The Robots Beat Usain Bolt. They Still Can't Plug In a Cable.
At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, a machine ran the 100 metres in 9.39 seconds, faster than any human ever has, then crashed into a padded wall and was carried off on a stretcher. The speed is real and doubling yearly. But roboticists point out that sprinting a flat, known course is easy. The chores, folding laundry, plugging in a cable, are the hard part, and where the real contest sits.
Read full story →Laid Off for a Bot: China Is Racing to Automate the Jobs It Still Needs
A Beijing programmer's boss asked whether AI could replace coders. Two weeks later he and 160 colleagues were gone. China is diffusing AI through its economy faster than any nation, by government design, and its workers are largely being asked to embrace the machine coming for their roles. With growth already slowing, automating jobs may deepen the very anxiety that keeps people from spending.
Read full story →AI Is Adding More Jobs Than It Cuts. Just Not for Anyone Starting Out.
Fresh data from Nomura, ZipRecruiter and the New York Fed says the doomsayers were wrong: AI is a net job creator. But the ledger hides a K-shaped split. Employers want senior staff and are quietly freezing out graduates, entry-level hiring in Indian IT is collapsing, and some of the "new jobs" are precarious data-labeling gig work paying a few dollars a day.
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