from e-commerce and warehousing. Amazon accounts for much of the additional employment. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) On the same day a report was released detailing the potential impact of automation on New York jobs, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has introduced a bill that would provide aid to workers who are replaced by new technology.

Gillibrand’s proposal would expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance program to include workers affected by automation. […]

Employment 2: Technology Will Drive Value Added-jobs

Employment 2: Technology Will Drive Value Added-jobs

The pace of change, especially technological change, has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again. In the early 1900s, it was the Luddites smashing weaving machines. These days, retail staff worry about automatic checkouts. Professional drivers are already fretting over self-driving cars and trucks.

There is no denying the fact automation has been decimating more and more jobs every year. From supermarket cashiers to postal workers and travel agents, industries and jobs that were considered mainstays barely a decade ago are vanishing rapidly.

McKinsey Global Institute predicts that as many as 800 million jobs could be […]

Job insecurities reign over the UK due to rise of the machines

Job insecurities reign over the UK due to rise of the machines

Whether it’s an easy task such as making coffee or a complex one like data processing, people are increasingly dependent on robots. Artificial intelligence (AI) and technology may be taking over our lives by making it easier but Brits are worried that these robots might be also taking away their jobs.

As it stands, the UK economy is booming in the tech market. But the increase in AI startups and firms has resulted in 62% of Brits to believe that automation will cost them their jobs, according to a survey of 1,000 millennial workers conducted by Office Angels, the recruitment […]

Technology is hurting jobs in developing countries

Technology is hurting jobs in developing countries

NO

Necessary skill

Technology is the result of scientific knowledge being used for practical purposes. In order to compete globally, technology is important. We now need skilled people who can handle technology and who will be better paid. In short, technology will be beneficial only in the long run.Ankita Mondal, Second year, Jadavpur University, Calcutta Generates new jobs Say, on an average, 10 individuals lose their jobs due to technological development. But, in order to develop and maintain that technology, a new company has to be formed, which will employ hundreds of people. So we cannot […]

How Useful Is the Aggressive Fare Enforcement of Link Light Rail?

How Useful Is the Aggressive Fare Enforcement of Link Light Rail?

Charles Mudede The one, possibly only thing, I dislike about Vancouver BC’s SkyTrain is that it’s completely run by machines. I have used the system over 100 times in the downtown area, and only once have seen a human working at a station as an employee of the rail system. The trains are fully automated, and tickets are dispensed by machines; they also do the gatekeeping. The system is one giant transportation robot. Seattle’s Link Light Rail has humans, but they only do two forms of work. One is driving the trains, and the other concerns policing or security […]

AI Is Less Of A Threat Than Some Suggest

AI Is Less Of A Threat Than Some Suggest

NTT Docomo 5G robot mirroring the operator’s movements doing calligraphy, during the Mobile World Congress day 3, on February 28, 2018 . (Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images) While robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) promise great advances in productivity, mostly they seem to worry people. Commentators talk and write endlessly about how these marvelous technologies will steal jobs from both workers and the managerial class, creating a large unemployed population. If history has anything to say, however, and it does, such fears are not only exaggerated, they are off the mark entirely. Ultimately, AI will create more new […]

Low-skill workers will be the have-nots of automation

Low-skill workers will be the have-nots of automation

© Getty Images Firms that are heavily reliant on low-wage workers are actively investing in robotics to replace them and being rewarded on the stock market for their successes.

Many of these firms strive to be “Amazon proof.” Right now, it looks like the likelihood of surviving will bifurcate around the “haves” and “have-nots” of robot technology, some of which is designed to replace low-wage workers.

Evidence pointing in this direction can be found in a report I recently prepared for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion.Estimates from 24 countries reveal that the automation of jobs over […]