jobs « Limits to Growth

China’s Robot Revolution Hitting a Few Bumps along the Road

About a month ago, I wrote about an “all-robot” factory in Red China which was actually only 90 percent automated. Imagine the workers’ relief!

Still, the highly automated factory sent a strong message: Chinese elites intend to maximize automation in order to eliminate jobs and they don’t try to pretend otherwise to the human workers.

Which is odd, […]

NPR Debates Whether Computers Will Crush Entire Career Categories

National Public Radio has a fair-and-balanced piece about whether automation will put many millions of people out of work: Andrew McAfee, co-author of The Second Machine Age, says Yes and David Autor, an MIT economist, says No. The report is pretty good for less than four minutes of radio.

Obviously my observation is that smart machines […]

Technology Ethicist Warns of Rising Unemployment from Automation

Smart machines, from robots to computers, are creating a tsunami of change in the workplace, yet many refuse to see the revolution and cling desperately to the old idea that jobs being swept away by technological change will be replaced by new ones.

One hint of the big change is the chart showing productivity and employment […]

Uber Moves into Self-Driving Car Business

In 2012, Google co-founder Sergey Brin opined that his self-driving car project would be available to ordinary people in five years. That seemed a little optimistic then, but in April the Delphi company announced that its prototype car self-drove from San Francisco to New York. Big companies like Mercedes, Tesla and Nissan are also engaged […]

“Rise of the Robots” Author Martin Ford Speaks in San Francisco

I just got my copy of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future delivered from Amazon (famous for its Kiva automated warehouses), and the package definitely looked machine-friendly. It was not an envelope, but two pieces of lightweight cardboard pressed together. So presumably the book about robots taking human jobs […]

Four Robot Job Takers Are Already Here

Here’s a little intro to specific robots, each with their own abilities, based upon the writer’s visit to a robot conference. Of those, the OSHbot and Baxter have already been examined in these pages.

Below, Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH) has been moving forward with a greeter robot that can also direct shoppers to desired gizmos in the […]

Public Broadcasting Notes Smart Machine’s Effect on Employment

The PBS Newshour had a segment on the automation threat to jobs this week, a good sign that the workplace revolution is becoming more widely recognized and discussed.

On the down side, I’ve seen almost no debate of how the economy is supposed to work when human workers are rapidly becoming obsolete, from strawberry pickers to […]

Airline Pilot and Journalist Are Jobs Threatened by Smart Machines

In July 2013, an Asiana airliner from Korea smacked into the seawall at the edge of the San Francisco Airport runway on approach and crashed, killing three and injuring dozens.

After the evidence was analyzed, one causal factor determined was that the pilot wasn’t prepared to fly the plane manually during the emergency. Furthermore, a 2013 […]

America’s Senator Jeff Sessions Demands Trade Agreements That Will Benefit Americans

Senator Sessions understands that the globalized economy is full of pitfalls for the American worker, particularly trade deals that benefit only wealthy corporations by pushing wages ever downward by way of outsourcing and immigration. Previous global trade agreements have been uniformly terrible for American workers’ jobs and wages, yet we are supposed to believe that […]

Elite Liberal Press Takes Aim at Global Trade

Politics sometimes seems like musical chairs, where politicians take positions on account of the situation of the moment and then remain in place despite all reason.

For example, Democrats oppose trade deals that cause Americans to lose jobs but don’t mind flooding the nation with millions of excess immigrant workers taking citizen jobs. On the other […]

NPR Interviews “Rise of the Robots” Author

Automation expert Martin Ford appeared on NPR Monday to discuss his new book, “Rise Of The Robots: Technology And The Threat Of A Jobless Future“. (You can read an except from the book on my blog Robotics Expert Martin Ford Explains the Automated Hamburger and Other Job-Killing Smart Machines.)

The audio file is posted below; you […]

Humanoid Robot Competition Suggests Rapid Advance in Technology

A front-page story in Sunday’s Washington Post focused on a government contest to build a humanoid robot capable of acting as a first responder in dangerous situations. The challenge of dealing with the radioactive Fukushima disaster has focused the military on what talents are needed in the next generation of robots, where the machines need […]

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