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The Amazon Picking Challenge
- Date
- November 05, 2014
- Tags
-
robots, pickers, amazon
- Words
- 131
Amazon has created The Amazon Picking Challenge to spur improvements in picking robot performance. These are the robots that fill boxes in Amazon’s…
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America DOES Still Make Stuff
- Date
- November 05, 2014
- Tags
-
manufacturing
- Words
- 109
It’s a common complaint that “America doesn’t make anything anymore.” Well, yes we do, it just doesn’t get as much press as the latest tech startup.…
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Automate This
- Date
- November 05, 2014
- Tags
-
big data
- Words
- 131
I read this Automate This over the summer: The bot takeover began with high frequency trading on Wall Street, and from there it spread to all manners…
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The Innovation Cycle
- Date
- November 05, 2014
- Tags
-
innovation
- Words
- 250
All innovation is not created equal. This article identifies three different types, in chronological order: Empowering innovations “transform…
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More Stuff, Less People Required
- Date
- November 05, 2014
- Tags
-
manufacturing
- Words
- 111
From a 2011 study entitled The Case of the Disappearing Large Employer Manufacturing Plants : […] the dramatic disappearance of large employers is…
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Not Working
- Date
- November 05, 2014
- Tags
-
productivity
- Words
- 48
Found in an article entitled The Art of Not Working at Work : Everywhere we look, technology is replacing human labor. In OECD countries,…
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The Onion on Serving the Machines
- Date
- November 05, 2014
- Tags
-
humor
- Words
- 70
The Onion claims that Man’s Whole Job Undoing Handiwork Of Self-Checkout Machine : Admitting that he basically just stands there until one of the…
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OTR Trucking in a Self-Driving World
- Date
- November 05, 2014
- Tags
-
self-driving cars
- Words
- 308
If I was an over-the-road trucker, I’d be watching Google’s self-driving car research with a careful eye, because the human behind the wheel of a…
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The Slow Elimination of Hotel Housekeeping
- Date
- November 05, 2014
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 452
Every year, my Dad and I go to Las Vegas for a rugby tournament. The last time we were there, we managed to get a very high-end hotel at off-season…
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The Great Decoupling
- Date
- November 06, 2014
- Tags
-
productivity
- Words
- 223
Author and and professor Erik Brynjolfsson is convinced that technology is increasing productivity at the cost of jobs, and he has a chart that he…
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47% at Risk
- Date
- November 07, 2014
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 113
You see the “47%” figure floating around a lot, refering to how many jobs the economy could lose to technology. Here’s where it comes from – an…
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What Does the Future Look Like?
- Date
- November 07, 2014
- Words
- 257
Interesting discussion over on Reddit: Imagine a robot that is a complete replacement for the average American worker. What economic system develops…
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Manna
- Date
- November 09, 2014
- Tags
-
basic income, restaurants, books
- Words
- 307
Manna: Two Visions of Humanity’s Future is a novel set sometime in the future with a protagonist living in Cary, North Carolina and working at a…
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Ken Jennings on The Inevitable Future
- Date
- November 10, 2014
- Tags
-
humor, future
- Words
- 12
Ken Jennings “Final Jeopardy” answer when playing against IBM’s Watson in 2011.
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Computers and Ediscovery
- Date
- November 11, 2014
- Tags
-
ediscovery, big data
- Words
- 204
In 2011, the New York Times was telling us about how so-called “ electronic discovery ” would be putting lawyers out of business by enabling the…
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The Luddites
- Date
- November 11, 2014
- Tags
-
luddites
- Words
- 264
Let’s just take a second to reflect on how long the battle against worker automation has been fought. Here’s where the pejorative term “ Luddite ”…
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Open-Source Library Self-Checkout
- Date
- November 11, 2014
- Tags
-
retail
- Words
- 128
If you have a public library, you can have automation even if you don’t have a budget, thanks to this open-source, web-based self-checkout system .…
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Pew Report on the Effect of Technology on Jobs
- Date
- November 11, 2014
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 576
Pew Research did a “canvassing” of experts and have released the results of one of their questions: AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs They asked…
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… the unfashionable argument that expertise cannot be reduced to data
- Date
- November 11, 2014
- Words
- 454
Here’s an article about “The Knowledge,” which is the body of knowledge that London cab drivers need to know: The Knowledge, London’s Legendary…
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Self-Service Retail
- Date
- November 11, 2014
- Tags
-
retail
- Words
- 104
This article is over three years old: Retail jobs are disappearing as shoppers adjust to self-service . You can bet the trend has just accelerated in…
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The Value of Man (…according to NASA in 1965)
- Date
- November 11, 2014
- Tags
-
humans, quote
- Words
- 27
Found this quote via Race Against the Machine : Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced…
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Elon Musk on the Dangers of AI
- Date
- November 20, 2014
- Tags
-
ai
- Words
- 80
A recurring theme of some of Elon Musk’s comments have been that the rise of artificial intelligence might end very badly for humans. From a CNBC…
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The Ethics of the Robots
- Date
- November 21, 2014
- Tags
-
robots, self-driving cars
- Words
- 100
The next frontier of self-driving cars is teaching them ethics. It turns out that some split-second decisions are as much value judgments as clear…
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Universal Basic Income
- Date
- November 21, 2014
- Tags
-
basic income
- Words
- 616
Marshall Brain of the How Stuff Works franchise, and the Manna novella, presents his case for a universal basic income . He starts off by painting a…
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Would We Even Need to Own Self-Driving Cars?
- Date
- November 25, 2014
- Tags
-
self-driving cars
- Words
- 330
The impact of self-driving cars will ripple through several different industries. It may be a huge step in the idea of not owning a car at all. The…
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Information, Functional, and Access Asymmetry
- Date
- December 01, 2014
- Words
- 462
I’m wondering how much technological unemployment will result from the simple, natural elimination of information asymmetry and the subsequent…
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Amazon’s Picker Robots in Action
- Date
- December 02, 2014
- Tags
-
robots, pickers, amazon
- Words
- 12
This video is making the rounds today. Amazon’s robot army in action.
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The Effect of Self-Driving Cars on Heart Health
- Date
- December 05, 2014
- Tags
-
self-driving cars, health care
- Words
- 101
I can’t find the original source mentioned in this column , but the CEO of McKinsey, Dominic Barton, apparently said this last week: If you are a…
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Smart Meters Eliminate Jobs, But Don’t Bring Much Else?
- Date
- December 06, 2014
- Tags
-
smart meters
- Words
- 150
Smart electrical meters were supposed to eliminate thousands of inefficient meter reading positions, and usher in a wave of intelligent energy…
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The Human We Need might not be a doctor…
- Date
- December 24, 2014
- Tags
-
health care, quote
- Words
- 55
The Week has a short piece, provocatively titled “ How computers will replace your doctor .” I loved this quote about “the human we need.” But the…
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Wither the Waiter?
- Date
- December 26, 2014
- Tags
-
retail, restaurants
- Words
- 109
Waiters might be next on the chopping block, given that a company making pay-at-the-table tablets is raising significant capital . E la Carte Inc., a…
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Documentary on Death and Work
- Date
- December 29, 2014
- Words
- 190
This documentary just got funded in Kickstarter. It connects the death of work to the death of…well, actual death , and discusses how the two relate…
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Google Unveils Concrete Plans for their Self-Driving Car
- Date
- December 29, 2014
- Tags
-
self-driving cars, google
- Words
- 59
Google is apparently ready to sell this thing : Google’s prototype self-driving car could be rolling through the streets of Northern California in…
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Bill Gates on software substitution
- Date
- January 02, 2015
- Tags
-
bill gates
- Words
- 65
Bill Gates, speaking last week at The American Enterprise Institute, said this: Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses…
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Camel Racing Robots Protect Human Rights
- Date
- January 02, 2015
- Words
- 165
Camel racing in the Middle East is big business, and the sport has worked for over a decade to replace all the jockeys with robots , However, in a…
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The Effect of a Declining Minimum Billable Unit on Wages
- Date
- January 05, 2015
- Tags
-
gig economy
- Words
- 544
Here’s an article from the Economist about the rise of technology that match people needing work with people who need the work done, in close to…
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The Business Insider on Technological Unemployment
- Date
- January 24, 2015
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 293
Business Insider recently wrote a broad article on technological unemployment entitled “ The Future of Jobs .” Some highlights – John Maynard Keynes…
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Robotic Guilt
- Date
- January 24, 2015
- Tags
-
robots
- Words
- 85
The New York Times reports further on the inability for robots to have morals or make moral-based judgments. One innovator is trying…
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Bill Gates on Reddit
- Date
- January 28, 2015
- Tags
-
bill gates, reddit
- Words
- 212
Bill Gates did another Reddit AMA , There were a couple questions about technological unemployment: Someone: How much of an existential threat do you…
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Humans Need Not Apply
- Date
- January 28, 2015
- Tags
-
future
- Words
- 157
This video is stone-cold terrifying. It lays out the fundamental case for technological unemployment, and explains that technology evolves faster…
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Smart Meter Initiatives Promise Retained Jobs
- Date
- January 28, 2015
- Tags
-
smart meters
- Words
- 122
I stumbled across two articles today, both making the same claim about smart meters: Out of Columbus, Ohio: AEP expects decision soon on smart meters…
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Longshoremen, Wages, and Resisting Technology
- Date
- March 02, 2015
- Tags
-
logistics
- Words
- 183
Here’s an interesting article about how longshoremen at West Coast ports have prevented technological improvements from threatening their jobs – it’s…
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More on Driverless Cars
- Date
- March 02, 2015
- Tags
-
self-driving cars
- Words
- 280
Zack Kanter writes about autonomous cars : Autonomous cars will be commonplace by 2025 and have a near monopoly by 2030, and the sweeping change they…
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The Uber-ization of Work
- Date
- March 04, 2015
- Tags
-
gig economy, uber
- Words
- 135
The New York Times talks about something that we discussed in the past. Uberization of work may soon be coming to your chosen profession. Just as…
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The Effect of Usability on Employment Rates
- Date
- March 04, 2015
- Tags
-
unemployment, ux
- Words
- 339
I’m wondering about much usability and HCI will affect automation and job losses. I’ve been thinking that a lot of transactions cannot be automated…
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Wither the Parking Attendant?
- Date
- March 08, 2015
- Tags
-
retail
- Words
- 113
There’s very little detail in this article about parking at a Dallas stadium, but the last line is pretty clear: Last week American Airlines Center,…
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Does the Internet kill jobs?
- Date
- April 06, 2015
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 224
Here’s an article from the Harvard Business Review which argues that the Internet is killing job creation in the middle class. The Internet […] has…
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Reddit Thread on Technological Unemployment
- Date
- April 06, 2015
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 200
Interesting thread over at Reddit: Which jobs will never be replaced by machines? . The top answer: I think jobs where people need a human-human…
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Fortis Smart Meters
- Date
- April 16, 2015
- Tags
-
smart meters
- Words
- 110
The city in Canada gets rid of meter readers in favor of smart meters. If you’re under 10 years old, you may never remember what a meter reader…
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LaGuardia’s New Checkout
- Date
- April 16, 2015
- Tags
-
retail
- Words
- 15
All of the checkout clerks at LaGuardia’s convenience stores have apparently been replaced with machines.
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Automated Strawberry Picker
- Date
- April 20, 2015
- Tags
-
agriculture
- Words
- 168
Wither the migrant agricultural laborer: Harvest CROO Robotics Develops Strawberry Picker, the Latest Solution in Agricultural Robotics Harvest CROO…
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The Power Company’s Argument for Smart Meters
- Date
- April 20, 2015
- Tags
-
smart meters
- Words
- 317
This is a press release from ComEd about the installation of smart meters in Chatham, which is a neighborhood in South Chicago, It’s fascinating in…
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Raising the Retirement Age Because We Can
- Date
- April 22, 2015
- Tags
-
politics
- Words
- 226
Here’s an article about the idea to raise retirement age which argues we should actually lower it. It starts with some common knowledge about…
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The Millenium Project Study on Future Employment
- Date
- April 27, 2015
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 129
The Millenium Project is doing a study on the future of work, entitled: Future of Work and Glocal Strategies to Improve Long-Term Prospects The…
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The Machines Are Workers, Not Tools
- Date
- April 30, 2015
- Tags
-
books, quote
- Words
- 75
From the introduction of Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford. [This] is an era that will be defined by a fundamental shift in the relationship between…
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Robot Strawberry Picker Re-visited
- Date
- May 04, 2015
- Tags
-
robots, agriculture
- Words
- 187
An article with more about the robot strawberry picker , but this article claims it will fix a labor shortage, and why this shortage exists. For some…
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Single Man Railroad Crews
- Date
- May 12, 2015
- Tags
-
transportation
- Words
- 194
Railroad companies are trying to reduce the number of employees onboard trains : Railroads have proposed eliminating the job of on-board conductor on…
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Unimate
- Date
- May 26, 2015
- Tags
-
robots, history
- Words
- 79
There is a Robot Hall of Fame , One of the inductees is the first automobile assembly line robot: Unimate : In 1961 the first industrial robot,…
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Driverless Trucks in the Oil Sands
- Date
- June 11, 2015
- Tags
-
self-driving cars
- Words
- 115
Falling oil prices and revenue have gotten oil sands producers interested in driver-less trucks. Suncor is buying 175 of them. The layoffs will be…
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Auto Insurance Disruption
- Date
- June 15, 2015
- Tags
-
self-driving cars
- Words
- 81
Self-driving cars will disrupt more than the automotive industry. They’ll mess with the insurance industry too . […] getting rid of the driver could…
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The Freightliner Inspiration
- Date
- June 15, 2015
- Tags
-
transportation, self-driving cars
- Words
- 102
Freightliner has a semi-autonomous truck licensed for use in Nevada . The lorry has the same “NHTSA Level 3” rating as Google’s self-driving car,…
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The Gig Economy
- Date
- June 15, 2015
- Tags
-
gig economy, uber
- Words
- 70
An interesting term is in this article about Uber drivers trying to file for unemployment . The companies of the gig economy, the on-demand economy,…
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Technological Employment Debate
- Date
- June 15, 2015
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 121
A Yale researcher is on the record about technological unemployment : Thanks to the efficiency of the internet and automated systems, productivity…
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McDonald’s Order Kiosks
- Date
- July 08, 2015
- Tags
-
restaurants
- Words
- 11
Here are some order and pay kiosks that McDonalds is testing.
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Why Today Isn’t a Luddite Fallacy
- Date
- July 09, 2015
- Tags
-
luddites
- Words
- 91
Here’s an argument that the reason why our current predicament isn’t a Luddite Fallacy is because of the rate of change. But what is missing from…
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Robots and Humans Working Together for Amazon
- Date
- July 09, 2015
- Tags
-
robots
- Words
- 207
An article about how humans and robots are working together in Amazon’s warehouse. The shelves move. In previous generations of its fulfillment…
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Empathy
- Date
- July 25, 2015
- Tags
-
humans, quote, empathy
- Words
- 90
Meg Bear was a VP for Oracle, In this LinkedIn post she makes this point which shows how computers and humans will never be the same: I have come to…
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Why We Will Always Need Humans
- Date
- July 25, 2015
- Tags
-
books, humans
- Words
- 337
Here’s a phenomenal article adapted from an upcoming book: Humans Are Underrated . The article seeks an answer to this question: What are the…
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Don’t Fear the Robots
- Date
- July 28, 2015
- Tags
-
future
- Words
- 130
Here’s an article which argues that we should welcome an increase in automation and productivity: […] don’t worry that the robots will take your job.…
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Automating the Twilight of DVD-By-Mail
- Date
- July 31, 2015
- Words
- 143
Here’s some information on Netflix’s eventually-doomed DVD-by-mail business and how they’re keeping it going by making it more efficient using…
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Automation and the Balance of Power
- Date
- July 31, 2015
- Tags
-
workers
- Words
- 172
There’s not a lot new in this New York Times piece from April , but this quote is a good summation of the problem. This is the way technology is…
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Replacing Humans with Robots
- Date
- August 06, 2015
- Tags
-
robots
- Words
- 200
The title of this post is apparently the title of an official Chinese government program which subsidizes and rewards companies for actively…
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Will Your Job Be Automated?
- Date
- August 06, 2015
- Words
- 110
NPR has come up with a cute, if simplistic, app to tell you if your job will be automated . The parameters it reviews are: Do you need to come up…
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Writing Gigs; Payment By The Page
- Date
- August 07, 2015
- Tags
-
gig economy
- Words
- 192
Inside an article about Amazon’s business practices , there’s an interesting note about how the “gig economy” is coming to book writing: Amazon…
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Money for Free
- Date
- August 09, 2015
- Tags
-
basic income
- Words
- 187
Here’s an interesting documentary from a Dutch “future affairs” television series on the idea of a “basic income” and how it might work. The idea is…
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We Live to Work
- Date
- August 24, 2015
- Words
- 68
Here’s an interesting article on how white collar work in the U.S. will resist automation because we will simply invent more work , because that’s…
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The Onion on Automation
- Date
- September 08, 2015
- Tags
-
humor
- Words
- 110
The Onion offers this humorous respite: Secretary Of Labor Assures Nation There Still Plenty Of Jobs For Americans Willing To Outwork Robots : During…
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Pilotless Planes
- Date
- September 09, 2015
- Words
- 94
It seems that planes don’t even need pilots . Advances in sensor technology, computing and artificial intelligence are making human pilots less…
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Server-less Restaurants
- Date
- September 09, 2015
- Tags
-
restaurants
- Words
- 99
We don’t need waiters anymore , apparently, as a new place in San Francisco is trying to prove. At this restaurant, customers order, pay and receive…
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World Summit on Technological Unemployment
- Date
- September 21, 2015
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 85
There’s an upcoming conference on technological unemployment: The World Summit on Technological Unemployment is the first high-level forum and…
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Automation and The Minimum Wage
- Date
- October 21, 2015
- Tags
-
politics, workers
- Words
- 74
The tail end of this NY Times opinion piece on raising the minimum wage includes this bit about the threat of automation as a reason not to raise the…
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Politicians Take Notice of the Gig Economy
- Date
- October 21, 2015
- Tags
-
politics
- Words
- 107
Politicians are working with start-ups to understand the so-called “gig economy.” It’s driving conversations about worker protections, lack of health…
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The Threat to White Collar Jobs
- Date
- October 21, 2015
- Tags
-
unemployment
- Words
- 101
This article argues that it’s not just middle class jobs at risk. Indeed, there’s apparently nothing special about white collar jobs either. “The…
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Good Analytics Means Less Workers
- Date
- October 22, 2015
- Tags
-
unemployment, big data
- Words
- 135
Here’s an interesting note in the middle of this article about temp workers at Amazon : At the same time, we are living in an era of maximum…
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Middle Management and The Gig Economy
- Date
- October 29, 2015
- Tags
-
gig economy
- Words
- 96
This article claims that the Gig Economy has another casualty: middle management. With real-time rating systems, we’re turning into a world of…
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Life on Chicken Assembly Line
- Date
- October 31, 2015
- Tags
-
manufacturing
- Words
- 108
Interesting information in this article about how automation drives the pace of a chicken assembly line. Today, the maximum permissible rate is 140…
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Automation Replacing Jobs at Panera?
- Date
- November 03, 2015
- Tags
-
restaurants
- Words
- 200
There is significant conservative spin on this article , clearly, but it summarizes what apparently happening on an earnings call for Panera Bread.…
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Reduced to Helping the Machines
- Date
- November 25, 2015
- Words
- 48
“The newest space, and the one that’s most exciting, is where machines are actually in charge, but they have enough awareness to seek out people to…
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The Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Date
- January 25, 2016
- Tags
-
future, inequality
- Words
- 148
Swiss Bank UBS has released a report saying that the move to automation is the “fourth industrial revolution,” and will drive considerable gains to…
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Rise of the Robots
- Date
- January 25, 2016
- Tags
-
books
- Words
- 311
Martin Ford’s book, Rise of the Robots was on many “best of” books for 2015, It’s a broad overview of the problems of automation and the potential…
-
The Gig Economy for Welfare
- Date
- January 29, 2016
- Tags
-
gig economy
- Words
- 203
Two conservative Washington policy wonks write in Politico that we should use the gig economy to put welfare recipients to work: Historically, some…
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Narrative Science
- Date
- January 29, 2016
- Tags
-
white collar
- Words
- 550
Narrative Science is a company that launched out of a project at the Intelligent Information Lab at Northwestern University. They make a software…
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Robot Farming
- Date
- January 29, 2016
- Tags
-
agriculture
- Words
- 78
Japan is going to harvest lettuce with robots . So much so that Spread is creating the world’s first farm manned entirely by robots. Instead of…
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Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us
- Date
- February 02, 2016
- Tags
-
future, existence
- Words
- 472
Bill Joy is one of the world’s great computer scientists, He started Sun Microsystems, and he had a lot to do with the creation of the Java…
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The Crash of Air France Flight 447
- Date
- February 05, 2016
- Tags
-
transportation
- Words
- 368
A Vanity Fair article examines the 2009 crash of Air France flight 447, which went down in the Atlantic en route from Brazil to France. The Human…
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Disembodied Objects of Speed and Efficiency
- Date
- February 05, 2016
- Tags
-
quote, software
- Words
- 106
In a discussion about automated business processing in Mindless: Why Smarter Machines are Making Dumber Humans . It is here perhaps that IBM gets us…
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Will the machines ever wake up?
- Date
- February 06, 2016
- Tags
-
robots
- Words
- 218
Could we ever replicate consciousness in machines? Might they ever become sentient like Skynet in the Terminator films? TechCrunch looks at the…
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Y Combinator Basic Income Study
- Date
- February 06, 2016
- Tags
-
basic income
- Words
- 177
Y Combinator – the startup incubator – is about to start up a study on the feasibility of basic income . We’re going to try something new – our first…
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NASA Investigates Single Pilot Operations in Commercial Aircraft
- Date
- February 08, 2016
- Tags
-
aircraft, transportation
- Words
- 203
NASA is investigating the idea of aircraft with a single pilot , rather than the two in use today. The key is that a second officer is present as…
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Buzzfeed Talks to Uber and Lyft Drivers
- Date
- February 10, 2016
- Tags
-
transportation, uber, self-driving cars, lyft
- Words
- 84
Buzzfeed made a video where they took rights with Uber and Lyft drives and talked to the about driverless cars and what it might mean for their jobs,…
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Robot Sex Dolls
- Date
- February 10, 2016
- Tags
-
sex doll
- Words
- 233
So, Real Doll has been around for years – I remember them being a blocked site on my company’s computer network back in 2000 or so, The company makes…