Posts Tagged ‘Robotics’
Will China Really Supplant US Economic Hegemony?
Posted by hkarner - 3. April 2018
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: china, Project Syndicate, Robotics, Rogoff, USA | Leave a Comment »
No Coffee Breaks Needed: Companies Add Software Robots to Workforce
Posted by hkarner - 24. März 2018
Date: 23-03-2018
Source: The Wall Street Journal
A screenshot of a software-robot control center.
A bot named ‘Goldie’ has answered nearly 1 million questions for EY employees in human resources
Companies that began experimenting a few years ago with software programs to automate mundane tasks are reaping tangible benefits now. Hundreds of software robots work alongside human employees at companies such as Ernst & Young and Walmart Inc. where they’re saving employees millions of hours of time.
“We’re saving (employees) from repetitive tasks that they tend to enjoy less, and freeing them up to do more meaningful, thought-intensive more focused human work,” said Jeff Wong, global chief innovation officer for Ernst & Young, which brands itself as EY.
Software robots are part of an industry called robotic process automation, which is evolving to include advanced software bots built with machine learning algorithms in order to perform tasks such as object recognition. Other software bots, though, don’t require artificial intelligence because they are designed to complete rules-based tasks. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: E & Y, Robotics, WSJ | Leave a Comment »
Automation Isn’t Killing Jobs, Study Says, But May Be Keeping Income in Check
Posted by hkarner - 11. März 2018
Date: 10-03-2018
Source: The Wall Street Journal
New research finds workers are getting a smaller slice of an expanding economy
Robotic arms weld car frames in a Japanese auto factory in December.
Employment in transportation equipment manufacturing was nearly unchanged between 1970 and 2007, but the sector became far more productive.
A new study rebuts the notion that automation is eliminating jobs broadly in the economy, but does find technological advancement doesn’t reward workers much with added income.
Over the previous five decades, automation hasn’t reduced the number of jobs available in 18 advanced economies, including the U.S.–in fact, it helped increase total employment, finds a new paper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s David Autor and Utrecht University’s Anna Salomons and released Thursday by the Brookings Institution.
But the economists’ paper also found that automation, and the productivity enhancements that it drives, has resulted in laborers taking home a smaller slice of an expanding economic pie. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: Inequality, Jobs, MIT, Robotics, WSJ | Leave a Comment »
From the factory floor to the OR, robots can make great teammates
Posted by hkarner - 6. März 2018
Date: 05-03-2018
Source: Technology Review
Julie Shah is figuring out the best ways for us to interact with our future robotic colleagues.
Julie Shah is all about robotic augmentation.
Robot coworkers and AI assistants are coming to an office near you.
And instead of worrying about a robotic takeover, Julie Shah is embracing it. An associate professor at MIT and one of our 2014 Innovators Under 35, Shah works on ways to make humans and machines into safe, efficient teammates. Her work has taken her to factory floors and bustling hospitals, where she tries to figure out how automation can make humans more productive. We sat down to talk to her about what we can expect to encounter when we begin working alongside robots—something many of us are already doing
Erin: What do you think is the most common misconception about robots in the workplace?
Julie: People often think artificial intelligence is one very general and powerful capability moving its way through all these different jobs. But AI does not work like that today. Currently each AI system needs to be designed to perform a very specific task. It takes a lot of engineering. The sets of tasks are expanding, but we don’t have this “general AI” that will take over large swaths of human work. As it becomes more capable, it is able to do many small tasks across many different fields. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: Hospitals, MIT, Robotics, Shah, Technology Review | Leave a Comment »
UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: HALF OF AMERICANS THINK GOVERNMENT SHOULD PAY WORKERS WHO LOSE OUT TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Posted by hkarner - 2. März 2018
Date: 01-03-2018
Source: NewsWeek
As robots become more sophisticated and replace humans in the workforce, Americans are split over whether those who lose their jobs to artificial intelligence should receive a minimum income.
The hypothetical universal basic income (UBI) would have the federal government give every adult below a certain income threshold an annual allowance of money.
The survey of more than 3,000 U.S. adults showed that almost three-quarters predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to a loss of more jobs than it creates.
Nevertheless, some 48 percent of people support, and 52 percent oppose, the rollout of a UBI to safeguard workers who lose their jobs because of advances in AI, according to a new poll for Northeastern University by Gallup. Those over 66 were least likely to support the UBI, compared with 46 percent of millennials. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: AI, Basic Income, Korica, Newsweek, Robotics | Leave a Comment »
The Robots Are Coming for Garment Workers. That’s Good for the U.S., Bad for Poor Countries
Posted by hkarner - 18. Februar 2018
Date: 17-02-2018
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Automation is reaching into trades that once seemed immune, transforming sweatshops in places like Bangladesh and bringing production back to America
The Mohammadi Group’s automated knitting machines leave little for humans to do.
DHAKA—At the Mohammadi Fashion Sweaters Ltd. factory in Bangladesh’s capital, a few dozen workers stand watching as 173 German-made machines knit black sweaters for overseas buyers. Occasionally the workers step in to program designs or clean the machines, but otherwise there is little for humans to do.
It’s a big change from a few years ago, when hundreds of employees could be found standing over manual knitting stations for up to 10 hours a day. Mohammadi’s owners began phasing out such work in 2012, and by last year, the knitting process was fully automated. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: Apparel, Automation, Robotics, Textile, WSJ | Leave a Comment »
Racing the Machine
Posted by hkarner - 26. Dezember 2017
Robert Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University and a fellow of the British Academy in history and economics, is a member of the British House of Lords. The author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, he began his political career in the Labour party, became the Conservative Party’s spokesman for Treasury affairs in the House of Lords, and was eventually forced out of the Conservative Party for his opposition to NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999.
LONDON – Dispelling anxiety about robots has become a major preoccupation of business apologetics. The commonsense – and far from foolish – view is that the more jobs are automated, the fewer there will be for humans to perform. The headline example is the driverless car. If cars can drive themselves, what will happen to chauffeurs, taxi drivers, and so on?
Economic theory tells us that our worries are groundless. Attaching machines to workers increases their output for each hour they work. They then have an enviable choice: work less for the same wage as before, or work the same number of hours for more pay. And as the cost of existing goods falls, consumers will have more money to spend on more of the same goods or different ones. Either way, there is no reason to expect a net loss of human jobs – or anything but continual improvements in living standards. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: Project Syndicate, Robotics, Skidelsky, Technology | Leave a Comment »
Globalisation may soon accelerate again – time to get domestic policies right
Posted by hkarner - 20. Dezember 2017
Richard Baldwin, Vesa Vihriälä 19 December 2017, voxeu
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: AI, Baldwin, Finland, Globalization, Robotics, Vihriälä, voxeu | Leave a Comment »
Does Amazon Create Jobs? Well, It Hired 75,000 Robots in 2017
Posted by hkarner - 9. Dezember 2017
By Dave Edwards and Helen Edwards, gz.com
December 4, 2017
Originally published here
There are 170,000 fewer retail jobs in 2017 – and 75,000 more Amazon robots.
Amazon’s headcount is growing by 40% year-over-year. It was the eighth-largest private employer in the US at the end of 2016, and it’s poised to climb those ranks quickly. The online retailer also announced plans to build a second US headquarters that will employ 50,000 employees.
But Amazon’s growth comes at a cost. It has a well-earned reputation for overwhelming competitors. Even though Amazon represents a small portion of the overall retail industry, it dominates the industry’s sales growth.
We wondered: Does Amazon create more jobs than it destroys?
It depends – on whether you are a robot
We assembled employment data for the retail industry as a whole, and for Amazon in particular. We estimated year-end results for 2017, based on current trends. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: Amazon, Edwards, Mauldin, Robotics | Leave a Comment »
Rage Against the Machine?
Posted by hkarner - 9. Dezember 2017
Laura Tyson, a former chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers, is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, a senior adviser at the Rock Creek Group, and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Gender Parity.
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BERKELEY – Intelligent machines are transforming the way we produce, work, learn, and live throughout the world. Almost every aspect of our economies will be radically altered. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »
Posted in Artikel | Verschlagwortet mit: Lund, MGI, Project Syndicate, Robotics, Technology, Tyson | Leave a Comment »
CAMBRIDGE – As China and the United States engage in their latest trade tussle, most economists take it as given that China will achieve global economic supremacy in the long run, no matter what happens now. After all, with four times as many people as the US, and a determined program to catch up after centuries of technological stagnation, isn’t it inevitable that China will decisively take over the mantle of economic hegemon? Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »