Robots are usually discussed as a threat to jobs in developed countries, but they could have an even more destructive effect on the developing world. A recent article in The Financial Times describes how automation could destroy one of the tried-and-tested routes of economic growth, in which a country’s labor force moves from farms to factories, creating cheap goods for export. We rightly think of factory work as dangerous, monotonous, and exploitative, but that doesn’t meant...

Wendy's may sell "old-fashioned hamburgers," but the fast food chain is about to start getting them to customers in a newfangled way. Citing concerns about the rising cost of labor, Wendy's President Todd Penegor told Investor's Business Daily (IBD) about plans to automate the ordering process in company restaurants. Employees who once took orders from customers will be replaced by self-service kiosks. Mobile ordering and payment apps will also cut down on employee hours.

As fast-food workers across the country vie for $15 per hour wages, many business owners have already begun to take humans out of the picture. “I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry -- it’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries -- it’s nonsense and it’s very destructive and it’s inflationary...

Apple and Samsung supplier Foxconn has reportedly replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots. One factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots", a government official told the South China Morning Post. Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: "More companies are likely to follow suit." China is investing heavily in a robot workforce.

Driverless vehicles "will make what happened in the steel or auto industries look tiny," says the former chief of one of America's largest unions. It was the free pizza that led Andy Stern to his first union meeting, back when he was working as a welfare caseworker in the 1970’s. He rose fast through the ranks, eventually claiming one of the most powerful positions in the labor movement: President of the 2.2-million member Service Employees International Union.

I’m a big believer in capitalism today. We live in a world where not everyone’s effort is equal. Yes, capitalism is grossly unfair in some parts — based on your birth, inheritance and a range of other factors. But it’s also one of the only systems we have the accounts for the effort you put in to produce things that other people want to use. And yet, I can also see an end. Capitalism’s greatest threat is it’s own progress. The technology capitalism has created is systematically undermining it. Which is why we may have to rethink it.

CLSA, WEF, and Citi have all been mulling what to work as robotics and automation advance. Will be have more leisure time or more poverty and inequality?

Unions fight for the working man and act as a counterbalance to the power of the capitalists. And there’s no reason why someone should not be able to avail themselves of such union protections–the right of association is as important a freedom as the right to free speech is. However, it’s also true that unions, just like any other form of human organization, can become stultified. They can become the problem rather than the solution to anything.

Will automation kill the middle class—and democracy with it? By Lee Drutman and Yascha Mounk. (July 4, 2016)

Although Patrick Tresset still regards himself an artist, he no longer paints. He still produces portraits, but doesn’t draw them with his hands. Tresset instead has turned to robotics, creating a computational system that is “artistic, expressive, and obsessive” in its ability to draw, reports Make. More than just a copy machine, Tresset’s robots are designed with an “autonomous artistic creativity” that makes them capable of producing “objects that are considered as artworks.”

For decades, a big trend in manufacturing has been the gradual automation of the factory floor. Robots play a major role in making advanced products today — they're fast, clean and efficient. But Tesla chief executive Elon Musk wants to take this to a whole new level with the factory producing the upcoming, low-cost Model 3, turning "the machine that makes the machine" into an "alien dreadnought." Not literally. The factory isn't going to become self-aware and turn on its masters; after all, Musk is an avowed skeptic of the kind of general artificial intelligence that could enable killer machines.

A robot tattooist might have steadier "hands" than its human counterpart, but how do you know it's not going to accidentally tattoo you all the way down to the bone? That's all I could think of watching this video of what's been billed as the "world's first tattoo by an industrial robot." At around two and a half minutes in you can see how tightly the tattoo recipient has been strapped to a chair and you think: "Ah, if he moves, then things are going to get nasty." That aside, it's wonderful to see an industrial robot being put to this use.

UPS Inc. is in the process of fully automating its 30 busiest U.S. package and delivery hubs, a four-year program that will yield 20 to 25 percent in productivity improvements per facility by the time the work is done in 2020, according to UPS' head of U.S. operations. The automation will encompass 27 ground hubs and 3 air hubs, known as "Tier 1" hubs, which handle about 60 percent of the Atlanta-based giant's volume, Myron Gray told analysts Friday as UPS released its second-quarter financial results. UPS handles about 18.3 million shipments a day worldwide.

As an apple fan (the delicious fruit, not the horrible-tasting technology company), I take it for granted that apples will be available to me at affordable prices whenever and wherever I want them. This is because I’m a clueless consumer, who had no idea that in 2012, 4.2 million apples were picked in the United States. By hand. Apple picking is a task that seems like it should be easy to automate: The environment is semistructured, and you’re dealing with objects that are nearly homogenous.

In H. G. Wells’s classic The War of the Worlds, the narrator pauses a moment to rue the fact that he didn’t react sooner to the arrival of an "intelligence greater than man’s"—in his case, Martians landing on earth. Comparing himself to a comfortable dodo in its nest, he imagined those ill-fated birds also dithering as hungry sailors invaded their island: "We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear." And what about you? As intelligent technologies take over more and more of the decision...

A new report from Citi and the Oxford Martin School explores the varying impact that automation of jobs will have on countries and cities around the world, in the near future and the coming decades. Technology at Work v2.0: The Future Is Not What It Used to Be builds on 2013 research by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne which found that 47 per cent of US jobs were at risk of automation over the next two decades, and on the first Technology at Work report, published in 2015.

Robots will be used to suppress attempts by the masses to rise up, a CEO who works with artificial intelligence has warned. Brad Wardell, founder of software company Stardock, said that automation will replace more and more jobs; but the elite few left with all the wealth will be able to crush any attempts to rebel with an array of security machines. “My day job is to evaluate technology and try to predict where it’s going to go next,” Wardell said in a blog post published Monday. “And with that, I am telling you the automation revolution isn’t happening soon. It’s happening right now.”

Donald Trump wants us to believe that immigration is hurting American workers. The truth is more complicated—and less useful.

Parking sucks. Looking for a space, driving round and round, trying not to hit a pillar. Fear not, the robots have it covered.

For Americans struggling with stagnant wages, under- or un-employment, one of Donald Trump’s most appealing campaign promises was to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. Navigating the complexities of policy, tariffs and geopolitics would make that hard enough already for the president elect. But technology will make this promise nearly impossible to fulfill.