Advances in Artificial Intelligence Could Lead to Mass Unemployment Warn Experts Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Dr Stuart Armstrong from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford said that there was a risk that computers could take over human jobs “at a faster rate than new jobs could be generated.” “We have some studies looking at to which jobs are the most vulnerable and there are quite a lot of them in logistics, administration, insurance underwriting,” said Dr Armstrong. “Ultimately, huge swathe of jobs are potentially vulnerable to improved artificial intelligence.” Dr Murray Shanahan, a professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London, agreed that improvements in artificial intelligence were creating “short term issues that we all need to be talking about.” "It's very difficult to predict," said Dr Shanahan. Both academics did however praise Google for creating an ethics board to look at the “how to deploy artificial intelligence safely and reduce the risks” after its £400 million purchase of London-based start-up DeepMind.
Study indicates Robots could replace 80% of Jobs In a few decades, twenty or thirty years — or sooner – robots and their associated technology will be as ubiquitous as mobile phones are today, at least that is the prediction of Bill Gates; and we would be hard-pressed to find a roboticist, automation expert or economist who could present a strong case against this. The Robotics Revolution promises a host of benefits that are compelling (especially in health care) and imaginative, but it may also come at a significant price. The Pareto Principle of Prediction We find ourselves faced with an intractable paradox: On the one hand technology advances increase productivity and wellbeing, and on the other hand it often reinforces inequalities. In his study Elliot relies on advances in speech, reasoning capabilities and movement capabilities to illustrate how robots and technology can replace jobs. Elliot is not the first to claim that robotics and technology will have such a profound impact on employment or inequality. Thinking machines
Robotic-Farming Grows With the Ladybird My following article below was originally published by SERIOUS WONDER: Robots are going to steal your job, but that’s okay, because they’ll be liberating us away from boring, strenuous and monotonous labor and give us far more time in doing what we truly want to do. Agriculture will not be an exception, and is in fact moving fast in becoming a model of what the entire workforce will eventually transform into. In today’s age, we’ll be witnessing the coupling of the agricultural revolution with the industrial revolution – robotic farming. From drones to autonomous tractors, robotic farming is here to stay and (dare I say it?) Serious Wonder was able to briefly speak with Professor Salah Sukkarieh, the lead researcher in project Ladybird, to which he stated: “Ladybird is a completely new approach to agriculture robotics. The Ladybird is an omnidirectional, self-driving vehicle with three goals in mind: collect data, analyze data, and harvest. Like this: Like Loading...
The Clearest Trend in the American Workforce It’s been a while since I posted data on US employment trends, so here’s a chart created with FRED’s snazzy new graphing interface. It shows the employment rate (in other words, 100 – the standard unemployment rate) in blue, the employment-to-population ratio (the % of working-age people with work) in green, and the labor force participation rate (the percent of working-age people who have work or are actively looking for it) in red. This graph clearly shows a very steady up-then-down trajectory in the red line — of the labor force participation rate. It’s affected very little by recessions (the gray bars in the graph), and instead appears to be responding to deeper forces. The most obvious of these forces are the demographics of the American labor force. So is retirement the main reason that the red line is going down these days? I’m more persuaded by the lower figure. Also, disability claims started spiking right around the year 2000, and have almost doubled since then:
Welcome Can workers actually be beneficiaries of the digital economy? MIT Sloan Professor Zeynep Ton believes the answer is yes. And just as importantly, she says, businesses won’t lose out in the process. Much has been written and discussed about the economic inequalities created as a result of digital technologies. In this blog, for example, MIT Research Scientist, Andrew McAfee, cites significant economic data supporting the view that IT is responsible for tectonic changes in U.S. jobs and wages. In a recent presentation, Ton, Adjunct Associate Professor of Operations Management (pictured at left), went beyond defining the problems of job displacement, dissatisfaction and despair; she offered solutions. Tossing Out Conventional Wisdom Ton asserts that currently, one in four workers – especially in the service sector and retail—has a “bad job” where salaries are insufficient to support families, and work is rote, irregular and unsatisfying. Zara, Mercadona and QT Find Win-Win Formulas 1. 2. 3.
Initiative on the Digital Economy | About the New Initiative The Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) is a major effort addressing one of the most critical issues of our time: the impact of digital technology on businesses, the economy, and society. Drawing on MIT Sloan’s strengths in technology and innovation, its internationally recognized faculty, and more than a decade of research and partnership with MIT Sloan’s Center for Digital Business, the IDE is analyzing the broad sociological changes brought about by the advance and spread of digital technology. While digital technologies are rapidly transforming both business practices and societies and are integral to the innovation-driven economies of the future, they are also the core driver of the great economic paradox of our time. On one hand, productivity, wealth, and profits are each at record highs; on the other hand, the median worker in America is poorer than in 1997, and fewer people have jobs. Technology is advancing quickly, but organizations and skills advance slowly.
Five Trends Shaping the Future of Work inShare671 Guest post by Jacob Morgan, author of the newly released, The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization. You can connect with Jacob on Twitter or email him directly: Jacob@ChessMediaGroup.com. If there’s one thing that we can all agree on it’s that the world of work is changing…quickly. New behaviors Ten years ago if someone were to tell you that you would have all this information about yourself public for the world to read, see and hear, you would have said they were crazy. Technologies Big data, the cloud, the internet of things, robots, automation, video, collaboration platforms, and other technologies are changing the way we work and live. Millennials in the workplace By 2020 millennials are expected to make up around 50% of the workforce, by 2025 this number is projected to be 75%. Mobility Globalization This is essentially the ability for organizations to work in a world where boundaries do not exist. Tags:
Robot Serves Up 360 Hamburgers Per Hour UPDATE: To read more about how workers will be affected by automation technology, check out Hub's follow up post Burger Robot Poised to Disrupt Fast Food Industry No longer will they say, “He’s going to end up flipping burgers.” Because now, robots are taking even these ignobly esteemed jobs. Alpha machine from Momentum Machines cooks up a tasty burger with all the fixins. And it does it with such quality and efficiency it’ll produce “gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices.” With a conveyor belt-type system the burgers are freshly ground, shaped and grilled to the customer’s liking. And while you fret over how many people you invited to the barbecue, Alpha churns out a painless 360 hamburgers per hour. San Francisco-based Momentum Machines claim that using Alpha will save a restaurant enough money that it pays for itself in a year, and it enables the restaurant to spend about twice as much on ingredients as they normally would – so they can buy the gourmet stuff. Peter Murray Related
Robert Reich: In Our Horrifying Future, Very Few People Will Have Work or Make Money It’s now possible to sell a new product to hundreds of millions of people without needing many, if any, workers to produce or distribute it. At its prime in 1988, Kodak, the iconic American photography company, had 145,000 employees. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy. The same year Kodak went under, Instagram, the world’s newest photo company, had 13 employees serving 30 million customers. The ratio of producers to customers continues to plummet. A friend, operating from his home in Tucson, recently invented a machine that can find particles of certain elements in the air. He’s already sold hundreds of these machines over the Internet to customers all over the world. So far, his entire business depends on just one person — himself. New technologies aren’t just labor-replacing. If you think being a “professional” makes your job safe, think again. The two sectors of the economy harboring the most professionals — health care and education – are under increasing pressure to cut costs.
The Truth About Robots and Human Jobs - Association for Advancing Automation Image Credit: Rethink Robotics Of all the technology topics covered in the media today, robots are among both the hottest and, in some ways, the most feared. Technology Has Treated us Well Amid all the recent hysteria surrounding the perceived threat that robots pose to human jobs, we seem to have lost sight of what they actually are. The answer, of course, is technology. Robots are simply a form of technology, albeit one that is growing and advancing at unprecedented rates in recent years. As a society, most of us have a largely positive outlook on modern technological advances that have helped to shape the world we live in today. Why then, would robots be viewed any differently? Employers Are Not The Only Ones Who Benefit Can a robot outperform a human when it comes to stacking cups together so they fit neatly inside a plastic sleeve? The explanation for why is what truly matters here. Education Leads to Economic Evolution At the end of the day, robots will not take your job. Sources: