This latest US foresight report will help policymakers, workers and employers groups, the United Nation’s labour agency, the ILO, as well as the readers of this blog get the latest information informing debate about the future impacts of automation and digitalization on the global workforce. Foresight is essential in helping us prepare for the potential …
Empowering the Poorest and Most Marginalised To coincide with the recent publication of my new book entitled Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development (Oxford University Press, 2017), the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D is convening a workshop on Friday 16th June from 11.00-12.45 in ITU Room Popov 1 at the 2017 WSIS Forum being held …
Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, argues that the single most important challenge facing humanity today is how to understand and shape the new technology revolution. What exactly is this revolution, and why does it matter, especially for Africa? The ‘fourth industrial revolution’ captures the idea of the confluence of new technologies …
(Big data and AI | Open AI) After a 75-year incubation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a household word, reflected in popular culture through books, movies and even music. From self-driving vehicles and interactive robots to Apple’s Siri concierge and IBM’s Watson, which is increasingly being used to solve business problems, AI technology is playing …
International Women’s Day. Thailand, 2015. Photo: UN Women/Pornvit Visitoran. | Lebanon, 2015. Photo: UN Women/Joe Saad | Kenya, 2016. Photo: CIAT/Georgina Smith As part of IDS Digital and Technology Cluster’s ongoing research into the impact of automation on the future of work we’re keen to understand how a range of stakeholders, from trades unions …
On 13th March, IDS together with the Web Foundation and Nesta, hosted the inaugural Digital Development Summit, with the support of DFID and the DFID-ESRC Impact Initiative.This blog post was the first in a series that was published by organisers and participants over several weeks. Here IDS’s Becky Faith and Ben Ramalingam explain why the future …
(What does the gig economy mean for workers rights? | Ethical Trading Initiative) Internet users will make up the majority of the planet’s population before the end of this year. Most of this digital growth is coming from Africa, Asia, and South America: places where incomes are low and well-paying jobs are scarce. It …
(Flickr |Lwp Kommunikáció) While waiting to board an inter-city bus in Montréal, Canada, an interesting conversation on the bottlenecks of automation was struck between a mid-aged American bus delivery driver and me. Wallette faces the risk of losing her job to a robot in the coming years. The long-haul transport truck driver of school buses …
Listen in. This is going to be good. If you been following the Tech@Work Portal or just curious and new to the Technology@Work Initiative, you will like this. We explore the next frontier of work in the new digital economy, also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This incoming technological wave is driven by the …
Photo credit: Freepik.com Frontier technologies have the potential to rapidly address large-scale challenges and transform our global economy and digital business models. Under UK’s Frontier Technologies Livestreaming Initiative, the Institute of Development Studies led by Ben Ramalingam reviewed and handpicked the top frontier technologies for international development in five different domains. The ten frontier technologies for …