Heena Sharma Blog

The rise of automation has so far had a negligible impact on jobs at a global scale, the World Bank chief economist said, despite common gloomy predictions that humans are set to be replaced by machines. While advanced economies have shed industrial jobs over the last two decades, the rise of the same sector in East Asia has more than compensated for the loss, according to an annual report published by the Washington-based international financial institution. “This fear that robots have eliminated jobs -- this fear is not supported by the evidence so far,” the World Bank’s Chief Economist Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg said in an interview.The World Development Report 2019 is the latest in a series of efforts by academics, consultancies and governments to assess the impact of new technologies on employment. Past studies have often forecast automation will destroy more jobs than it creates. In its report, the World Bank instead stresses that the nature of work in the fut...

The Philippines’ richest man Henry Sy will start rolling out robots next year to help customers navigate his massive shopping malls . Initially three androids will be deployed in the first quarter of 2019 in SM Megamall, the nation’s second-biggest shopping center, said Steven Tan, chief operating officer for the shopping malls of SM Prime Holdings Inc. The talking bots will provide mall directions and information on promotions and events, Tan said. Megamall , among the biggest in Southeast Asia, spans 477,000 square meters (5.1 million square feet) or an area equivalent to about 89 football fields, and serves about 277,000 people every day, according to data from SM. If the pilot is successful, the group will bring the robots to its biggest shopping center SM North Edsa and other major malls, Tan said. “Customer service is at the core of everything that we do and we always aim to make the shopping experience fun and seamless,” Tan said. SM’s three largest malls in...

Robots will handle 52 per cent of current work tasks by 2025, almost twice as many as now, a World Economic Forum (WEF) study said Monday. The sharp increase could also see a net gain in "new roles" for humans, who will have to revamp skills to keep pace with the "seismic shift" in how we work with machines and computer programmes, the forum estimated. "By 2025 more than half of all current workplace tasks will be performed by machines as opposed to 29 per cent today," a statement by the Swiss non-profit organisation said. Simultaneously, rapid changes in machines and algorithms, or computer processes that are designed to solve problems, "could create 133 million new roles in place of 75 million that will be displaced between now and 2022," the group forecast. Its report, The Future of Jobs 2018 , foresees robots swiftly replacing humans in the accounting, client management, industrial, postal and secretarial sectors. Read our ful...