Shipping Giants Are Looking to Self-Piloting Boats to Shift Cargo

Date: 12-06-2017
Source: Technology Review

Millions of containers could be hauled by robotic ships within the next decade.

Forget Uber’s autonomous 18-wheelers: if you want a robot to haul a heavy load in the future, it might be worth considering a self-piloting container ship instead.

Plenty of people have been building modest autonomous boats in recent years, but the real payoff is in something much larger. As the Economist has pointed out in the past, fully robotic cargo ships could be faster, safer, and ultimately cheaper to run than their crewed counterparts. And that promise obviously hasn’t escaped the attention of some of the world’s largest users of maritime freight.

The Nikkei Asian Review reports that a consortium of Japan’s shipbuilders and freight companies are working together to build technology that will enable new ships to chart their own courses. The vision: an onboard artificial intelligence that will gather data from sensors and external sources—to ascertain, say, weather conditions and ocean traffic—in order to constantly plot the safest and most efficient route. The consortium is expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the technology, which it hopes will be ready to build into ships as soon as 2025.

Date: 12-06-2017

Source: Technology Review

Subject: In Buying Boston Dynamics, SoftBank Is Betting Big on Walking Robots

Can the company make a go of the automatons that never did fit in at Google?

The technology conglomerate Softbank has acquired Boston Dynamics, the firm known for its often terrifying animal- and human-like robots, from Alphabet.

Back in 2013, Alphabet went on somewhat of a robot-buying binge. Led by Android creator Andy Rubin, the company covered all the bases, making acquisitions that included: Boston Dynamics and Schaft (which both make legged robots); Redwood Robotics and Meka (robots that grasp objects); Industrial Perception (computer vision for warehouse robots); Holomni (wheeled robots); and Bot & Dolly (movie-set robots).

Labor Markets in the Age of Automation

Laura Tyson

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.

JUN 7, 2017 Project Syndicate

BERKELEY – Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics are powering a new wave of automation, with machines matching or outperforming humans in a fast-growing range of tasks, including some that require complex cognitive capabilities and advanced degrees. This process has outpaced the expectations of experts; not surprisingly, its possible adverse effects on both the quantity and quality of employment have raised serious concerns.

To listen to President Donald Trump’s administration, one might think that trade remains the primary reason for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States. Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, has declared that the possible technological displacement of workers is “not even on [the administration’s] radar screen.”

Among economists, however, the consensus is that about 80% of the loss in US manufacturing jobs over the last three decades was a result of labor-saving and productivity-enhancing technological change, with trade coming a distant second. The question, then, is whether we are headed toward a jobless future, in which technology leaves many unemployed, or a “good-jobless future,” in which a growing number of workers can no longer earn a middle-class income, regardless of their education and skills.

Robots Aren’t Destroying Enough Jobs

Date: 11-05-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal By Greg Ip

Economic predictions of massive job losses to automation are missing indicators that show just the opposite

Robots are growing increasingly sophisticated, but productivity data suggest automation isn’t displacing human workers fast enough.

From Silicon Valley to Davos, pundits have been warning that millions of individuals will be thrown out of work by the rapid advance of automation and artificial intelligence. As economic forecasts go, this idea of a robot apocalypse is certainly chilling. It’s also baffling and misguided.

Baffling because it’s starkly at odds with the evidence, and misguided because it completely misses the problem: robots aren’t destroying enough jobs. Too many sectors, such as health care or personal services, are so resistant to automation that they are holding back the entire country’s standard of living.

“Robot” is shorthand for any device or algorithm that does what humans once did, from mechanical combines and thermostats to dishwashers and airfare search sites. In the long run these advancements are good. By enabling society to produce more with the same workers, automation is a major driver of rising standards of living.

Robots won’t just take our jobs – they’ll make the rich even richer

Date: 24-04-2017
Source: The Guardian

Robotics and artificial intelligence will continue to improve – but without political change such as a tax, the outcome will range from bad to apocalyptic

Instead of making it possible to create more wealth with less labor, automation might make it possible to create more wealth without labor.

Should robots pay taxes?

It may sound strange, but a number of prominent people have been asking this question lately. As fears about the impact of automation grow, calls for a “robot tax” are gaining momentum. Earlier this month, the European parliament considered one for the EU. Benoît Hamon, the French Socialist party presidential candidate who is often described as his country’s Bernie Sanders, has put a robot tax in his platform. Even Bill Gates recently endorsed the idea.

Find Out If a Robot Will Take Your Job

Date: 20-04-2017
Source: TIME

At a community college in upstate New York, 12 cafeteria workers recently learned that they will lose their jobs — and be replaced by self-serve machines. It’s an issue that has played out in communities across the country, as robots get better and better at doing jobs — from taking fast food orders to mining coal — that once belonged to humans.

Is your job next? The answer to that question is complicated, according to a report by management consultant McKinsey, but most workers don’t need to worry. Experts found that less than 5% of jobs can be completely replaced by technology, though nearly every job involves tasks that robots could learn to do.
Enter your occupation below to see how much of your work may someday be done by machines.

Jobs with predictable activities in structured environments are the easiest to replicate with robots, a process known as automation. McKinsey estimates that 51% of all job-related activities in the U.S. economy fit this description, largely in manufacturing, food service and retail trade sectors.

ARBEIT IM DIGITALEN ZEITALTER

FURCHE-Kolumne 210 9. März 2017, Wilfried Stadler

Eine der vielen Fragen, über die sich Ökonomen nicht einig werden können, ist die nach den Folgen des Vordringens von Robotern und der Digitalisierung für die Beschäftigung. Während die einen steigende Arbeitslosigkeit erwarten, sehen andere nur einen weiteren jener Technologiesprünge, die zwar zunächst Verluste von Arbeitsplätzen in bisher ausgeübten, traditionellen Tätigkeiten nach sich ziehen, dafür aber in anderen, bisher unbekannten Bereichen ganz neue Erwerbsmöglichkeiten eröffnen.
Die Sorge, dass unser Gesellschaft die Arbeit ausgehen könnte, begleitet uns jedenfalls, seit es technischen Fortschritt gibt. Auf einen eindrücklichen Beleg dafür stieß ich vor kurzem ganz zufällig bei der Lektüre des Programmheftes zur Oper „Peer Gynt“ im Theater an der Wien. Dort fand sich das folgende Zitat von Hannah Arendt aus ihrem 1960 veröffentlichten Hauptwerk „Vita Activa oder Das tätige Leben“: Was uns bevorsteht, ist die Aussicht auf eine Arbeitsgesellschaft, der die Arbeit ausgegangen ist, also die einzige Tätigkeit, auf die sie sich noch versteht. Was könnte verhängnisvoller sein?

How to make robots pay their fair share

Date: 06-03-2017
Source: The Economist

THE future looks increasingly perilous for the human worker. New robots are no longer flummoxed by staircases and doorknobs; clever software is capable of driving cars and carrying on (rudimentary) conversations. While a workless world remains a distant possibility, a period of automation-driven disruption seems to loom ahead. Many futurists reckon that as machines replace people, governments will need to find ways to redistribute income from the machines (and the people who own them) to displaced workers, to ensure that the benefits of automation-driven growth are shared widely. In a recent interview Bill Gates proposed one method for doing this: a tax on robots, the money from which could be used to retrain workers and expand employment in health care and education. But is this the right response?

Mr Gates’s proposal would solve several problems at once. In addition to raising money (which could be used to fund new employment opportunities for people) the tax would probably slow the pace of automation: a good thing, from Mr Gates’s perspective. Economists typically dislike taxes on such investments, since buying and using new equipment raises productivity and growth. But if the pace of automation is too rapid for society to handle, as Mr Gates supposes, then slowing automation could do more good than harm: by prolonging employment for workers who might otherwise fall into long-term unemployment, for instance.

Supersmart Robots Will Outnumber Humans Within 30 Years, Says SoftBank CEO

Date: 02-03-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

Futuristic forecast spurs investment wave from Japanese telecom company

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son

BARCELONA—Within 30 years, artificial intelligence will be smarter than the human brain.

That is according to Masayoshi Son, chief executive of SoftBank Group Corp., who says that supersmart robots will outnumber humans and more than a trillion objects will be connected to the internet within three decades.

These beliefs underpin the wave of large and surprising deals the Japanese internet and telecommunications company has pulled off in the past year, he said Monday. These include starting a $100 billion technology-investment fund with a Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, buying British microprocessor designer ARM Holdings PLC for $32 billion and acquiring U.S. asset manager Fortress Investment Group PLC for $3.3 billion.

This 30-year forecast created urgency, Mr. Son said in a speech at the telecom industry’s biggest trade show, Mobile World Congress. “That is why I’m in a hurry to aggregate cash to invest.”

In a brief interview after his speech, Mr. Son said his $100 billion project with the Saudis, dubbed the SoftBank Vision Fund, was bigger than the $65 billion in combined investments from the venture-capital world. He said the SoftBank Vision Fund would be focused. “Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, smart robots: Those are the three main things I’m interested in,” he said.

No, Robots Aren’t Killing the American Dream

Date: 21-02-2017
Source: The New York Times

Defenders of globalization are on solid ground when they criticize President Trump’s threats of punitive tariffs and border walls. The economy can’t flourish without trade and immigrants.

But many of those defenders have their own dubious explanation for the economic disruption that helped to fuel the rise of Mr. Trump.

At a recent global forum in Dubai, Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said some of the economic pain ascribed to globalization was instead due to the rise of robots taking jobs. In his farewell address in January, President Barack Obama warned that “the next wave of economic dislocations won’t come from overseas. It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good middle-class jobs obsolete.”

Blaming robots, though, while not as dangerous as protectionism and xenophobia, is also a distraction from real problems and real solutions.