May Day report by MPs damns growing UK gig economy
By: The Guardian may 01, 2017 Companies in Britain’s growing gig economy are forcing workers into bogus self-employment and free-riding on the welfare state, an influential committee of MPs has said. In a damning assessment of modern employment practices, the parliamentary work and pensions committee calls on the next government to bring laws up to […]
Good Gigs: A fairer future for the UK’s gig economy
By: Brhmie Balaram, Josie Warden & Fabian Wallace-Stephens April 27, 2017 The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) believes that everyone should have the freedom and power to turn their ideas into reality – we call this the Power to Create. Through our ideas, research and 28,000- strong Fellowship, we seek to […]
Driverless pods plot new course to overtake humans
By: Gwyn Topham April 25, 2017 In a little over two years, a fleet of driverless cars will make its way from Oxford to London, completing the entire journey from start to finish without human intervention, including on urban streets and motorways. Organisers of the government-backed project, announced on Monday, still expect to have a […]
How we’ll face a fundamental threat to the market economy: Martin Ford at TED2017
By: New York Times April 25, 2017 Two hundred years ago, the Luddites rebelled against weaving technology. In 1964, US President Lyndon B. Johnson received “The Triple Revolution” memo that laid out the threat of job displacement due to automation. We’ve been concerned about technology displacing humans for a long time, says futurist Martin Ford. […]
Alibaba founder Jack Ma: AI will cause people ‘more pain than happiness’
By: Olivia Solon April 24, 2017 Artificial intelligence and other technologies will cause people “more pain than happiness” over the next three decades, according to Jack Ma, the billionaire chairman and founder of Alibaba. “Social conflicts in the next three decades will have an impact on all sorts of industries and walks of life,” said […]
Hillbillies who code: the former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map
By: Cassady Rosenblum April 21, 2017 As Highway 119 cleaves through the mountains of eastern Kentucky, exposed bands of black gold stretch on for miles – come get us if you can, they tease. And for years, miners did: they had good employment that earned them upwards of $70,000 a year and built a legacy […]
New tools needed to track technology’s impact on jobs, panel says
By: Steve Lohr April 14, 2017 America needs new tools for the timely measurement and monitoring of technology, jobs and skills to cope with the advance of artificial intelligence and automation, an expert panel composed mainly of economists and computer scientists said in a new report. The panel’s recommendations include the development of an A.I. […]
Track how technology is transforming work
By: Tom Mitchell & Erik Brynjolfsson April 13, 2017 Advances in technology pose huge challenges for jobs. Productivity levels have never been higher in the United States, for example, but income for the bottom 50% of earners has stagnated since 1999 (see ‘Job shifts’). Most of the monetary gains have gone to a small group […]
How Technology Liberates Human Capital
By: Michael Milken and Igor Tulchinsky April 11, 2017 New technologies tend to disrupt old businesses, but also to create more jobs than they destroy. That’s little solace, though, to the workers who lack either the skills or flexibility to find better opportunities. From the factory floor to the Wall Street trading desk, advanced technologies […]