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Archive for the ‘employment’ category: Page 64

Oct 10, 2017

What India’s hi-tech capital can learn from China

Posted by in categories: business, employment, robotics/AI

According to India’s Frontline magazine, anecdotal evidence from Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and other cities suggests that a number of large IT service companies are shedding thousands of jobs as artificial intelligence, automation and deep learning technologies replace humans.


Bangalore’s outsourcing businesses may be on the wane, but cities like Hangzhou may indicate its best course for the future.

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 10 October, 2017, 10:00am.

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Sep 30, 2017

3D-printable synthetic muscle is three times stronger than you

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, employment, robotics/AI

The classic image of a robot is one clad in a rigid metal shell, but that might not be practical in situations where man and machine will need to work together. The emerging field of soft robotics is helping to make that collaboration safer, but recreating muscle is no easy task. Now, mechanical engineers from Columbia University have developed a synthetic soft muscle that’s said to be much more simple to make and run than others, and is three times stronger than the real thing.

Most soft robots are powered by pneumatic or hydraulic systems, with their movements controlled by filling and emptying bladders with liquids or gases. The problem is, that usually requires bulky external components like compressors, which prevent the systems from being shrunk down to practical sizes.

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Sep 24, 2017

You could wear your screen on your sleeve…

Posted by in categories: employment, mobile phones

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Sep 12, 2017

Google’s AI AlphaGo Is Beating Humanity At It’s Own Games (HBO)

Posted by in categories: employment, robotics/AI

Go is an ancient, aristocratic Chinese board game that’s reputed to have as many possible moves as there are atoms in the universe. And Google recently trained an artificial intelligence computer to play against one of the best human players in the world. The computer won.

At Google’s Future of Go Summit, 19-year-old Chinese Go prodigy Ke Jie was defeated by the AI AlphaGo in a three-match series.

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Sep 6, 2017

Top Silicon Valley tech exec on cash handouts: Let’s eliminate poverty for all Americans

Posted by in categories: economics, employment, ethics

It’s de rigeur for the many of the richest of the rich to tout the benefits of giving cash handouts to all American citizens, in part as a way to end poverty. The idea, called universal basic income (UBI), is for every individual to be paid a regular sum of money regardless of employment status.

One of the tech elite who has an interest in universal basic income is self-made multimillionaire and Y Combinator President Sam Altman. “Eliminating poverty is such a moral imperative and something that I believe in so strongly,” Altman tells CNBC Make It.

“There’s so much research about how bad poverty is. There’s so much research about the emotional and physical toll that it takes on people.

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Aug 26, 2017

It’s possible that we can build a society where people don’t have to work – here’s how

Posted by in categories: economics, employment, finance, sustainability

Work isn’t working anymore. Labour productivity has fallen in the UK since the financial crisis; 13.5 million people are living in low-income households; real wages are falling and the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality, is rising.

The sustainability and quality of jobs in our economy is also decreasing – 7.1 million workers now face precarious working conditions, meaning that uncertainty (and for many, anxiety) itself is now built into our employment system. According to some estimates, 30 per cent of UK jobs could potentially be automated away by the early 2030s. Depending on the sector, this will mean a remarkable reduction of required hours of human labour. With less work to go around, we will find ourselves in heightened competition with machines and each other, ever more desperate for stability.

Is this our only future? No. But in order to change it and move beyond this crisis, we first need to confront our very conception of work. For a long time we have thought of work as a matter of individual choice – a free, private agreement between a single person and an employer. You, the thinking goes, are free to pick whatever job you like as long as the employer is happy to have you on board and there are a sufficient number of jobs created by the free market.

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Aug 24, 2017

People Versus Machines: The Impact of Minimum Wages on Automatable Jobs

Posted by in categories: employment, robotics/AI

Automation, unemployment, & low wage workers


We study the effect of minimum wage increases on employment in automatable jobs – jobs in which employers may find it easier to substitute machines for people – focusing on low-skilled workers from whom such substitution may be spurred by minimum wage increases. Based on CPS data from 1980–2015, we find that increasing the minimum wage decreases significantly the share of automatable employment held by low-skilled workers, and increases the likelihood that low-skilled workers in automatable jobs become unemployed. The average effects mask significant heterogeneity by industry and demographic group, including substantive adverse effects for older, low-skilled workers in manufacturing. The findings imply that groups often ignored in the minimum wage literature are in fact quite vulnerable to employment changes and job loss because of automation following a minimum wage increase.

You may purchase this paper on-line in.pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

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Aug 21, 2017

Skills needed to fill U.S. plant job openings — By Dan Sewell and Christopher S. Rugaber | The Associated Press

Posted by in category: employment

“It’s true that many jobs have gone overseas, to lower-wage workers.

But at the same time, American manufacturers have actually added nearly a million jobs in the past seven years. Labor statistics show nearly 390,000 such jobs open.”

Aug 15, 2017

These delivery robots are adding jobs before they take them

Posted by in categories: employment, robotics/AI

Aug 15, 2017

Robot shelf-stack fail suggests they won’t take our jobs just yet

Posted by in categories: employment, robotics/AI

Boston Dynamics demo clip shows we are not quite living in an i, Robot future – even if the machines can skate better than you can.

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