Tag: Technology

Why import workers when robots will do the job?

Why import workers when robots will do the job?

The growth lobby often argues that Australia needs to run high levels of immigration in order to alleviate so-called skills shortages and to mitigate an ageing population.

This view has been debunked many times on this blog.

First, analysis from the Department of Employment shows that Australia’s skills shortage “remains low by historical standards” .Second, there are big question marks over whether immigration can alleviate skills shortages anyway?That is, if Australia imports a whole bunch of workers to alleviate, say, shortages in construction, these workers will inevitably increase demand in other areas (e.g. for various services), thus creating shortages there. Australia […]

Advance with technology

Advance with technology

0 As technology takes over most of the menial jobs, there is a need for the engineering graduates to be employable and trained in contemporary technologies like data analytics, big data, data science, robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, says Prakash Menon

Automation is reducing the need for people in many jobs. We are facing a future of stagnant income and worsening inequality,” opines Erik Brynjolfsson alarming about how technological advances are likely to replace human element in many jobs. The IT space is increasingly adopting technologies like artificial intelligence, be it IBM’s Watson or Wipro’s Holmes. And if […]

3 Ways to deal with job losses due to automation

3 Ways to deal with job losses due to automation

There has been a lot written about the potential job losses due to the advent of automation. Some of our previous blog posts covered this topic as well. We know that the landscape of professions is going to change : the number of workers required in our factories, warehouses, call centres, retail outlets, cash counters, bill desks, customer service desks, secretary desks is going down; a number of robots, chat bots, RFID tags, smart phones and apps are going to rule the roost. How should one deal with these changes?

Study Mathematics and Technology, right from Pre-school

Most of […]

Beware Robots Bearing Beer

Beware Robots Bearing Beer

The robots are coming … and they’re bringing the beer.

I’ll admit that I don’t think it’s what Philip K. Dick — renowned science-fiction author whose stories spawned such movies as Blade Runner , Total Recall and Minority Report — and Isaac Asimov — think I, Robot and The Bicentennial Man — had in mind, but I do think we are faced with a technology that we can no longer relegate to the realm of science fiction.

Earlier this week, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV and Uber Technologies announced that for the first time ever a self-driving truck completed a commercial delivery. The […]

When Will Robots Take All the Jobs?

When Will Robots Take All the Jobs?

There is a contradiction in economic forecasting today that I’ve come to think of as the "robot paradox.” Some people seem confident that automation will take many workers’ jobs, yet they cannot point to evidence that technology has done anything in the last few years to replace work or add to productivity. Indeed, economic growth has been lackluster for the last few years, productivity growth is mysteriously moribund, and the last two years have been perhaps the best time this century for wage growth. This is not what the end of work looks like.

Since I have written repeatedly that […]

Smart Machines Will Eat Jobs–Except Where Smart People Create Them

Smart Machines Will Eat Jobs--Except Where Smart People Create Them

Automation will eat employment. That warning has been issued at every turn in history, with the printing press, the advent of electricity, and the rise of robotics. Phases of automation, and the new trade patterns and agreements that accompany them, destroy jobs that involve repetitive tasks while creating new jobs.

“No office job is safe,” said Sebastian Thrun , Stanford CS professor and MOOC pioneer. “Lots of lawyers, accountants, even surgeons will be automated away. Having spent my career watching the long, slow carnage of my own industry, I have some insight into how that will feel, and how to […]

Future jobs to be driven by digital tech: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Future jobs to be driven by digital tech: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Moreover, automation itself would create large job opportunities in the information technology (IT) space where there is likely to be an explosion of automation software development jobs, she said. HYDERABAD: Automation and digital technologies will drive jobs of the future even as they cannibalise conventional employment while creating a large number of new opportunities, says biotech entrepreneur Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw .

According to her, new age businesses like Uber, Ola, Amazon, Flipkart, Airbnb and Alibaba are creating millions of jobs which are several orders of magnitude higher than comparative conventional jobs.

Moreover, automation itself would create large job opportunities in the information […]

Robotics, driverless tech are taking over mining jobs

Robotics, driverless tech are taking over mining jobs

In the next decade, the mining industry may lose more than half of its jobs to automation, according to a new report. That’s not based on future technologies, but on automated equipment being deployed today.

The mining industry is primed for automation. It’s capital intensive, buys expensive equipment and pays relatively well.

This industry is adopting self-driving trucks, automated loaders and automated drilling and tunnel-boring systems. It is also testing fully autonomous long-distance trains, which carry materials from the mine to a port, according to the report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg, Canada.A broader question is whether […]

Will Logistics Provide a Good Career Path for Young Grads?

In this Presidential election cycle we saw surprising strength from both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the primaries. While the Presidential election is the nastiest in living memory, one thing it has made clear is that there are a lot of Americans who feel they have been left behind. They see an economy where the rich get richer and the middle class is being hollowed out. Both Trump and Sanders pointed to global trade as an important reason for this.

But the bigger reason for the loss of jobs is the growing power of automation. Martin Ford, in Rise […]

Vardi: Does automation doom the future of work?

Two schools of economists haggle over the ultimate impact of automation on employment.

The Neoclassicals soothe us with human resilience: jobs lost will eventually be balanced by new jobs found. The Neo-Luddites reply that technological advances have changed the rules, and many jobs will be lost forever.

“So, who is right? Nobody knows,” said Moshe Y. Vardi, the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University, who suggests we examine the past and present before drawing grand conclusions about the future.Vardi’s lecture, “Humans, Machines and Work: The Future is Now,” was sponsored by the Ken Kennedy Institute […]