Robert Hickson • Sep 09, 2019 •
A quarter of a century ago, when I thought my future was in science, automation and the idea of “big data” had just arrived for genetics. Automated sequencing, mathematical models, algorithms. Similar innovations spread to others areas of biology through things like better sensors, imaging systems, smarter radio tags for wildlife, data-loggers, and the like. Wet labs … Read More
Guest Author • Sep 09, 2019 •
Judy Kavanagh Many, many things affect whether a firm will adopt a technology, and whether this adoption will be successful. I got a sense of this at a recent family gathering, where I met up with Michael. Michael’s a Hutt boy who, with a friend, set up an online nuts and bolts distribution company in Brisbane. The thing with … Read More
Guest Author • Aug 16, 2019 •
Nik Green Technological progress need not eliminate jobs; automation can allow new and expanded worthwhile activities. Technology can have many different effects on the labour market – it can replace human labour, it can make workers more productive, it can increase the overall demand for workers, and it can create demand for new skills, roles and tasks. Technological progress can … Read More
Guest Author • Aug 01, 2019 •
Judy Kavanagh Robots are going to take our jobs, right? Well, maybe. The available evidence provides conflicting results: In the US, one new robot reduces employment by 5.6 workers and local wages by about 0.5% according to estimates in Daron Acemoglu & Pascual Restrepo’s much cited 2017 paper. In Germany, more robots decrease employment in the manufacturing sector but increase … Read More
Guest Author • Jul 31, 2019 •
Judy Kavanagh Denmark is a lot like us. A small country and with an open economy and lots of fiords and sounds. (Dave tells me fiords and sounds are different – a sound is formed by the sea flooding a river valley whereas a fiord is where a valley has been carved out by a … Read More
Dave Heatley • Jul 17, 2019 •
The nice thing about forecasts is that you have so many to choose from.1 For the weather, you can choose between MetService, metvuw, yr, the Weather Channel and many others. It’s best if they agree to guarantee a perfect day in the mountains… … Read More
Dave Heatley • Jul 01, 2019 •
“Machines take jobs” cry the headlines. A journalist friend once said the media only publish two stories: “it’s that terrible” and “isn’t that wonderful”. “Machines take jobs” is clearly “terrible”. But its logical opposite, “machines create jobs”, is unlikely to make the grade as “wonderful”. Such selection effects mean that bad news crowds out the good. Today I’m going to … Read More
Dave Heatley • Jun 28, 2019 •
Can automation tech keep improving at the current rate? First, how good is today’s AI-enabled software? There is no question that it is a lot better at specific tasks than its predecessors. These tasks are more than toys – they include classifying photos, language translation, speech recognition and text synthesis. My photo library has lived on … Read More
Dave Heatley • Jun 24, 2019 •
Biotech. Nanotech. Cleantech. Gene tech. Cloud computing tech. Successive waves of technological change are the norm for those of us in the developed world. These waves typically rise, peak and ebb while barely raising a concern about wider labour market effects. Further, it seems strange to be worrying about unemployment – technologically induced or otherwise – when, according to The … Read More
Robert Hickson • Jun 20, 2019 •
No one seems to have much trouble with robots fighting each other – RobotBattles, BattleBots. People pay good money too to watch movies of good gals and guys with guns, metal presses, and vats of molten metal killing bad bots. We are now also seeing … Read More