Posts tagged automation
CA Follows $20 Min Wage With Bill To Limit Self-Checkout
May 15, 2024 // Proposed CA Senate Bill 1446 would “prohibit a grocery or retail drug establishment from providing a self-service checkout option for customers unless specified conditions are met,” according to a proposed legislation summary. Some of those conditions: Checkouts are limited to 10 items or less At least one manual staffed checkout station is available Customers are prohibited from purchasing certain items An employee can only monitor up to two self-service stations Employee is relieved from all other duties while monitoring
Mike Rowe calls Gen Z the next ‘toolbelt generation’ amid increasing vocational enrollment
April 22, 2024 // Rowe doubled down on the demand for electricians, pipe fitters and plumbers, among others, despite emerging technologies. "Look, plumbers are not going to be outsourced," he added. "Electricians, steam fitters, pipe fitters, the people my foundation tries to assist — they have a level of job security that the article in the Journal is referencing, and it's a big deal, because those jobs have always been here for the last 20 years, as long as I've been doing this, they've been open, and it's starting to tip where we're literally turning a tanker around with regard to perceptions."
CALIFORNIA: Dave’s Hot Chicken tests kiosks, bigger drinks in face of $20 CA wage
April 3, 2024 // “We didn’t see the ability to pull labor out of the restaurant, but we did see some positive impact on sales,” Bitticks said. Dave’s labor deployment at the cash register — the position most likely to be replaced by kiosks — is already fairly small. The brand still needs workers present to assist customers with kiosks, in the same way grocery stores deploy workers to oversee the self-checkout process, he said. Tickets placed at kiosks are about 7% to 8% higher than orders placed with an employee, Bitticks said. This increase is driven by greater orders of the brands’ entrees, and possibly by guests trying new items they notice on their own, rather than trying items based on conscious upselling. Dave’s managers report customers across age demographics are using the kiosks, Bitticks said, rather than just younger diners.
PODCAST: An Unholy Incubator, Will Swaim breaks down the new regulation that took effect on March 15 which affects every independent contractor in America.
March 21, 2024 // The President of the California Policy Center, host of National Review’s Radio Free California podcast, and watchdog journalist warns about the new federal regulation that effectively makes CA-AB5 national and ends independent contractor status as we know it. As goes California, so goes the nation—from a $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers to rampant homelessness, crime, and reparations—the recovering communist dissects examples of what’s happening in the Golden State and yet to come nationally.
Could the U.S. adopt a four-day workweek?
March 16, 2024 // “They would ship those jobs overseas or they would automate to replace those workers for whom they have an increased expense, or they would dramatically increase prices to make them stay afloat,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said. Some witnesses in Thursday’s hearing agreed with Cassidy arguing it could put some industries and workers at a disadvantage. “We also potentially disadvantage older workers who cannot necessarily physically do the same amount of work in a shorter time,” Liberty Vittert, Professor of the Practice of Data Science at the Olin Business School said.
Why Is Panera Exempted From California’s New Minimum Wage Law?
March 4, 2024 // That exemption stands to benefit Greg Flynn, owner and CEO of the Flynn Restaurant Group, a conglomerate that operates more than 2,300 restaurants nationally and is the second-largest Panera franchisee in the world, according to the company's website. Flynn and Newsom go way back: Bloomberg reports that the two attended the same high school at the same time—Flynn was student body president during Newsom's freshman year—and the restaurateur has donated to Newsom's gubernatorial campaigns and bragged to colleagues about his close relationship with the governor.
California dockworkers have a new target in their fight against automation
February 2, 2024 // Although automated port technology has existed for decades and is already employed at three terminals in Los Angeles and Long Beach, the vast majority of dock operations are still conducted using human-operated equipment. Union workers and the shipping industry say that could change if the ports are forced to adopt electric equipment. “This rule, aimed at meeting environmental standards, has raised worries about the potential increase in automation at the ports,” said Gary Herrera, president of ILWU Local 13, in a statement. “While it is important to prioritize environmental sustainability, it is equally important to consider the impact of these measures on the local workforce and community as it pertains to jobs in the community and region.”
Opinion: California’s minimum wage woes are a cautionary tale for the nation
January 10, 2024 // California politicians seem to have a penchant for doing whatever they can to reduce housing affordability and otherwise increase the cost of living in the state — high taxes, burdensome labor and environmental mandates, waste for boondoggles like the high-speed rail project and countless other laws and regulations. Then they attempt to be saviors by passing still more laws to benefit one group or another and alleviate the situation they have largely created.
Commentary: The Hollywood Strikes Stopped AI From Taking Your Job. But for How Long?
December 28, 2023 // The “learn to code” crowd has all new ammo. Even Biden’s executive order was clear about the fact that the US government wanted to attract the best and brightest in the field. But that’s job creation, not job displacement. New technologies create jobs all the time, but with AI, some of those jobs pay pennies. What’s more, AI can also ask you to train it to do your job before picking up your tools. Going forward, the likelihood that AI will displace many entry-level jobs while creating a few highly skilled gigs seems high. The biggest questions in AI right now nearly all revolve around what these machines are learning from people, whether it’s human skill or human bias.
AI: Jobs and Regulation
November 13, 2023 // Despite that, while there are some basic safety precautions that should be taken, for example, to limit the extent to which AI is integrated into nuclear weapon systems, it is hard to see how, short of adopting economic autarky, the U.S. could renounce or even slow down the broader advance of AI. A technology cannot be uninvented, and, if the U.S. applied the brakes, its geopolitical or economic competitors would do their best to take advantage, by pressing on with AI, probably recruiting American experts to help in their efforts to do so. Thus it’s interesting to see that a number of European countries have been pushing back against the EU’s efforts to regulate AI development (with the harshest regulation, naturally, being reserved, EurAktiv reports, for “leading providers that currently are non-European companies”). The regulation would be “risk-based,” which, as typically interpreted in Brussels, a place where the precautionary principle is taken to absurd levels, would be bleak news for innovators.