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from the ya-tvoy-sluga-ya-tvoy-rabotnik dept.
regift_of_the_gods writes:
"A study that was published last year by two Oxford researchers predicted that 47 percent of US jobs could be computerized within the next 20 years, including both manual labor and high cognition office work. The Oxford report presented three axes to show what types of jobs were relatively safe from being routed by robots and software; those requiring high levels of social intelligence (public relations), creativity (scientist, fashion designer), or perception and manipulation (surgeon) were less likely to be displaced.
This further obsolescence of jobs due to automation may have already begun. The Financial Times describes an emerging wave of products and services from algorithmic-intensive, data-rich tech startups that will threaten increasing numbers of jobs including both knowledge and blue collar workers. The lead example is Kensho, a startup founded by ex-Google and Apple engineers that is building an engine to estimate the impact of real or hypothetical news items on security prices, with questions posed in a natural language. Specialist knowledge workers in many other fields, including law and medicine, could also be at risk. At lower income levels, the dangerous are posed by increasingly agile and autonomous robots, such as those Amazon uses to staff some of its fulfillment warehouses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by metamonkey on Tuesday March 04 2014, @01:35PM
That's why labor unions are useful. There needs to be a counterbalance between the interests of capital and labor. When there is no one to speak for labor, capital keeps all the profits and fucks the workers. When labor has all the power, nothing gets done and the economy stagnates. We need these two forces fighting each other, as a fair and productive society exists somewhere in the middle. Right now, capital has all the power, and labor has nothing. Corporate profits are at all time highs, the stock market is going crazy again yet people are out of work and wages are stagnant.
Left a beta website for an alpha website.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 04 2014, @09:24PM
A large part of the problem in the US is that the unions have repeatedly, flagrantly shown themselves to be political clubs pushing their own agenda without being responsive to the real concerns of the workers, and substantially in the pockets of organised crime. And now they're amazed that union membership is dropping like a rock everywhere it's optional, and people are pushing to make it optional anywhere they can.
When the unions in the USA start to actually care about the workers, work realistically in terms of business factors, and stop pushing their politics in the teeth of what their members think, union membership might start to rise. Of course, when that happens, I'll start looking for unicorns in my back yard, but hey. Miracles do happen.