Tag: Technology

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 […]

The Next Industrial Revolution

The Next Industrial Revolution

A “crisis of abundance” initially seems like a paradox. After all, abundance is the ultimate goal of technology and economics. But consider the early history of the electric washing machine. In the 1920s, factories churned them out in droves. (With the average output of manufacturing workers rising by a third between 1923 and 1929, making more washing machines was relatively cheap.) But as the decade ended, factories saw they were making many more than American households demanded. Companies cut back their output and laid off workers even before the stock market crashed in 1929. Indeed, some economists have said […]

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, […]

Brunell: China betting on advanced robots

Brunell: China betting on advanced robots

Don Brunell China has a new industrial strategy which is capturing attention worldwide. It is striving to become an innovation economy using advanced automation, connected robots and artificial intelligence.

China intends to shake the image of just being a nation for low-cost manufacturing. Instead, it wants to be known for producing cutting-edge, reliable and high-quality products — even making robots.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, the Chinese are creating an “industrial internet” which gathers information and uses it across manufacturing networks, including suppliers and customers.Their robots are connected systems with advanced sensors, sophisticated software and actuators (devices which can […]

Labor Day 2016: More Automation, More Foreign Workers, Fewer Jobs for Americans

Labor Day 2016: More Automation, More Foreign Workers, Fewer Jobs for Americans

Labor Day is becoming a time of dismal reflection as automation technology continues its incursion into new places in the jobs economy. For example, self-driving taxis were rolled out for public testing in Singapore and Pittsburgh in August. A robot security guard was sighted in a San Francisco parking lot earlier in the summer. In California, the new $15 minimum wage has pushed fast food restaurants to replace counter workers with ordering kiosks . It was reported a few days ago that Walmart is cutting hundreds of accounting and invoicing jobs , which sounds like a software upgrade or […]

Lack of skilled labor threatens manufacturing

Lack of skilled labor threatens manufacturing

During the 2016 primary election, several presidential candidates repeatedly lamented the loss of American manufacturing jobs. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump built their populist economic platforms around the issue, soon followed by other candidates and members of Congress. None of the rhetoric explains manufacturing as an industry or the entire economy.

Over the last 20 years, low-skilled manufacturing jobs have vanished from the U.S. while high skilled jobs flourish. The central political narrative is that jobs are primarily lost to overseas competitors.

While this may be anecdotally true, low-skilled manufacturing jobs disappeared primarily as the result of automation — which, ironically, […]

The future of automation and your job

The future of automation and your job

Buy Photo Imagine it’s 2030, and it’s nearing time to eat dinner.

You text a grocery store where your order is taken for a pound of ground beef, a box of Hamburger Helper and maybe some lettuce and tomatoes for a salad. Possibly you want to fancy it up with a bottle of cabernet. The beef was butchered and packaged by a machine. Robots picked and processed the grapes, which where then bottled and shipped to a market by automation.

A driverless car, or possibly a drone aircraft, delivers the goods to your front door. You never see a person from […]

The new technology revolution – impact on SL

The new technology revolution - impact on SL

( Continued from yesterday )

By C.R. de Silva,
Retired World Bank Official
Artificial Intelligence (AI) -The Second Machine Age is Here.The Nobel Prize winner in behavioural economics Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow, believes that robots will actually replace CEOs, which is well beyond the limits of manual or physical labour. His view is that there is no concrete evidence that expert human cognition does better than intelligently constructed formulas, meaning algorithms conjoined with artificial intelligence(AI) to create good business judgement. So, what is AI ? It is the invention and deployment to actual situations of intelligent or […]

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 […]

The new technology revolution – impact on SL

The new technology revolution - impact on SL

By C.R. de Silva,
Retired World Bank Official

Revolutionary changes in technology, following on the heels of globalization, are changing the world economy as a result of the evolving changes in employment and resulting wage patterns in the industrialized economies. The overriding structural issues facing the advanced economies are creeping job insecurity and the need for providing productive employment and adequate salaries for affected workers to take care of their families, in the wake of progressive use of robots and also ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI). This is occurring in diverse sectors of industrialized economies with a wave of robotic machines and […]