Tag: Technology

Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income by Independent Trader

It wasn’t long time ago when Swiss had a referendum about universal basic income (UBI). They rejected it. The initiators of the campaign for UBI wanted a minimum salary to be paid to everyone regardless of their age, occupation or level of income. The UBI was aimed to replace pensions and benefits thanks to which numbers of bureaucrats would decrease. One argument for such a change is advancing automation and the end goal is to disconnect salary from work.

The Swiss economy is one of the most efficient economies in the world. Robotised manufacturing […]

“They’ve just shot the wrong thing.” Automation, immigration and Brexit at London Tech Week

The absence of Ashok Vaswani, CEO of Barclays UK, at London Tech Week’s Future of Work panel was a telling hint at the enormous, Brexit-shaped elephant in the room.

While technology and business leaders had gathered to hear a panel talk about the changing face of work, the pound was plummeting to a 31-year low. As a result, optimistic words about the future of 21st-century employment had to jostle around the awkward fact that Britain’s future economy was, and continues to be, very much in the toilet.

The young can look forward to a “more secure” and “prosperous future”, Boris Johnson […]

Interview: Top US Labor Official Talks Job Creation, TPP

Interview: Top US Labor Official Talks Job Creation, TPP

ObamaFILE – Deputy Labor Secretary Christopher P. Lu speaks at Bladensburg High School in Bladensburg, Md., April 7, 2014 In the midst of a presidential campaign season where sustained economic recovery, job creation and trade have returned to the fore, Deputy Secretary of Labor Christopher Lu talked with VOA’s Adrianna Zhang about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and outlook on job creation efforts. Lu said more needs to be done despite recent gains.

VOA : Job creation has been a central talking point throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. Can you talk a bit about what your department has been doing to […]

The return of the machinery question

The return of the machinery question

THERE IS SOMETHING familiar about fears that new machines will take everyone’s jobs, benefiting only a select few and upending society. Such concerns sparked furious arguments two centuries ago as industrialisation took hold in Britain. People at the time did not talk of an “industrial revolution” but of the “machinery question”. First posed by the economist David Ricardo in 1821, it concerned the “influence of machinery on the interests of the different classes of society”, and in particular the “opinion entertained by the labouring class, that the employment of machinery is frequently detrimental to their interests”. Thomas Carlyle, writing […]

Automation and anxiety

Automation and anxiety

SITTING IN AN office in San Francisco, Igor Barani calls up some medical scans on his screen. He is the chief executive of Enlitic, one of a host of startups applying deep learning to medicine, starting with the analysis of images such as X-rays and CT scans. It is an obvious use of the technology. Deep learning is renowned for its superhuman prowess at certain forms of image recognition; there are large sets of labelled training data to crunch; and there is tremendous potential to make health care more accurate and efficient.

Dr Barani (who used to be an oncologist) […]

Re-educating Rita

Re-educating Rita

IN JULY 2011 Sebastian Thrun, who among other things is a professor at Stanford, posted a short video on YouTube, announcing that he and a colleague, Peter Norvig, were making their “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course available free online. By the time the course began in October, 160,000 people in 190 countries had signed up for it. At the same time Andrew Ng, also a Stanford professor, made one of his courses, on machine learning, available free online, for which 100,000 people enrolled. Both courses ran for ten weeks. Mr Thrun’s was completed by 23,000 people; Mr Ng’s by […]

March of the machines

March of the machines

EXPERTS warn that “the substitution of machinery for human labour” may “render the population redundant”. They worry that “the discovery of this mighty power” has come “before we knew how to employ it rightly”. Such fears are expressed today by those who worry that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) could destroy millions of jobs and pose a “Terminator”-style threat to humanity. But these are in fact the words of commentators discussing mechanisation and steam power two centuries ago. Back then the controversy over the dangers posed by machines was known as the “machinery question”. Now a very similar debate […]

Ericsson: we should embrace ICT as a tool for transformation

Technology is a tool for transformation. It is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially when it comes to industry. We should embrace ICT as a tool for change as it promotes inclusive social and economic development for all.

Who could have imagined twenty years ago the ICT industry we have today and the possibilities it offers? Who could have imagined that mobile technology has the potential to help put an end to extreme poverty and hunger, whilst providing universal access to healthcare, secondary education and energy services? That smart solutions can make our cities more sustainable, safer […]

Can machines take our jobs without ruining our lives?

Can machines take our jobs without ruining our lives?

Thomas Dworzak/Magnum Photos Inside the machine JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES always assumed that robots would take our jobs. According to the British economist, writing in 1930, it was all down to “our means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour”. And that was no bad thing. Our working week would shrink to 15 hours by 2030, he reckoned, with the rest of our time spent trying to live “wisely, agreeably and well”.

It hasn’t happened like that – indeed, if anything many of us are working more than we used […]

Will new technologies put us out of work? A peek into the future

Will new technologies put us out of work? A peek into the future

Over the past year, questions about how emerging technologies will impact employment have taken on a new tenor. Will robots take over our jobs? One thing is indisputable: automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will displace workers in the IT and business process outsourcing services industry.

But this is not a new trend.

+ Also on Network World: The 6 hottest new jobs in IT + Such tectonic shifts have occurred every few decades over the last two centuries. With each wave of new technology and each accompanying paradigm shift, jobs have disappeared. During the Industrial Revolution, people feared the loss […]