White Paper

Rapid urbanization is exerting growing pressure on cities’ traditional infrastructures, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) present very viable means of updating these infrastructures to reflect the demands of 21st century societies. This ITU-T Technology Watch Report analyses Seoul’s implementation of its “Smart Seoul 2015” project, providing a best-practice guide to the construction and operation of a smart city. The report investigates the conceptual underpinnings of Smart Seoul, the use of smart technologies and mobile-web applications to provide citizen-centric services, and the role of technical standards as the precondition for smart city functionality.

This year’s report accomplishes two objectives. First, it refreshes last year’s metrics. Second, it provides global context whenever possible. The former is critical to the Index’s mission — grounding the AI conversation means tracking volumetric and technical progress on an ongoing basis. But the latter is also essential. There is no AI story without global perspective. The 2017 report was heavily skewed towards North American activities. This reflected a limited number of global partnerships established by the project, not an intrinsic bias. This year, we begin to close the global gap. We recognize that there is a long journey ahead — one that involves further collaboration and outside participation — to make this report truly comprehensive.

Advancements in AI were recently spotlighted by AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google’s DeepMind team. The program — which relies on decision-making algorithms and neural networks — defeated a human European champion at the board game Go in a feat previously believed to be years away. On the investor side, Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital has said AI will deliver massive returns for investors betting on applications for industries including healthcare and entertainment. With this in mind, we used CB Insights’ database to look at funding to artificial intelligence startups since 2010. Our artificial intelligence category covers startups primarily focused on developing AI, across areas including image processing, natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning, and predictive APIs, among other core applications. We found that AI startups have raised an aggregate $967M in funding since 2010, with investments going to companies in 13 separate countries and 10 industry categories, including business intelligence, e-commerce, and healthcare.

U.S. educational and occupational wage differentials were exceptionally high at the dawn of the twentieth century and then decreased in several stages over the next eight decades. But starting in the early 1980s the labor market premium to skill rose sharply and by 2005 the college wage premium was back at its 1915 level. The twentieth century contains two inequality tales: one declining and one rising. We use a supply-demand-institutions framework to understand the factors that produced these changes from 1890 to 2005. We find that strong secular growth in the relative demand for more educated workers combined with fluctuations in the growth of relative skill supplies go far to explain the long-run evolution of U.S. educational wage differentials. An increase in the rate of growth of the relative supply of skills associated with the high school movement starting around 1910 played a key role in narrowing educational wage differentials from 1915 to 1980. The slowdown in the growth of the relative supply of college workers starting around 1980 was a major reason for the surge in the college wage premium from 1980 to 2005. Institutional factors were important at various junctures, especially during the 1940s and the late 1970s.

Jobs for NSW was launched in August 2015 as a private sector-led and New South Wales (NSW) Government-backed initiative. Its goals are twofold: to help make the NSW economy as competitive as possible, and to fulfil the government's primary objective for NSW of creating more jobs across the state. This paper presents Jobs for NSW's view on how NSW will secure its jobs for the future. Four unavoidable challenges to future jobs growth are identified (increasing global trade in the knowledge economy; new challenges in faster changing industries; task automation and unbundling; an ageing population) and a strategy proposed to turn these challenges into opportunities. The strategy provides four long-term priorities for job creation over the next 20 years and an agenda for action through to 2020. The strategies are: (1) growing exports; (2) opening doors for entrepreneurs; (3) drawing on all of the state's people; and (4) skilling up for the knowledge economy.

In today’s tough global market, organisations have to strive harder than ever to compete. Attracting, retaining and developing the right talent is critical to success. For organisations to operate and compete on a global level, there is an increasing expectation for 24/7 availability and responsiveness. The result: a longer hours culture as organisations are driven to squeeze the maximum out of their resources - a challenge for both women and men who need to balance career demands alongside family and lifestyle commitments. Under these pressures, employers often struggle to find practical solutions for reduced hours working that are both sustainable and commercially competitive.

The Future of Work study aims to stimulate thinking and dialogue on how people and organisations can prepare for tomorrow’s world of work. It provides evidence, inspiration and alternative thinking for those with an interest in employment and skills. The results are derived from a robust, evidence-based approach that draws on expert input from key groups including business, trade unions and academia, as well as a detailed and comprehensive review of literature. A central finding is that in future, new attitudes and behaviours will be needed, founded on flexibility, resilience, collaboration, enterprise and creativity. Above all the ability to respond to change will be critical.

We know that automation is affecting the labor market, but forecasts differ on how swift and dramatic the future impact will be. A new report now suggests things may happen more slowly than some have predicted.

We are a nation of enthusiastic adopters. We embrace technological change and its associated benefits. But any rapid change brings associated trade-offs and risks as well as benefits. It is these trade-offs and risks that must be subject to transparent public debate. The pace at which technology is transforming our lives is exponential. Entire industries are being disrupted as new business models emerge. Regulators, businesses and individuals alike must adapt or be left behind. Our legal and regulatory sectors must act to both protect society and foster innovation. They must modify their frameworks to accommodate technological advances. The job market is changing and will continue to change. Some jobs will disappear. Some will be replaced by different roles that emerge from the relevant technology. Research suggests that roles requiring a low skill level are the most likely to be automated, and that the resulting job loss is likely to be most severe in regional centres. Studies suggest that jobs requiring ‘soft skills’, such as creative and social intelligence, are at a relatively low risk of being automated. In this paper, we explore various industries where technological change is set to significantly disrupt the status quo. Driverless cars, solar power and longer lives – all made possible by technological advancement. Our small island nation is home to numerous disruptive technology companies. According to the CEO of one such company, Rocket Lab, New Zealand is the best place in the world to launch a satellite! These businesses are thriving despite low levels of governmental investment in innovation, by the standards of the developed world. As stakeholders in our country’s future, we must be aware of the impact disruptive technologies are having on our lives: good and bad. In the final section of the paper, we present a series of suggestions that aim to challenge policy makers, businesses and individuals to mindfully embrace technological innovation