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Prematurely accelerating the implementation of fully autonomous trucking (no driver in the cab) seems like an idea that could be fraught with risk. While driverless long-haul trucks have the potential to increase economic productivity by enabling more cost-effective transport of goods, the technology is not yet ready for prime time. There is growing pressure, however, to make it a reality sooner rather than later – particularly as long-distance trucking faces a worsening driver shortage. At the same time, highway infrastructure in many parts of the country is clearly inadequate even for today’s traffic, let alone a mixed bag of driven...

Speaking with Wired editor-in-chief Scott Dadich and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito in a recent interview, President Barack Obama reaffirmed his belief that universal basic income would be harder to ignore in the coming decades. UBI is a system of wealth distribution in which the government provides everyone with some money, regardless of income. The money comes with no strings attached. People can use it however they choose, whether to repair a leaky roof or to go on vacation. Advocates say the system is a smart and straightforward way to lift people out of poverty. A growing body of...

Anyone who pays any attention knows that something unusual is happening to employment. Good full time jobs are disappearing, being replaced by lower paying and part time jobs. Experts and especially politicians have explanations and excuses: Offshoring to lower labor countries, excessive rules and regulations, illegal aliens, lack of education in the workforce…. The list goes on and on. What I rarely hear: automation. When most people hear “automation,” they think “robots.” Most robots are dedicated and expensive and don’t replace that many people. “Automation” or computer control is what gets the majority of the jobs, and it is not...

More than 70 percent of manufacturing jobs and more than half of jobs involving data collection might be rendered obsolete by automation and robots, according to a report from McKinsey & Company. One study estimated up to 80 percent of current jobs may be threatened by automation, which could become a critical economic issue for policy makers and global leaders in the coming decades. While Americans celebrate Labor Day weekend, it is a good time to contemplate the rise in artificial intelligence and how it can threaten jobs in all types of industries....

Investors in Cambodia’s garment industry are increasingly purchasing modern equipment as they look to produce higher value-added products to compete in the international market and counter rising labour costs, an industry insider said yesterday. Ly Tek Heng, operation manager at the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), said rising factory worker wages were thinning margins on the production of low-value garments and footwear in the face of fierce global competition.

The Association for Vertical Farming aims to create the first sustainability standard for towering indoor food systems From shipping containers-turned-micro farms to fruit-picking robots, the wide world of agriculture techis attracting attention and investor dollars as increasingly urgent concerns about food scarcity come into focus. Amid a wave of in-field technology, food data analytics and experimental urban agriculture, the particularly futuristic field of vertical farming is attracting entrants including industrial incumbents such as Fujitsu and upstarts such as AeroFarms, City Farm and Green Sense. As ag tech blooms, attracting a total $4.6 billion in investment during 2015, the nonprofit Association...

Two guys from Canada have come up with a new way for everyone from small indoor growers to large-scale vertical farmers to easily automate their operations. Their system's called Motorleaf and it collects data about your plants and then instructs your existing grow equipment to adjust to the crop’s needs. Think of it as the Nest for your indoor farm. In the summer of 2015, Ramen Dutta began tinkering around with a way to more easily care for his small indoor hobby farm. Although he had a degree in agricultural engineering, he had been working in IT and created an...

Robin Chase and Martin Ford explain why at a White House roundtable. Automation is going to make universal basic income a necessity sooner rather than later, a White House panel discussed today. Technology entrepreneur and Zipcar founder Robin Chase and author Martin Ford (Rise of the Robots) today during a Facebook Live discussion with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. “We need to start thinking about universal basic income,” Chase said, referring to the concept of a base-level of income each person would get just for being alive. “If people had that platform, that basic minimum, we could be...

The fast-food chain has plans to replace some workers with the touch-screen technology in an effort to save on labor costs. By the end of the year, thousands of Wendy’s locations across the country will be offered the kiosks, while franchise-operated stores will have the option of whether to use the technology. ... This year, minimum-wage rose to $10 an hour in California and will gradually rise to $15. Wendy’s president and chief financial officer, told Investor’s Business Daily that labor costs have gone to five to six percent in the past year. ... On social media, there were mixed...

Beware the $15 minimum wage for menial labor — it’ll eventually come back to bite you in the hindquarters. As wages for fast-food workers continue to spiral upwards, hamburger chain Wendy’s is fast-replacing human workers with automation. The company announced this week that by the second half of the year, ordering will be available through the use of self-service kiosks throughout its entire 6,000 locations, according to Investors Business Daily. It will be up to each franchisee whether to use the new technology or to stick with the old system. Wendy’s President Todd Penegor observed that some locations have already...

Investor’s Business Daily reported Wednesday that fast food chain Wendy’s will be expanding the use of self-service kiosks in response to the rising minimum wage: Wendy’s said that self-service ordering kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year as minimum wage hikes and a tight labor market push up wages. It will be up to franchisees whether to deploy the labor-saving technology, but Wendy’s President Todd Penegor did note that some franchise locations have been raising prices to offset wage hikes Other fast food chains are also experimenting with self-service kiosks. McDonalds...

Students of Austrian business cycle theory are familiar with the term malinvestment. A malinvestment is any poor use of resources or capital, commonly made in response to bad policy (usually artificially low interest rates and/or unsustainable increases in the monetary supply). The dot-com bubble that popped in 2001? The housing bubble that similarly burst in 2008? Those were classic examples of malinvestment.With this article, I'd like to introduce a related term: malincentive. While not part of the official economic lexicon, I consider a 'malincentive' a useful word to describe any promise of short-term gain whose long-term costs outweigh any...

A little while back we told you about how the CEO of Hardees/Carl’s Jr. was thinking about replacing employees with machines thanks to the ridiculous minimum wage hike to $15.Well, it appears he has done it.It was only a matter of time before this started to happen and you can expect to see more of this in the future.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is suggesting that mechanization is the answer to the labor needs of farmers who lose their access to illegal immigrants. During a CNN town hall Tuesday night, a Wisconsin dairy farmer told the GOP presidential candidate that his industry can't find enough American-born workers and that the only people “willing to do this hard work are Latino immigrants.” Join Farm Bureau and make YOUR VOICE stand out. Cruz didn't answer the question as it pertained to dairy producers specifically but instead responded by citing a Wall Street Journal article about an Arizona pepper grower who was...

Consumer preferences, reduced technology costs and government policies that increase labor costs are driving a trend toward automation in the restaurant business. If you make something more convenient and less expensive, it tends to catch on. As recently as the 1960s, gas-station employees would rush to fill your car’s tank, wash the windows, check the oil and put air in the tires. Telephone operators made your long-distance calls and bank tellers cashed your checks. Those jobs now are either gone or greatly diminished. Today, we reduce jobs whenever we shop on Amazon instead of our local retail outlet, use an...

A recent study by the Oxford Martin School and Citi, with OECD data from the World Bank, found that an average of 57 percent of workers around the world are at risk of being replaced by automation. The study's authors do recognize, however, that not all of these jobs will be automated. They explain that "a job is considered to be 'exposed to automation' or 'automatable' if the tasks it entails allows the work to be performed by a computer, even if a job is not actually automated." The jobs in question are mainly low-skilled positions, including jobs in transportation...

We recently looked at how the “Fight for 15” had impacted employment in Seattle, with job numbers inside the affected zone plummeting as hiring spiked in the suburbs where wages and associated labor costs remained at relatively normal levels. So what can the employers who are hit with these higher costs do when their prices are driven to above competitive levels? One unfortunate but completely predictable choice for lower skill positions is to replace them with high tech, automated options. That’s the path that Andy Puzder, CEO of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, is considering after a recent visit to...

Artificial intelligence is poised to automate lots of service jobs. The White House has estimated there's an 83% chance that someone making less than $20 a hour will eventually lose their job to a computer. That means gigs like customer-service rep could soon be extinct. But it's not just low-paying positions that will get replaced. AI also could cause high-earning (like top 5% of American salaries) jobs to disappear. Fast. That's the theme of New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper's new feature, "The Robots Are Coming for Wall Street." The piece is framed around Daniel Nadler, the founder of Kensho,...

Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders thinks he can wave a magic government wand, impose lots of new taxes and government programs and make the world grand. Reality has another notion. Take the minimum wage. Bernie says he'll raise it to $15 an hour, more than doubling it. If I worked at a fast-food restaurant for minimum wage, Bernie would get my vote. But the problem is, I'd likely never see $15 an hour as a fast-food employee because my entry-level job might be taken over by a robot. According to the Brisbane Times, robots are expected to replace half of...

As cities along the east coast finally finish digging their way out of last weekend's historic snowstorm, drivers braving the streets have to contend with icy conditions, snowbanks along the curb and other hazards they would probably rather avoid if they could help it. Enter the self-driving car, which someday may alleviate that anxiety. But although the technology appears to work well in dry, sunny weather, those are just the best-case scenarios. The real test for autonomous vehicles will be when the roads are wet or even icy and invisible to the computerized eye. What then?