job loss « Limits to Growth

Discussion: How the Pandemic May Speed the Adoption of Automation

Automation is coming on strong in the economy and will take millions of jobs in the next few years because as soon as a machine becomes cheaper for an individual task than a human, the worker will be gone. In addition, business owners like how robots work 24/7 and don’t require lunch, sleep or paychecks. […]

Coronavirus Provides Impetus for Increased Automation Now

The government’s reaction to the coronavirus of shutting down the normal economy has unsurprisingly inspired some business owners to contemplate shifting to non-human means of production by using machines that don’t get sick.

One blog stated the objective clearly in a recent headline: Coronavirus May Mean Automation Is Coming Sooner Than We Thought, SingularityHub.com, March […]

Andrew Yang Ends His Presidential Campaign

As the media and other candidates awaited the results of the New Hampshire primary, candidate Andrew Yang announced he was calling it quits.

Tucker Carlson interviewed Yang last March about automation, and remarked on Tuesday that he was a “good guy personally and a serious person talking about things that actually matter and will […]

Some Believe Life Will Improve for All in the Automated Future

One of the reactions to the dire predictions of mass unemployment in the automated future is to claim that it won’t be a problem at all. Just institute universal basic income (UBI), the pollyannas say, and everyone will be happy with their free money, and the machines will be doing all the work — utopia!

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Only One 2020 Presidential Candidate Has Warned America about Automation

Martin Ford is a technology expert and writer whose 2015 book Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future woke up a lot of people about the fundamental changes automation will bring to the workplace and employment economy.

The book got my attention in particular about how insane it is to […]

PBS Frontline Surveys a Future with Artificial Intelligence

Earlier this week, PBS broadcast a two-hour Frontline episode, In the Age of AI. It was one of the more comprehensive media presentations on the automated future we face, and the program was broken into five sections. One of those was titled “The Surveillance State” and it described the steps being taken by Red China […]

Democratic Debate Includes Automation Discussion

I couldn’t face watching three hours of Democrats jabbering at each other on Tuesday’s debate, but it was interesting that automation came up as a question from news person Erin Burnet (Transcript):

BURNETT: I want to turn now to jobs. According to a recent study, about a quarter of American jobs could be lost to […]

CBS Sunday Morning Visits Andrew Yang

It’s encouraging to see a smart young candidate for president talking about automation as a threat to the US economy and American jobs. The 2016 election was lacking any such discussion: the tech community was aware, but Washington lagged behind, as usual.

The formula is simple: when a machine become less expensive than a worker, […]

Robots May Replace 20 Million Manufacturing Jobs by 2030

There’s a new automation report out, forecasting major job loss around the world from robots. The Oxford Economics study focuses on the manufacturing sector, which is what makes some economies run in Third World nations lacking economic diversity, and political instability may result.

Oxford Economics wants you to register your business on its website to […]

Women Face Job Loss from Automation

This is a somewhat curious article from the Wall Street Journal because of course women will lose employment when automation takes hold since many millions of women work. The piece uses a new McKinsey study, The Future of Women at Work, that specifically notes, “Women and men face a similar scale of potential job losses […]

Robot Picker Sorts Tomatoes According to Ripeness

Do you still think of picking fruits and vegetables as an occupation that requires migrant workers to do the hard work? That industry, along with many others, is being transformed by the introduction of smart machines.

The latest in pickers can now detect degrees of ripeness to suit the market — more ripe for local […]

Tucker Carlson Sees Coming Automation Disruption Worsened by “Lunatic” Immigration

It’s a rare thing to hear anyone in politics discuss the threat of automation to the economy — certainly no candidates did in the 2016 presidential campaign, and I watched closely. You would think that a genuine leader would have a plan to lessen the shock of massive job loss when it becomes cheaper to […]

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