Guest Work • Jan 22, 2017 •
By Associate Professor Colin Gavaghan, Director of the New Zealand Law Foundation Centre for Law and Policy in Emerging Technologies, University of Otago The European Parliament’s Draft Report on Robotics has certainly captured the public imagination, and it’s easy to see why. Proposals about ‘smart robots,’ ‘robot killswitches’ and ‘electronic persons’ perfectly capture the zeitgeist, where talk of … Read More
Paul Walker • Sep 22, 2016 •
A common argument you see with regard to computers and employment is that computer automation leads to major job losses. James Bessen deals with this issue in a new column at VoxEU.org. A modern version of the Luddite story. Bessen argues that this line of argument, however, ignores the dynamic economic responses that involve both changing … Read More
Robert Hickson • May 16, 2016 •
There are four narratives about how increasing automation of manual and cognitive tasks will affect employment: Many people will no longer have paid employment, and will depend on government assistance. Many people will no longer have paid employment, but automation will create highly productive and equitable economies that enable people to pursue their own creative and social endeavours. As in … Read More
Robert Hickson • Sep 09, 2015 •
Following on from my last post about robots, evolution, and metaphors, the Journal of Economic Perspectives has, for a non-economist, a surprisingly good pair of other articles in the same issue. Both Mokyr et al. and Autor provide good historical perspectives on how economists and others have a poor track record of predicting future … Read More