replacing workers with smart machines

Retail Use of Automation Is Increasing

Automation is creating a revolution in shopping: from ordering merchandise from Amazon to visiting a local supermarket with self-checkout, the machines are moving in. In particular, big changes are coming in retail out where the public will see them. Store sales persons who can advise and help customers are pretty much on the way out.

Below, […]

Robot Apple Picker Will Displace Illegal Alien Workers

Automation’s threat to jobs is not entirely negative, considering that robot pickers can replace an agricultural workforce that is generally estimated to be half illegal alien. The Associated Press article below notes that in Washington state, “several counties near the Canadian border are now majority-Hispanic.”

Abundant Robotics has developed a vacuum-based system that doesn’t bruise the […]

Automation-Caused Job Loss May Spawn Third-World Instability, World Bank Warns

It would be a mistake to think that automation is a first-world affliction only. As the cost of robots decrease, they will replace workers in the third world also. (See my Social Contract article on this topic: How Automation Threatens Third World Stability.)

Third-world automation is happening now, as shown by robot arms painting motorcycle gas […]

CBS Imagines the American Future as Automation Nation

The CBS Sunday Morning show began a special edition focusing on money with a report on automation and its threat to employment now and going forward. The eight-minute video report included tough facts about job loss across the skills spectrum with expert comments by Rise of the Robots author Martin Ford and other involved in the […]

Warehouse Robotics See Advances in Technology

Warehouse robots are a big part of the revolution transforming a growing portion of consumer shopping from stores to online. Amazon led the way by purchasing the Kiva system and then keeping it for itself so other competitors could not spring up easily. (See my 2016 Social Contract article, “Amazon Robotics: A case study of […]

Treasury Secretary Blunder Sparks Discussion of Automated Future

When Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin remarked about robots taking US jobs that “It’s not even on our radar screen … 50-100 more years,” heads exploded across the tech world. Mnuchin’s comments during an interview with Axios on March 24 [Watch] sparked more than 700,000 responses online as of today, nearly all negative. Some observed that […]

New Evidence Shows that Automation Is a Threat to Jobs and Wages

A new automation report has been published and it tackles the measurement of a vital trend, namely the amount of robotization that has already occurred.

As has been noted here, in 2013 the Associated Press published a series documenting how the Great Recession had prompted many businesses to invest in technology, thereby killing middle-class jobs and […]

New Research: Automation Could Grab More Than a Third of US Jobs by Early 2030s

A new report came out last week forecasting the likelihood of automation taking human jobs. The study comes from PwC (Price Waterhouse Cooper) and can be seen online at UK Economic Outlook where the section about international automation begins on page 30.

The upshot is not quite as dreary as the 2013 Oxford study by Frey […]

NBC: Automation May Destroy Half of Truck Driver Jobs

I rarely watch NBC, but was clicking around a couple days ago and saw a rather decent piece on self-driving trucks that included important facts about how the technology will affect jobs in an important American industry. Interestingly, Fox News is AWOL on the subject, while the liberal media does better, in particular PBS and […]

DC Residents Now Share Sidewalks with Food Delivery Robots

Robot food delivery in the neighborhood has been chatted up on the news as the cool new tech thing about to happen, being tested and now it’s here.

The flagship robot delivery fleet rolled out on Wednesday in Washington DC.

The robots are doing the deliveries, although human minders will accompany the machines for now.

The little robots […]

Self-Driving Shuttles Hit Public Streets in California Pilot Program

San Ramon, California is a suburban community of around 72,000 located 34 miles east of San Francisco. The city is the first place in the nation where self-driving vehicles are allowed to function without a backup human driver in the seat, albeit in a limited situation. The shuttles scoot along at a safe 12 miles […]

Automated Trucks Threaten Millions of US Jobs

Self-driving vehicles are coming on strong, faster than anyone knowledgeable thought a few years ago. Self-driving vehicles are being tested for real world use, and highway laws are being rejiggered to accommodate the new tech future.

But driving is a major jobs category, as shown by the map below, taken from an interactive NPR graphic in […]

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Limits to Growth