Brian Merchant
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Amazon Says It Will Retrain Workers It’s Automating Out Of Jobs. But Does ‘Upskilling’ Even Work?
Amazon made waves when it announced late last week that it planned to spend $US700 ($994) million to retrain one-third of its U.S. workforce, 100,000 employees, as part of its “˜Upskilling 2025′ initiative. The sizeable commitment, which the Wall Street Journal notes is “among the biggest corporate retraining initiatives” yet announced, will fund pilot programs,…
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Automation Should Be A Major 2020 Issue – So Why Is It Being Ignored?
It’s early yet, but automation is already on track to become the most ignored issue this U.S. campaign cycle, outpacing even the neglected climate change, which, while broached both nights of the first Democratic presidential debate this week, deserves a much larger share of the conversation. Corporate automation, and the mass job loss and degradation…
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‘Robots’ Are Not ‘Coming For Your Job’, Management Is
Listen: ‘Robots’ are not coming for your jobs. I hope we can be very clear here—at this particular point in time, ‘robots’ are not sentient agents capable of seeking out and applying for your job and then landing the gig on its comparatively superior merits. ‘Robots’ are not currently algorithmically scanning LinkedIn and Monster.com with…
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The Next Evolution Of Online Shopping Is Letting A Bot Buy You Underwear
Online retailers are engaged in a constant, all-consuming quest to make the process of buying stuff ever faster and more efficient and to remove as many barriers between you and the final click-confirmed purchase as possible. Amazon has experimented with IRL ‘dash’ buttons that automatically order you more detergent or diapers. Smaller retailers like Blue…