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Robots Overtaking Jobs by 2025, Experts Split on Consequences

August 6, 2014 By Georgia Dawson Leave a Comment

The future of humanity lies in how we decide to produce, engage with and manage robots. By robots, we can understand a large range of technological entities with artificial intelligence. Since the eve of the first industrial revolution, humans struggled with how to introduce technological improvements in production without hurting employees? Well, most capitalists thought that technological innovations will increase profit, but recently we started posing publicly the question of technological unemployment more often than ever if that will happen, how should we deal with it? The robots overtaking jobs are our friends or enemies?

Pew Research Center Internet Project asked many researchers about precisely this topic. The exact question was: “Self-driving cars, intelligent digital agents that can act for you, and robots are advancing rapidly. Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence (AI) applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025?”

Pew Research Center undertakes some interesting projects. About a month ago Pew released a report concerned on what threatens the Internet.

Robots overtaking jobs, friends or enemies?

Almost 1.900 experts answered the open-ended question. Initially, Pew sent the question to more than 12.000 experts from all over the world. Three expert categories were formed. The first contained experts who previously participated in other Pew researches. The second was formed out of members of professional associations studying internet trends, among others. The third category represents regular the Pew Internet Project newsletter subscribers. Bear in mind that this is not a representative study, so the results cannot be generalized. Moreover, about 84 percent of the respondents said they live in North America.

Robots Overtaking Jobs, what are the consequences?

The answers to the tricky question can easily be split in two opposing ideas. One is that robots will be a bad influence to the future employees, while the other opposes it. The first 48 percent of respondents think that the integration of robots and digital agents in the work field will increase income inequality. More than half, 52 percent, think that even if robots will take over some jobs prone to automatisation, humans will be able to find new ways of providing jobs and producing wellbeing, as we do have enough experience in the process so far.

One of the most recurring theme is that of education. Most respondents are concerned that the education system does not prepare students adequately for this fast-changing environment. There is a Henry Ford education in a Mark Zuckerberg world. We need to adapt to the new condition, the respondents warn so the robots overtaking jobs will help us, not threaten us.

 

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: employment, forecast, Pew Research Internet Center, robots, technological unemployment, unemployment

Apple Fires Beats Personnel after Acquisition Ends

July 31, 2014 By Georgia Dawson 1 Comment

When Apple bought Beats Electronics, it was the biggest acquisition for the Cupertino giant. Beats cost Apple $3 billion. Apple bought Beats for several reasons. One would be because of the headphones department, whose product has a widely renowned stylish image. Another reason is represented by Beats more recent service, Beats Music. The music streaming service offers human curated playlists, a trendy feature in the world of online radios filled with automated playlists. Nevertheless, the acquisition means that Apple fires Beats personnel. We really hope that the laid off workers will find other jobs soon, because according to a study, unemployment raises mortality risks. Coming from Beats might be an advantage on the labormarket.

While Dr. Dre might be happy about the transaction, not all of Beats’ employees will share his joy. At the moment Beats has around 700 workers. An unidentified informer claims that around 200 employees will be laid off, according to Bloomberg. Because the discussions were private, the name of the informer could not be disclosed. The job cuts might start as of August 1.

“We’re excited to have the Beats team join Apple, and we have extended job offers to every Beats employee,” Tom Neumayr from Apple stated. “Because of some overlap in our operations, some offers are for a limited period and we’ll work hard during this time to find as many of these Beats employees as we can another permanent job within Apple.”

Probably the jobs to disappear will be in sectors overlapping in both companies. So human resources and finance might be the sectors to see layoffs. At the end of June, Apple had 41.300 employees.

What happens after Apple fires Beats personnel

Some people from Beats will join Apple directly. Luke Wood and Ian Rogers, as well as creative boss Trent Reznor will work with Apple soon. The headphones and speaker workers will transfer to Apple as well.

Apple Fires Beats Personnel from redundant positions.

Apple plans to translate Beats Music to the iTunes platform, but 9to5mac says that according to sources, the transition will be difficult, because of the different architectural characteristics. As a consequence, Beats Music will suffer a redesigning process. So Apple fires Beats personnel, but most of them will work on adapting the platform to Apple services.

Apple recently bought another streaming app, Swell. The app acts similarly to music streaming radios, only that it selects news instead of music. Streaming services are highly popular and Apple wants to make sure it has as many avenues as possible for future development.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: acquisition, Apple, Beats Electronics, unemployment

Unemployment Raises Mortality Risks, Recession Effects Counteract

July 25, 2014 By Troy Rubenson 1 Comment

Although signs of economic recovery are generally good for the jobless, there are some recent finding that might shed a different light on the matter.

Researchers from Drexel University from Pennsylvania found that unemployment raises mortality risks. The results were published in July 2014 in American Journal of Epidemiology, under the title “Individual Joblessness, Contextual Unemployment, and Mortality Risk”. Data for this study was based on secondary analysis of Panel Study of Income Dynamics, from 1979 until 1997, available from US Department of Labor. The statistical model for their analysis included the influences of individual employment status, as well as the employment rate of each analyzed state.  Besides those factors, health history, age, gender, income and marital status are relevant when assessing death risk.

Unemployment raises mortality risks, but periods of economic recession decrease it

As Medical News Today quotes, unemployment raises mortality risk by 73%, which could be translated in adding up to ten years to someone’s age.  One provided explanation is that stress related to needing a job might induce deviant behaviors, like drug use.

Unemployment raises mortality risks because of unhealthy behaviors

According to the leading authors, these effects are only visible for unemployed groups and there are reduced during economic recession, which means that when the economy is bad, there are less unemployed people at risk of death.

There are several explanations considered when analyzing these opposite effects. First, the air pollution during booming economies is higher, which is directly related to health status. When an economy is in recession, pollution is reduced because of lack of industrial activity.

Ultimately, when economies are on the rise, people do more work, they sleep less and have more sleeping disorders, commute more and so they risk more to have accidents. Therefore mortality risk increases. All this are less done in recession, consequently mortality risk decreases.

Second, the stress associated with the pressure to have a job is higher when economies are good, the result being that more and more people from the unemployed groups are being affected by depression. On the other hand, when recession strikes, there is a sense of normalcy in budget reduction, cuts in employment and a general increase of number of unemployed persons. Therefore, in a time of recession, not having a job might not be such an anomaly after all. Consequently, unemployment raises mortality risks, but during recession there are fewer feelings associated with depression or pressure to obtain a job, since the general tendency is that you don’t have one.  Also, the mild improvement of mortality rate during economic recessions is, as the authors noted, although significant, moderate in effect at the same time, so the opposite phenomena don’t have the same intensity.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: economic downturn, Health, mortality risks, recession, unemployment

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