Automation vs. artisanship: Why bricklayers aren’t worried about robot overlords, for now.

Americans are mixed in their support for using a universal basic income program as a way to help workers who lose their jobs because of advances in artificial intelligence.

Andrew Yang, a former tech executive, is mounting a longer-than-long-shot bid for the White House by warning of economic calamity ahead.

About one in four working Americans worry about losing their jobs to artificial intelligence. Americans who say AI will result in net job loss expect the construction and manufacturing industries to be hardest hit.

Hong-Kong based Crystal Group, which is the World’s largest clothing manufacturer by volume, is planning to expand its staff by more than 10% in the coming years, reports the Financial Times.

Crystal Group, which recently raised USD 490m in an initial public offering in Hong Kong, says that sewing robots cannot currently compete with human labour in Bangladesh and Vietnam, where the company plans to recruit more staff to grow the business. These countries, along with Cambodia and Sri Lanka where the company also has factories, are likely to benefit from rising labour costs in China, which currently has 30% of the market share in clothing production.

Andrew Lo, chief executive of Crystal Group said “the handling of soft materials is really hard for robots”. He added that labour costs in Southern China, where most of the manufacture of clothing takes place, are already above USD 700 per month compared with less than half that in Vietnam and USD 150-200 in Bangladesh.

Responding to these comments, Palaniswamy Rajan, chief executive of Softwear Automation, the US-based developer of Sewbots accepted that automation could not compete with low-cost labour when production involved shipping costs. However, he added that he hoped his start up would help to start a revolution when it rolls out its first automated production line for T-shirts in the US in the next 12-18 months.

LabourStart headline – Source: The Record

Japanese companies are turning to robots as the country goes through its worst labour shortage in more than 40 years, Bloomberg reported. Furniture-maker Nitori Holdings just deployed 79 robots at its Osaka distribution centre. “Running logistics as a labour-intensive business model is pretty much on its last legs,” Hiratomo Miyata told Bloomberg. Miyata is the founder of Ground, whose software powers robots in Nitori’s distribution centre. “What separates the companies is their ability to fill the gap left by human labour with technology,” Miyata said.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Wal-Mart Stores Inc will roll out shelf-scanning robots in approximately 40 stores to replenish inventory faster on its shelves and save store employees time when products run out.

LabourStart headline – Source: Equal Times