Following the innovations of Turing and Lovelace, the advancement of intelligent machines picks up speed from the 1950s into the 1970s in large part to three developments: Turing’s work, Bertrand Russell’s propositional logic and Charles Sherrington’s theory of neural synapses...

The notion of what constitutes intelligence and therefore what constitutes an intelligent machine has been widely debated throughout the history of Western thought. Descartes’ mind-body dualism, Marx’s humanist distinction between the intentionality of an architect versus the functionality of bee, and Allen Newell and Herbert Simon’s ‘Physical Symbol System’ hypothesis, which argued that any representational system “has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action”, are just a few examples...

Fifty years after the first computer network was connected, most experts say digital life will mostly change humans’ existence for the better over the next 50 years. However, they warn this will happen only if people embrace reforms allowing better cooperation, security, basic rights and economic fairness

Artificial intelligence (AI) is “summoning the demon,” Elon Muskwarned, continuing a great tradition of fearful warnings about new technology. In the 16th century, the Vicar of Croyden warned how Gutenberg’s demonic press would destroy the faith: “’We must root out printing or printing will root us out,’ the Vicar told his flock.”(...) As evidenced by Musk’s concerns as well as those of other prominent individuals, there are many fears that AI will, among other things, impoverish people, invade their privacy, lead to all-out surveillance, and eventually control humanity....

The American AI Initiative is guided by five principles, which include (in summarized form), the following: 1. Driving technological breakthroughs, 2. Driving the development of appropriate technical standards, 3. Training workers with the skills to develop and apply AI technologies, 4. Protecting American values including civil liberties and privacy and fostering public trust and confidence in AI technologies, 5. Protecting US technological advantage in AI, while promoting an international environment that supports innovation.

Economic Note showing that to make the most of the economic opportunity AI represents, several important structural reforms should be undertaken.

This paper examines the nature and prospects of robotics and associated production technologies, reviews the literature on their impact on spatial dynamics, reviews recent data on robotic adoption, including controlling for robot adoption rates by domestic worker compensation rates, and speculates on future trends in the spatial distribution of manufacturing.

Since June 2019, we’ve been exploring new social safety nets for gig workers through our Better Work programme. It’s been an interesting ride, taking in Gladstone pottery in Stoke-on-Trent, doppelgangers and disco-balls in Copenhagen and all corners of the gig economy.

The future of work creates anxiety: if in the past each generation could aspire to better job opportunities, today the specter of technological unemployment is advancing, Is there really a risk of mass technological unemployment?

Comment travaillera-t-on dans l’usine du futur ? Quel sera le rôle des opérateurs de production ? Comment ceux-ci seront-ils formés pour maîtriser les nouvelles compétences requises ? Comment les usines adapteront-elles leur organisation ? Va t-on vers un design du travail ?Ce document est une version simplifiée de la note co-éditée par la Chaire FIT2 Mines ParisTech et La Fabrique de l’industrie “Organisation et compétences dans l’usine du futur”, déjà disponible sur notre site.À partir des témoignages d’une vingtaine de dirigeants et d’experts, ce livret identifie et analyse des pratiques inspirantes d’entreprises manufacturières de tailles variées en matière d’organisation du travail et de gestion des compétences...

Qui a peur de l'automatisation et que veulent-ils que les politiciens fassent à ce sujet? Ce rapport trouve une corrélation entre la crainte des Canadiens de perdre leur emploi du fait de l’automatisation et les points de vue populiste et nativiste, mais aussi que les Canadiens favorisent les approches politiques traditionnelles du gouvernement en matière de perturbation de l’emploi, telles que la reconversion professionnelle, plutôt que des mesures radicales telles que la réduction de l’immigration...

What can we do about workers living paycheque to paycheque, with the rise of the gig economy and future changes to work? Emerging leaders from the Banff Forum gathered and came up with a holistic set of policy measures for improving the well-being of workers and to help prevent economic marginalization as work changes.

Courts and legislatures in Canada and around the world are deciding whether your Lyft driver is an independent contractor or an employee. The classification is a big deal. This paper surveys the current state of the gig economy and how courts, tribunals and legislatures in North America and the UK are tackling the issue of employment classification.

Le Sénat de Californie a adopté le mardi 10 septembre 2019 la loi dite "Uber" ou Assembly Bill 5, aux termes de laquelle les travailleurs des plateformes en Californie vont devenir des salariés. Afin de comprendre l’objectif et la portée de cette loi, l’Institut Montaigne a sollicité Laëtitia Vitaud, co-présidente du rapport Travailleurs des plateformes : liberté oui, protection aussi, auteure du livre Le Labeur à l'ouvrage (Calmann-Lévy, 2019), présidente de Cadre Noir Ltd et enseignante à Sciences Po et Paris Dauphine.

California state legislators embarked last week on the single most important regulatory misadventure this country has seen in many decades, seeking to redefine the obscure but critical legal distinction between an employee and an independent contractor. The employment relationship today is subject to massive regulation that is inapplicable to the independent contractor, who pretty much works on his or her own...

This report is the first step in moving the United States to a system that accounts for workers' needs for lifelong learning, employers' continuously changing workforce requirements, rapid and often disruptive changes in technology, and the ever-evolving nature of work. This publication should be of interest to educators, business leaders, policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders who are engaged in issues relating to workforce education and training and the future of work.

Workers today face major worries about the potential for advances in automation and artificial intelligence, on top of long-standing concerns about trade and globalization. Indeed, despite a ten-year-long economic expansion and a historically low unemployment rate, one in ten U.S. workers think that they are likely to be laid off in 2019...

Tech firms are regularly and pejoratively referred to as “monopolies”—implying that their dominance harms consumers. Economists find the certainty of such pronouncements troubling.

The Ghent system—an arrangement whereby trade unions help deliver government-supported unemployment insurance—exists in its truest form only in a handful of countries, including Sweden, Belgium, and Denmark. However, the United States has a number of Ghent-like policies where unions deliver or help people access governmental benefits—including workforce training, retirement benefits, and enforcement of workplace laws. Expanding upon these models would increase union membership and improve the quality of public programs in the United States...

Backstage at the Bruegel Annual Meetings, Giuseppe Porcaro talks with J. Scott Marcus on AI, robots and platform workers.

Many nations are racing to achieve a global innovation advantage in artificial intelligence (AI) because they understand that AI is a foundational technology that can boost competitiveness, increase productivity, protect national security, and help solve societal challenges. This report compares China, the European Union, and the United States in terms of their relative standing in the AI economy by examining six categories of metrics—talent, research, development, adoption, data, and hardware. The European Union has the talent to compete with the United States and China. Indeed, it has more AI researchers than its peers, and typically produces the most research as well. However, there is a disconnect between the amount of AI talent in the EU and its commercial AI adoption and funding.

The future of work in America: People and places, today and tomorrow analyzes more than 3,000 US counties and 315 cities and finds they are on sharply different paths. Automation is not happening in a vacuum, and the health of local economies today will affect their ability to adapt and thrive in the face of the changes that lie ahead.The trends outlined in this report could widen existing disparities between high-growth cities and struggling rural areas, and between high-wage workers and everyone else. But this is not a foregone conclusion. The United States can improve outcomes nationwide by connecting displaced workers with new opportunities, equipping people with the skills they need to succeed, revitalizing distressed areas, and supporting workers in transition. Returning to more inclusive growth will require the combined energy and ingenuity of business leaders, policy makers, educators, and nonprofits across the country.

The fourth industrial revolution is bringing about numerous challenges and opportunities. This column summarises selected takeaways from a recent ECB conference which brought together leading minds from academia, institutions and the private sector on the expected effects of digitalisation on the economy, including labour markets, productivity, investment and inflation, and possible implications for monetary policy.

Work is a key factor affecting people’s health, with issues such as fair pay, job security, and working conditions all impacting on how well people are able to live a healthy life. Indeed, the Health Foundation’s Young people’s future health inquiry has identified secure and rewarding work as a one of the key building blocks needed for a healthy life. The increased use of automation in the workplace in future has major implications for both the amount of work available and the nature of work people do. How these changes will affect people’s health has yet to be fully explored. This blog outlines some big questions about how automation may affect the health of the UK population.

Autonomy1Working to LabourIntroductionMost attention to self-branding has focussed on the theoretical implications of the term. Some have emphasised that having a brand relies on first modelling the worker as a firm. Others have focussed on worker responses to self-branding discourse and the ways that such responses offer insight into the worker’s relation to labour market uncertainty. However, little attention has so far been paid to the discourse itself. This report analyses the discourse as it appears in personal-brand management and self-help texts, as well as recent online advice offered in articles featuring in The Guardian and the Huffington Post.

Alors que la loi d’orientation des mobilités (LOM) se borne à proposer aux plateformes numériques de se doter d’une charte facultative de responsabilité sociale, les think tanks (Institut Montaigne, Terra Nova) ayant abordé le sujet demeurent pour le moment prisonnier d’une optique résolument libérale.Aurélia Andreu, directrice des ressources humaines et adjointe au chef de pôle Économie de L’Hétairie, et Vincent Duchaussoy, chef du pôle Économie de L’Hétairie et Secrétaire national du PS en charge du Travail et du Dialogue sociale, plaident au contraire pour une régulation des pratiques de ces nouveaux acteurs du numérique et de l’économie des services.

The manufacturing industry has been a significant part of the U.S. economy for decades, but it now faces critical challenges with the emergence of automation and other technologies. Recently, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted the eighth annual John Hazen White Forum on Public Policy to discuss the future of manufacturing, as well as a new Brookings survey on public attitudes toward the industry in the U.S.

The prospect of losing our jobs to automation may keep us up at night and change our politics, but there are other factors at play, too. Here are five key challenges and some smart policy responses that emerged at the inaugural Brave New Work conference.

One of the most disconcerting features of today’s polarized labor market is its stark “U-shape,” by which high-pay and low-pay occupational groups (like business-finance and food service, respectively) expand as a share of the national workforce, while middle-pay/middle-skill occupations (like sales and production) shrink...

Artificial intelligence and emerging technologies have enabled automation to scale and pose legitimate workforce threats. However, these innovations are creating new jobs and recreating old ones that together shape the building blocks of a future workforce. This dynamic opportunity engine is driven in large part by a fast expanding innovation ecosystem that combines a bevy of thriving, scaling, and nascent startups and their emerging workforce needs...

As our global economy has grown more technological, connected, and complex, fears continue to loom about an economic future wherein our workers are rendered obsolete—whether by new products and industries, new forms of automation, or more competitive labor forces across the globe...

Since the 1980s, labour compensation relative to aggregate output has been on an inexorable downward trend across major developed economies. This column deploys a simple accounting technology to tease out the driving factors behind this, focusing on the US. The findings highlight the key role of under-appreciated factors, including supercycles and boom-bust effects and rising depreciation. The analysis suggests that while the effect of some factors may dampen or reverse, others will likely continue at an uncertain pace.

After 3 years of surveys carried in 13 European countries, it is clear that platform work is here to stay, and even growing at a rapid pace. It has become a way to gain additional income for many people across Europe, with particularly high levels in European countries where salaries are low.At the same time, we see digital management practices we often associate with platform work, such as rating systems and the online logging of work hours, spreading to conventional forms of employment.Hence, the ‘platform dynamic’ that involves precarious work, reduced worker autonomy, and flexibility for the employer, not the worker, is gaining prominence in European labour markets. In other words, we see the 'platformisation of work'. Luckily, this is not an inevitable feature of platform technology. At the end, the authors stimulate thinking about platform applications that do not exploit workers and support public policy goals.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, with artificial intelligence (AI) as one of its principal drivers, promises big changes. AI automation is expected to lead to, among other things, large disruptions in the labour market. A 2013 Oxford study estimated that almost half of employment in the US is at risk of computerization. Similarly, a 2017 McKinsey report suggests that by 2030 one-third of work activities could be displaced by automation. Some countries, industries and professions are more susceptible to these risks, which means these changes will lead to redistributive effects. That is, AI is expected to lead to increased economic inequality both across and within countries...

Earlier this year, the Bank of Canada’s Canadian Economic Analysis Department released the results of a recent survey of households on the size and characteristics of informal work — also known as “gig” work — in Canada. About 30 percent of respondents said that they currently participate in some kind of informal work. Of those respondents, some engaged in informal work for a few hours a week, while others considered it their primary occupation. The study showed that the highest rate of participation in informal work was among youth (58 percent)...

The upset election victory of Donald Trump in 2016 resulted from the unsettling social and economic changes in American society, not least the anxiety over job losses caused by technology and international trade competition. But other factors such as race, education, age, and rising diversity among voters also contributed to a shift by some white voters toward Trump, especially in pivotal industrial states...

In the United States, there is currently a dichotomy: employers are unable to fill manufacturing jobs, and yet there are hundreds of thousands of manufacturing workers looking for jobs. How can this be? Many point to a skills deficit across the U.S. workforce. Much like other aspects of daily life and the economy, technology is changing the way U.S. based companies manufacture goods for the global market. As technology permeates and alters the manufacturing industry, it has created a massive boost in manufacturing productivity, while simultaneously requiring fewer workers to maintain and increase production. For those still employed in the manufacturing sector, they also need to be better equipped with the skills to handle the new demands such advanced technology and techniques impose. This report analyzes different workforce development programs for advanced manufacturing across the nation, seeking to better understand what is required to educate and retrain the worker of the future.

The American education system and labor market are heavily biased toward college graduates. High schools function predominantly as college-prep academies, state and federal governments subsidize higher education by more than $150 billion annually, and those with the academic aptitude to succeed on a college pathway are likely to find their skills in higher demand and applicable to higher-paying jobs.However, for many Americans—perhaps even the majority, who do not earn even a community-college degree—and for many career paths, positions that combine immediate on-the-job experience with employer-sponsored training offer the best opportunity to enter the workforce and build valuable skills. Such positions receive little to no public support, and employers often have little incentive to create them. A neutral approach for public policy toward workforce preparation would recognize that employers, not universities, often provide the most socially valuable form of training and would redirect public resources accordingly...

The health of the U.S. manufacturing sector is of ongoing interest to Congress. Numerous bills aimed at promoting manufacturing are introduced in each Congress, often with the stated goal of creating jobs. Implicit in many of these bills is the assumption that the manufacturing sector is uniquely able to provide well-paid employment for workers who have not pursued education beyond high school...

During the first quarter of 2019, the hype about Uber and Lyft’s race to become public companies initiated discussions on everything from Uber’s whopping $120 billion and Lyft’s $24 billion pre-IPO valuation to the fact that both companies are still deeply unprofitable. Several months into being public companies, both have experienced rollercoaster stock prices and lower valuations: post-IPO, the market values Uber at approximately $74 billion and Lyft at roughly $18 billion. The turbulence apparently did not stop other IPO hopefuls: Postmates has filed for an IPO and is exploring other exit strategies, whereas Airbnb is contemplating its own public floating. Throughout the period, little attention has been paid to how these IPOs could affect tax collection for governments, given the complex tax rules governing drivers and other workers in the rapidly evolving sharing economy...

On Wednesday 17th July, the Commission on Workers and Technology – a two-year research project established by the Fabian Society and Community trade union – hosted a fascinating in-conversation event with speakers Carolyn Fairbairn (director general, CBI) and Frances O’Grady (general secretary, TUC). The discussion was chaired by Yvette Cooper MP, who also chairs the Commission.Carolyn Fairbairn and Frances O’Grady set out their thoughts on technology change and the future of work before taking a range of thought-provoking questions from Yvette Cooper and members of the audience. We’ve picked out six key points from the discussion.

Spécialiste reconnu de l’économie internationale, Richard Baldwin a consacré son dernier ouvrage[1] à l’avenir de l’emploi sous les effets de la globalisation et de la digitalisation. L’auteur voit des télétravailleurs lointains modiquement rémunérés (les télémigrants) et des robots se substituer, dans nos sociétés, à de nombreux cols blancs aujourd’hui épargnés par la concurrence transfrontalière et l’automatisation. Les défis considérables et inédits posés par ces développements ne paraissent pas insurmontables. Des remaniements notables des politiques du travail et de formation seront toutefois indispensables pour limiter la casse sociale et saisir les chances de la connectivité et de l’électronique ubiquitaires...

Women will need to make far more significant transitions compared to men and may find it more difficult to capture new opportunities because of the persistent barriers they face, write Anu Madgavkar, Mekala Krishnan, and Kweilin Ellingrud in Harvard Business Review.

Economic insecurity is a long-standing problem in the United States, and millions today are struggling to get by. Around the country, approximately 80 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and 40 percent of Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency (Hayes 2017; “Report on the Economic Well-Being of US Households in 2017” 2018). The median annual wage per household today, approximately $50,000 a year, is approximately the same as it was in the 1970s when accounting for inflation (Vo 2012; Desilver 2018). While discussions about the future of work heat up, it is important to recognize that the challenges facing workers today—and in the future—are not new. Insecure, precarious work is increasingly the norm across many sectors of the 21st century economy.

Axios kicked off 2019 with a headline proclaiming: “AI expert warns automation could take 40% of jobs by 2035.” This is the baseline consensus according to Axios future editor Steve LeVine. But is it accurate? And if it is, how can workers and students today prepare? To answer these questions, and many more, we interviewed Brent Orrell.

-Researchers from the University of Oxford and other institutions have sought to predict how many jobs will be displaced by artificial intelligence (AI), but their results have varied widely, from 9 to 47 percent.-Variations in methodology are responsible for the wide range, with one major difference being whether the researchers believed that the entire occupation would be automated or just a specific task.-These studies ultimately say very little about the changing structure of work and even less about the appropriate policy responses; policymakers should proceed with caution.

-France, Germany, and Italy plan to adopt national and European goals on AI, albeit for different reasons.-France’s AI strategy appears to be driven by the conviction that, in addition to creating risks, AI presents opportunities for the economy and society.-In contrast, the German – and, to the extent that one can infer, Italian – approach to AI is markedly driven by fear of losing economic opportunities.-While the French strategy includes a focus on the military and security elements of AI, its German counterpart almost completely neglects this area.-The EU appears to be largely uninterested in AI’s geopolitical importance, but its member states can only influence the global development of AI if they act together.

The automation of production processes is an important topic on the policy agenda in high-wage countries, but evidence of the economic effects of automation at the firm level is limited. This column presents insights on automation from new survey data for Denmark. The findings reveal that variation in the adoption of automation technologies is high, the change in adoption over time is slow, and almost half of Danish manufacturing firms relied greatly on manual production processes in 2010. Increasing international competition from China is a driver for investments in automation.

Automation will produce significant productivity gains that will reshape specific sectors and occupations. These gains are likely to be recirculated, with jobs reallocated rather than eliminated, economic output increased, and new sources of wealth created. The problem is likely to be one of how income and wealth are distributed. Automation could create a ‘paradox of plenty’: society would be far richer in aggregate, but, for many individuals and communities, technological change could reinforce inequalities of power and reward.

In a new working paper, Roosevelt Fellow Brishen Rogers makes the case that automation is not a major threat to workers today, and that it will not likely be a major threat in the near future. However, he contends that existing labor laws allow companies to use new technology—specifically information technology—in ways that give them outsized power over their workers. Ultimately, Rogers argues that policymakers should expand the scope and stringency of companies’ duties toward their workers, and/or they should rewrite the rules in ways that enable workers to push back against the introduction of new workplace technologies.

Africa continues to face a major employment challenge: Put simply,countries are not creating enough jobs. By some estimates, the continent needs to create 15 million jobs annually to meet the demand of the burgeoning labor force. Many analysts are now arguing that the challenge of job creation might be exacerbated by the economic disruptions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. So, in light of new technologies, I recently examined the challenges to and opportunities for job creation that they present, and I recommend policies for how countries can maximize the benefits of digitization while limiting risks in a recent African Development Bank report, “Creating Decent Jobs: Strategies, Policies, and Instruments.”

New digital technologies are expected to take away many jobs. They will also create several new ones. However, to grasp these new opportunities, everyone must continuously learn new skills. “We will now have to move to a continuum of lifelong learning, which essentially means we have to be lifelong learners,” says Ravi Kumar, president at Infosys, the digital services firm.Kumar sees two big shifts on the jobs front. The first, he says, will be from repetitive tasks to non-repetitive tasks. And the second will be from problem-solving to problem-finding. In a conversation with Knowledge@Wharton in the company’s New York City offices, Kumar discusses how the emerging world of technology will shape the jobs of the future and what it means for individuals, industries and countries.

Western societies have exhibited a continuing worry that automation, particularly automation associated with artificial intelligence, will lead to massive unemployment and the impoverishment of large segments of society. In different epochs, technological change has triggered concerns and social protests. Those concerns date back to the early stages of the industrial revolution and the use of coal-fired weaving machines to automate textile manufacturing, and they continue through to the present-day and adoption of computerized algorithms that “learn” how to automate tasks through the use of data-driven “machine learning.”Western societies have exhibited a continuing worry that automation, particularly automation associated with artificial intelligence, will lead to massive unemployment and the impoverishment of large segments of society. In different epochs, technological change has triggered concerns and social protests. Those concerns date back to the early stages of the industrial revolution and the use of coal-fired weaving machines to automate textile manufacturing, and they continue through to the present-day and adoption of computerized algorithms that “learn” how to automate tasks through the use of data-driven “machine learning”...

On 26 June 2019, the EU’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG), consisting of fifty two experts drawn from industry, academia and civil society, published Policy and Investment Recommendations for Trustworthy Aritificial Intelligence. They set out the group’s broad vision for a regulatory and financial framework conducive to the development and deployment of trustworthy AI.The Recommendations reflect and expand on the three tenets of the European Commission’s AI strategy, Artificial Intelligence for Europe (25 April, 2018) and the seven key requirements for trustworthy AI listed in the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, (8 April 2019).

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is upending the nature of work as we know it. Policymakers are struggling to grapple with this future in the West, but for African countries—and developing countries generally—the outlook appears even more bleak.Advancing technology will narrow the traditional route to economic transformation through manufacturing. This is a matter of when, not if—many of these jobs as we know them will be displaced.Yet tech will transform Africa too, offering new avenues to leapfrog the old systems of the West. To achieve this, African governments, the international community and the tech community must come together to harness the power of the 4IR. If this does not happen now, a new tech inequality will further entrench the gap between the developed and developing world.

New York State Director of Workforce Development Madhuri Kommareddi discussed the state’s strategy to train the workforce for continued economic growth at the Rockefeller Institute in June, focusing on the challenges of filling jobs today while preparing for the workforce demands of the future.“With AI, with automation, with the gig economy, we’re seeing a fundamental restructuring of how jobs are being created,” she said. “This is a national problem, this is also a global problem”...

Automation refers to the substitution of technology for human labor. As tasks become automated, fewer people are required to produce a given amount of output each hour—in other words, each worker becomes more productive. That rising productivity is the mechanism by which workers’ wages rise over time and society as a whole becomes more prosperous. The same thing happens when a firm invests in training that allows each worker to produce more. No one says that training “destroys jobs”...

Technological advances in fields such as artificial intelligence and automation have the potential to fundamentally alter prevailing economic trends. While the effects of these changes are the subject of great debate in the developed world, less discussed has been how they will impact the developing world.Will they challenge traditional paths to development, removing rungs from a ladder such as growth through export led manufacturing, as automation allows firms to “reshore” production in high-wage countries? Will they offer new routes for development, leading to global value chains in professional services and other previously-localised jobs?This panel will explore what emerging technologies mean for both the traditional models of development and the future of job creation in developing countries.

An online survey of 2,235 UK residents between the ages of 16 and 75 was carried out 26th April and 1st May 2019by the University of Hertfordshire with fieldwork and data collection byIpsos MORI, funded in association with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and UNI Europa. This built on an earlier survey carried out between January 22ndand January 26th. 2016 of 2,238 adults aged 16-75 also by the University of Hertfordshire, with fieldwork carried out by Ipsos MORI and funding from FEPS and UNI Europa.

Le thème de l’économie de plateforme et de ses enjeux sociaux suscite depuisquelques années un intérêt académique et un débat social soutenu. Nombre d’études sont publiées sur ce thème, et pourtant le sujet demeure difficile à appréhender tant les données précises et fiables manquent — en particulier entermes de poids économique et de volume d’emploi — pour en saisir précisémentles contours. Autre difficulté : l’économie de plateforme rassemble sous une expression générique une grande diversité de modèles d’entreprise.(...) ce projet joint à l’approche juridique un cadre général d’analyse que l’on pourrait qualifier d’historico-prospectif, mettant en contexte l’évolution des rapports sociaux de production au prisme des évolutions technologiques. Cette approche complémentaire permet de sortir des débats stériles trop souvent réduits à des questions simplistes : les robots vont-ils « voler nos emplois » ? Les plateformes numériques vont-elles détruire nos modèles sociaux ?

Our purpose is to set out the best evidence of conditions, their causes and effects, and to provoke an informed and constructive dialogue as to what policies and practices would produce a fair, harmonious, and productive so-ciety. The objectives of policy ought to be to stimulate productivity and growth from technological innovation, realize the efficiencies of global rationaliza-tion of production and trade, and achieve an income distribution that pro-duces an equitable result in society...

Traditionally, boosting growth has been seen as the best way to create job opportunities and raise living standards. But governments should now look at this the other way around: by better equipping their citizens to navigate the world of work, countries can most effectively boost their economic growth and development...

An immense rise in automation by means of industrial robots has taken place. Figures from the International Federation of Robotics reveal that while automation was almost an unkown phenomenon in the 1970s, with fewer than 3000 industrial robots installed worldwide, the operational stock of robots is nowadays already approaching 2.5 million...

Thomas Farrar speaks to Terah Lyons, founding executive director of the Partnership on AI, about what artificial intelligence means for society and the labour market, and whether governments have the power or expertise to regulate it.

The age of automation, and on the near horizon, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies offer new job opportunities and avenues for economic advancement, but women face new challenges overlaid on long-established ones. Between 40 million and 160 million women globally may need to transition between occupations by 2030, often into higher-skilled roles. To weather this disruption, women (and men) need to be skilled, mobile, and tech-savvy, but women face pervasive barriers on each, and will need targeted support to move forward in the world of work.

Rapid and deep technological changes driven by the digital revolution, together with globalisation and demographic changes, are creating many new job opportunities but also new challenges. In particular, these transformations are contributing to the rise in non-standard forms of employment –self-employment, temporary work, and ‘independent contracting’...

Même si les travailleurs des plateformes ne sont que 200 000 en France, soit 0,8 % des actifs occupés, il convient de s’y intéresser rapidement tant les plateformes ont créé une nouvelle façon de trouver et d’exercer un travail et tant elles jouent déjà un rôle central pour certaines catégories de travailleurs. C’est pourquoi l’Institut Montaigne a engagé une enquête statistique inédite sur les coursiers à vélo (réalisée en ligne auprès de plus de 800 travailleurs de plateformes), 22 entretiens individuels ainsi que 3 focus groups, afin de comprendre les enjeux de ces nouvelles formes de travail, et proposer des solutions pour encourager un développement responsable des plateformes de travail à la demande, respectueux des intérêts des travailleurs et soutenable sur le long terme.

Current estimates suggest that over the coming decades, slower population growth and lower labor force participation will constrain the supply of labor in the U.S. The U.S. labor force will also become more diverse as immigration and fertility trends increase the size of minority populations...

The first analysis of the AI:NY series explored how artificial-intelligence-enabled automation will affect New York’s labor force in the coming years. The study found that 53 percent of jobs in New York could potentially be automated in coming years using technology available today.

The future of the Canadian economy holds opportunities for women but to capture them, women will need to successfully reskill and transition.

We are used to thinking about artificial intelligence (AI) in the future tense, speculating how technological developments in this area will affect us. But if we spend too much time trying to figure out what to expect in the future, we risk not seeing that AI and robotisation have already started transforming our daily lives.

The increased use of algorithms to automate decisions promises to speed up operations for private companies and governments alike. However, it also raises concerns about how algorithms arrive at their decisions, especially ones with negative consequences for individuals or society as a whole. Many algorithms draw inferences from existing data when making decisions, and are susceptible to magnifying existing biases when they receive unrepresentative data. To explore these issues, the Center for Technology Innovation hosted an event on May 22 at the Brookings Institution. The event featured a keynote speech by Cathy O’Neil, author of the book “Weapons of Math Destruction,” and a panel discussion with the authors of a new Brookings report titled “Algorithmic bias detection and mitigation: Best practices and policies to reduce consumer harms.”

Given the infinite variety and quantity of data that requires labeling and the ravenous appetite that all kinds of commercial entities have for that data, the big high-tech firms are turning to developing countries for educated but inexpensive labor. Across Asia and Africa, firms like Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Yahoo! are employing low-cost tech workers to do the work of labeling the world. These jobs typically pay between $3 and $6 per day which, as the author says, is “chump change” to Big Tech but often the best job on offer for workers in developing countries...

The grand committee, which held its inaugural meeting in the United Kingdom last year, is made up of politicians from Canada, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Ireland, Latvia and Singapore. This year, the committee members are joined by representatives from Estonia, Ecuador, Mexico, Morocco, and Trinidad and Tobago.Representatives of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and the Mozilla Foundation are all scheduled to appear before the committee. Top Facebook executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg have even been subpoenaed, although they have ignored the request to testify. Kevin Chan, head of public policy for Facebook Canada, will answer questions instead.The grand committee has already agreed to five principles, set out in a declaration signed last November...

Artificial intelligence promises economic growth as well as creating fear for those whose jobs it may replace. This column takes a wider approach to examining how AI and other technologies will affect citizens’ welfare beyond just their income. It argues that the new technologies are intrinsically neither good nor bad, it is how they are deployed and how the transition is crafted that conditions the welfare dynamics of societies.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) made headlines by calling for “taxing the robots” of the emergent digital economy. That followed her previous call for a 70% top marginal income-tax rate on the richest and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) plan for a 2% wealth tax on assets worth more than $50 million (and 3% on assets worth more than $1 billion)...By putting inequality front and center on the political agenda as the U.S. heads into the election season, Democratic politicians are trying to capture the populist zeitgeist.

Professor David Engstrom and law student Cristina Ceballos discuss artificial intelligence and whether it can help or hinder important decision making by the federal government?

In order for the UK to have informed policy decisions and look after its most vulnerable, there is aneed to understand fully the changes that are occurring, and could take place, in the world of work. These include socio-economic change, demographic trends, technology advancements, greater levels of globalisation, evolving skill demands and acultural shift among younger workers. Informed policy decisions should help ensure employment rates remain high and that no one is left behind, allowing the market mechanism to work properly and intervening where needed. Work is avital route out of poverty and central to future prosperity...

An era of autonomous robots and self-learning software is upon us. Many industrialized economies are being transformed by the increasing automation of work as countries enter the ​“second machine age” or the ​“fourth industrial revolution,” as the World Economic Foundation called it. Predictions vary on what automation will eventually mean for the future of work. The purpose of this discussion paper is not to argue that either of these two perspectives is the correct one, but rather to direct attention toward those particular factors that influence the uptake of automation technologies. There is a tendency in the current discourse on automation and the future of work to presuppose that impressive advances in hardware and software mean that widespread automation — and its consequences — are inevitable. Yet, technology alone is not deterministic of the future and advancements in robots and algorithms are not the sole drivers of automation. This discussion paper takes a more critical look at a number of social, regulatory, economic, and infrastructure and capital factors that are driving or inhibiting the automation revolution....

Cette note de prospective examine si les plates-formes de travail numériques doivent être traitées comme des agences d’emploi privé. Des plateformes comme LinkedIn sont généralement perçues par le grand public comme de simples réseaux sociaux. Toutefois, sous cet aspect avenant, elles agissent aussi comme un service d’emploi. Cet article se consacre de manière plus précise à l’un des principes centraux des normes internationales du travail relatives aux agences d’emploi, en vertu duquel les demandeurs d’emploi ne peuvent être tenus de supporter des honoraires ou des frais pour les services de recherche d’un emploi, à moins que ces honoraires ou frais n’aient fait l’objet d’une approbation d’une autorité compétente.

Mireille Bruyère sur le travail

Alors que les difficultés de recrutement d’emplois qualifiés risquent de s’accentuer avec la diffusion des technologies et de l’intelligence artificielle, les entreprises peuvent améliorer l’appariement entre leurs besoins de compétences et celles détenues par les individus.

Comment rendre accessible le code du travail ? Comment penser un code du travail du futur, en utilisant tout le potentiel des nouvelles technologies ? En partenariat avec Matrice, programme d’innovation et d’entrepreunariat créé à l’École 42, la Fondation Jean-Jaurès a reçu des étudiants qui ont présenté leurs idées d’un nouveau code de travail, aux côtés notamment de Myriam El Khomri.