Geeking Out
“Lured by that juicy chicken money…” Everything you ever wanted to know about the development of robotic butchers.
The rest of the internet wants you to watch this robot get knocked over by some dude. But I think watching it lose & regain balance, walking in snow, is way more interesting. Halfway between drunk person and toddler is person-lite.
“Bots won’t replace journalists, but they can help supercharge them by automating tasks that would otherwise have to take place manually.”
Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability
I sort of don’t know what to think about this. Can we use it to crowdsource solutions to gun violence, or poverty, or something other than how to solve companies’ problems?
“At the high end skill of the workforce, we increasingly work to targets, not time.” Paul Mason on why the automation revolution should drive us to adopt a UBI.
Organizing Theory
Tom Steinberg wants to start an organization of technologists who are worried about the future of work. Interested? Leave him a comment on this post.
What’s Going on in the Workforce
“Most often, what these workers had in common was what they lacked: unemployment insurance, minimum wage protection, health benefits—any of the social safety nets built into more traditional jobs.” Quartz, on the difficulty of tracking who’s working in the gig economy. And Bloomberg’s Justin Fox takes a shot at last month’s “Uber for Welfare” column in Politico.
Open Society’s Ken Zimmerman, on the need to make sure that the future of work doesn’t replicate old patterns of discrimination.
Uber and Lyft drivers are getting ready to launch a driver-owned ride-hailing app.
You didn’t know you needed this until now—the history of “Robots in American Law.”
“…the problem isn’t a labor shortage. It’s a shortage of people who want to do your job at the wages that you want to pay.” Great piece on the flaws of the H1B visa program, by Sarah Jaffe.