gettySeveral years ago, I met someone who moved for a new job. She found an apartment for $500 per month, but could not afford the $1,000 deposit. So instead, she moved into a $200 per week hotel bringing her rent to over $800 per month. Despite the higher cost, her room did not come with a kitchen. So, she ate every meal at the nearby McDonald’s.
On the face of it, staying at a hotel and regularly eating out might seem like financially careless things to do, but because of how our financial system works, she had limited choices. Upon closer inspection, her decisions were rational given her situation. In our financial system, money works like a magnet: The smaller your magnet, the more likely it’ll get pulled away by the larger magnets.
As our financial system becomes more automated, it’s also automating many of these mechanisms that create inequality, mechanisms that benefit those that already have a financial advantage and hurt those with lower income. However, there are changes and automations that we can embrace to make our financial system more balanced and inclusive….Continue reading…
Source: The Consequences Of Automated Financial Disparity
Critics:
Perhaps the most cited advantage of automation in industry is that it is associated with faster production and cheaper labor costs. Another benefit could be that it replaces hard, physical, or monotonous work. Additionally, tasks that take place in hazardous environments or that are otherwise beyond human capabilities can be done by machines, as machines can operate even under extreme temperatures or in atmospheres that are radioactive or toxic.
They can also be maintained with simple quality checks. However, at the time being, not all tasks can be automated, and some tasks are more expensive to automate than others. Initial costs of installing the machinery in factory settings are high, and failure to maintain a system could result in the loss of the product itself.
Moreover, some studies seem to indicate that industrial automation could impose ill effects beyond operational concerns, including worker displacement due to systemic loss of employment and compounded environmental damage; however, these findings are both convoluted and controversial in nature, and could potentially be circumvented.
The main advantages of automation are:
Increased throughput or productivity, Improved quality, Increased predictability , Improved robustness (consistency), of processes or product , Increased consistency of output, Reduced direct human labor costs and expenses,Reduced cycle time, Increased accuracy, Relieving humans of monotonously repetitive work, Required work in development, deployment, maintenance, and operation of automated processes — often structured as “jobs”, Increased human freedom to do other things
Automation primarily describes machines replacing human action, but it is also loosely associated with mechanization, machines replacing human labor. Coupled with mechanization, extending human capabilities in terms of size, strength, speed, endurance, visual range & acuity, hearing frequency & precision, electromagnetic sensing & effecting, etc., advantages include: Relieving humans of dangerous work stresses and occupational injuries (e.g., fewer strained backs from lifting heavy objects) and Removing humans from dangerous environments (e.g. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, underwater, etc.)
The main disadvantages of automation are: High initial cost, Faster production without human intervention can mean faster unchecked production of defects where automated processes are defective, Scaled-up capacities can mean scaled-up problems when systems fail — releasing dangerous toxins, forces, energies, etc., at scaled-up rates, Human adaptiveness is often poorly understood by automation initiators.
It is often difficult to anticipate every contingency and develop fully preplanned automated responses for every situation. The discoveries inherent in automating processes can require unanticipated iterations to resolve, causing unanticipated costs and delays. People anticipating employment income may be seriously disrupted by others deploying automation where no similar income is readily available.
The paradox of automation says that the more efficient the automated system, the more crucial the human contribution of the operators. Humans are less involved, but their involvement becomes more critical. Lisanne Bainbridge, a cognitive psychologist, identified these issues notably in her widely cited paper “Ironies of Automation.” If an automated system has an error, it will multiply that error until it is fixed or shut down. This is where human operators come in.
A fatal example of this was Air France Flight 447, where a failure of automation put the pilots into a manual situation they were not prepared for. Increased automation often causes workers to feel anxious about losing their jobs as technology renders their skills or experience unnecessary. Early in the Industrial Revolution, when inventions like the steam engine were making some job categories expendable, workers forcefully resisted these changes.
Luddites, for instance, were English textile workers who protested the introduction of weaving machines by destroying them. More recently, some residents of Chandler, Arizona, have slashed tires and pelted rocks at self-driving car, in protest over the cars’ perceived threat to human safety and job prospects. The relative anxiety about automation reflected in opinion polls seems to correlate closely with the strength of organized labor in that region or nation.
For example, while a study by the Pew Research Center indicated that 72% of Americans are worried about increasing automation in the workplace, 80% of Swedes see automation and artificial intelligence (AI) as a good thing, due to the country’s still-powerful unions and a more robust national safety net. In the U.S., 47% of all current jobs have the potential to be fully automated by 2033, according to the research of experts Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne.
Furthermore, wages and educational attainment appear to be strongly negatively correlated with an occupation’s risk of being automated. Even highly skilled professional jobs like a lawyer, doctor, engineer, journalist are at risk of automation. Prospects are particularly bleak for occupations that do not presently require a university degree, such as truck driving. Even in high-tech corridors like Silicon Valley, concern is spreading about a future in which a sizable percentage of adults have little chance of sustaining gainful employment.
“In The Second Machine Age, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue that “…there’s never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value. However, there’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only ‘ordinary’ skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate.”
As the example of Sweden suggests, however, the transition to a more automated future need not inspire panic, if there is sufficient political will to promote the retraining of workers whose positions are being rendered obsolete. Business process automation (BPA) is the technology-enabled automation of complex business processes. It can help to streamline a business for simplicity, achieve digital transformation, increase service quality, improve service delivery or contain costs.
BPA consists of integrating applications, restructuring labor resources and using software applications throughout the organization. Robotic process automation (RPA; or RPAAI for self-guided RPA 2.0) is an emerging field within BPA and uses AI. BPAs can be implemented in a number of business areas including marketing, sales and workflow…
Related contents:
- The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era.
- The Changing Nature of Work
- How Robots Caused Brexit and the Rise of Donald Trump”.
- Robots for Trump: Did automation swing the US election?”.
- The lesson of Trump and Brexit: a society too complex for its people risks everything | John Harris”.
- Will robots and AI take your job? The economic and political consequences of automation”.
- People are lost’: Voters in France’s ‘Trumplands’ look to far right”.
- Transfer Of Islamic Technology To The West, Part II: Transmission Of Islamic Engineering Archived
- Soft variable-structure controls: a survey”
- “Charting the Globe and Tracking the Heavens”.
- Adaptive Control Processes: A Guided Tour.
- The Ascent of Man.
- The Weaver’s Knot: The Contradictions of Class Struggle and Family Solidarity in Western France, 1750–1914.
- Automation and Society.
- A course of lectures on the Steam Engine, delivered before the Members of the London Mechanics’ Institution … To which is subjoined, a copy of the rare … work on Steam Navigation, originally published by J. Hulls in 1737. Illustrated by … engravings”.
- Transactions of the Society Instituted at London for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce”.
- Dusseldorf Exhibition of Automation and Instruments”
- Logic Designer’s Handbook: Circuits and Systems
- The Programmable Logic Controller: its prehistory, emergence and application
- Mechanization in Industry, National Bureau of Economic Research
- “The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Designates the Owens “AR” Bottle Machine as an International Historic Engineering Landmark”.
Marketing Programs You May Like:
