The Knowledge to Decide

As China aims to shift from quantity to quality economic growth in 2018, it aims to foster high-quality job creation in fields like robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), while forestalling global financial risks. Will 2018 still see China regain its old dominance of global growth? Leon Perera, Chief Executive Officer of Spire Research and Consulting, shared his insights in China Daily – Asia Weekly. The world economy is poised for an upturn. This is not only due to China’s economic success. Perera remarked that the decrease in the headline US corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% – one of the lowest in the developed world; and Japan’s economic reforms under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are some of the contributing factors to the improved global economic outlook in 2018. Moreover, disruptive technologies such as drones and AI will give rise to employment opportunities globally in new sectors, compensating for eliminated traditional jobs. However, this movement depends on ho

Robots are now prevalent across many industries, not only heavy manufacturing. Today’s robots are more precise and can be controlled remotely, which is why there is a preference for them over error-prone humans in some parts of the services industry. With over 179,000 industrial robots sold worldwide in 2013, robots are now set to conquer a new arena – the household. What is a robot? The first thing that comes to mind when the word robot is uttered is a machine that imitates a human being, such as the androids from Hollywood’s Star Wars or Terminator movies. The reality, though, is that the hundreds of thousands of industrial robots operating in the world resemble high-tech machinery more than high-tech humanoids. A robot is defined as a programmable, self-controlled device with electrical, electronic or mechanical units. Robots have some advantages over humans when it comes to work – they have better physical endurance and are more adept at working under uncomfortable or da