Did I do that? What happens if an Artificial Intelligence writes my final dissertation.

openThe aim of the research is to investigate the current role of an expert-system and assess whether it is an effective tool to help people with their work and, thus, an opportunity to exploit; or a valuable substitute for it and, thus, a valid threat. Firstly, an analysis will be conducted to identify the sectors most influenced by AI, thereby understanding which sectors might be at the highest risk. Afterward, an attempt will be made to assess the real threat posed by AI to these jobs, as well as the nature of these jobs. Once the nature of these jobs has been determined, a question will be raised to ChatGPT , since this tool is widely available and represents exactly what people are starting to fear, to test the extent of the threat posed by Artificial Intelligence.The aim of the research is to investigate the current role of an expert-system and assess whether it is an effective tool to help people with their work and, thus, an opportunity to exploit; or a valuable substitute for it and, thus, a valid threat. Firstly, an analysis will be conducted to identify the sectors most influenced by AI, thereby understanding which sectors might be at the highest risk. Afterward, an attempt will be made to assess the real threat posed by AI to these jobs, as well as the nature of these jobs. Once the nature of these jobs has been determined, a question will be raised to ChatGPT , since this tool is widely available and represents exactly what people are starting to fear, to test the extent of the threat posed by Artificial Intelligence

Globalisation and union opposition to technological change

Trade unions have a rational incentive to oppose the adoption of labour-saving technology when labour demand is inelastic and unions care much for employment relative to wages. Trade liberalisation typically increases trade union technology opposition. These conclusions are reached in a model of unionised international duopoly with two-way trade. We also find that the incentive for technology opposition is stronger in the more technologically advanced country and in the country with the larger home market, complementing earlier explanations for technological catch-up and leapfrogging

The "machine-breakers" and the industrial revolution

The early phase of the industrialization process in Britain was characterized by a considerable number of machine-breaking riots. All the great innovations in textile technology seemed to have been, at some point of time, smashed. John Kay's flying shuttle met a strong resistance and workers rioted against its introduction in 1758, 1785-7,1810-13 and 1822. Hargreaves'spinning jenny was attacked in several mobs (1767, 1769 and 1779). In 1779 there were also assaults against Arkwright-type of factories. The power loom was the target of the Lancashire Luddites in 1812. Although this form of labour disturbances has been the subject of extensive historical investigation, there is still little consensus among historians about the exact nature and significance of this form ofresistance to innovation

Threats and Risks of Nanoindustry Development

The paper deals with the negative aspects of nanotechnology development on the global and national scales. Possible economic, environmental and social risks and latent threats to the formation of nanoindustry and nanoproducts consumption are discussed. The conclusion about the need of intensive studies of this complex problem and development of regulatory mechanisms, legal frameworks and institutions of nanotechnology progress monitoring is made.

Development and underdevelopment from the perspective of evolutionary socioeconomics in the post-COVID-19 era

Abstract. In economics, the problematics of development and underdevelopment is a field of conceptual controversies and constant “re-comprehension,” already since classical economists’ fundamental explorations. Nowadays, especially within the particularly pressing conditions caused by the global pandemic of COVID-19, it seems that this field of research and scientific knowledge must be profoundly re-fertilized in analytical and explanatory terms. The current crisis seems to function as a catalyst for various structural changes globally, leading to a necessary reorientation of the related thematics towards exploring the inner evolutionary “mechanisms” that will drive socio-economic development (and underdevelopment) in the future. This article aims to study the conceptual evolution of the notions of development and underdevelopment in the light of modern evolutionary economics, which we think could offer a foundational repositioning at the interpretative level in response to the new emerging conditions. More specifically, this article tries to respond to what development and underdevelopment mean over time, where analytical readjustments the evolutionary economics lead to nowadays, and whether it is possible to counter-propose a multilevel approach that enriches the theoretical background for an interdisciplinary and unifying understanding of the specific problematics at the dawn of the new global reality that appears in the post-COVID-19 era. At first, we look at essential development and underdevelopment concepts by critically exploring corresponding basic definitions throughout time. Next, we study the essential and associated elements of evolutionary economics, in the light of the problematics of development and underdevelopment of our days, intending to reach a synthesizing theoretical perspective. We counter-propose the multilevel “development web” approach and analysis as a useful repositioned perspective on addressing the developmental/underdevelopmental problem since the compartmentalization of social sciences between the “micro, meso and macro” approaches seems progressively inadequate and sterile.Keywords. Development, Underdevelopment, Evolutionary economics, Development web, Micro-meso-macro, Evolutionary microeconomics, Evolutionary mesoeconomics, Evolutionary macroeconomics.JEL. O40, B52

Collective Bargaining and Technological Investment: The Case of Nurses’ Unions and the Transition from Paper-Based to Electronic Health Records

Does the presence of a unionized nursing workforce retard U.S. hospitals’ transition from paper-based to electronic health records (EHRs)? After tying archival data on hospitals’ structural features and health information technology (IT) investment patterns to self-gathered data on unionism, I find that hospitals that bargain collectively with their registered nurses (RNs) appear to delay or forego the transition away from paper, consistent with existing theory and research in industrial relations and institutional economics. However, this relationship is fully mediated by a hospital’s payer mix: those serving a larger share of less lucrative, elderly, disabled, and indigent patients are more likely to adopt EHRs if they are unionized than if they are not, a result that holds even at the median payer mix. Indeed, this accords with research on the interplay of labour and technology as the aforementioned dynamics are driven entirely by RN-exclusive bargaining units for whom the new IT serves as a complement rather than as a substitute in production. Given the outsized role that unions play in the U.S. healthcare sector, the overall sluggish performance of the sector, and the expectations that policymakers have for EHRs, evidence that these unions are welfare-enhancing should be welcome news

The Urban Political Ecology of Post-industrial Scottish Towns: Examining Greengairs and Ravenscraig

Urban ecological politics is shaped by both moments of concerted action and more silent perceptions and responses. Instead of only being evident in situations of organised protest, the politics of urban ecology is also manifested, in material and symbolic terms, in the daily life of the residents. The fragmentation of urban political ecology turns out to be an important element in the affirmation of post-political forms of urban governance. Those issues were the object of fieldwork research carried out in Greengairs and Ravenscraig, two towns in North Lanarkshire, near Glasgow, with the goal of unravelling the understanding and the coping mechanisms of environmentally deprived residents. The towns are permeated by a widespread, often dissimulated, political ecology that is nonetheless always present. Empirical results demonstrate that a more comprehensive handling of the political ecology of the urban is crucial in order to halt the sources of marginalisation and ecological degradation

Maximising motivators for technology-enhanced learning for further education teachers: moving beyond the early adopters in a time of austerity

Technology-enhanced learning (TEL) has become a prominent issue in further education (FE) since the publication of the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (FELTAG) report in 2014, but many initiatives have concentrated on digital competence without investigating the role of staff attitudes and motivation in extending their use of new technologies. This research explored the views and experiences of FE staff using technology to support learning and the impact of these on their motivation to develop a technology-enhanced curriculum in their subject. The aim was to identify any common themes or factors linked to positive engagement with TEL which could inform institutional efforts to increase the extent and effectiveness of TEL use. This research used a mixed-methods approach to attempt to provide a broader and more reliable view of attitudes and also considered the similarities and differences between the experiences of further and higher education teachers through comparison with Bennett’s (2014) Digital Practitioner Framework and the particular barriers found in the resource-constrained environment of FE. It summarises the key factors identified as likely to influence staff engagement with TEL, and recommends how such motivating factors could be maximised and how potential barriers could be addressed

Hipsters on Networks: How a Small Group of Individuals Can Lead to an Anti-Establishment Majority

The spread of opinions, memes, diseases, and "alternative facts" in a population depends both on the details of the spreading process and on the structure of the social and communication networks on which they spread. In this paper, we explore how \textit{anti-establishment} nodes (e.g., \textit{hipsters}) influence the spreading dynamics of two competing products. We consider a model in which spreading follows a deterministic rule for updating node states (which describe which product has been adopted) in which an adjustable fraction $p_{\rm Hip}$ of the nodes in a network are hipsters, who choose to adopt the product that they believe is the less popular of the two. The remaining nodes are conformists, who choose which product to adopt by considering which products their immediate neighbors have adopted. We simulate our model on both synthetic and real networks, and we show that the hipsters have a major effect on the final fraction of people who adopt each product: even when only one of the two products exists at the beginning of the simulations, a very small fraction of hipsters in a network can still cause the other product to eventually become the more popular one. To account for this behavior, we construct an approximation for the steady-state adoption fraction on $k$-regular trees in the limit of few hipsters. Additionally, our simulations demonstrate that a time delay $\tau$ in the knowledge of the product distribution in a population, as compared to immediate knowledge of product adoption among nearest neighbors, can have a large effect on the final distribution of product adoptions. Our simple model and analysis may help shed light on the road to success for anti-establishment choices in elections, as such success can arise rather generically in our model from a small number of anti-establishment individuals and ordinary processes of social influence on normal individuals.Comment: Extensively revised, with much new analysis and numerics The abstract on arXiv is a shortened version of the full abstract because of space limit

INNOVATION TRANSFER AND RURAL SMES

The role innovation can play to make enterprises more dynamic and competitive is surely well known. For rural small and medium enterprises (SMEs) this can become a critical issue because they often need financial and technical incentives and support from public and private research institutions in order to make innovation accessible to them. Yet bridging research and productive dimensions is not always an easy task The cooperation between researchers and rural entrepreneurs can become a rather demoralizing experience for both parties due to the action of a large number of inadequacies caused not only by financial, technical or organizational factors but also by cultural diversities and different approaches. This paper proposes some considerations matured by the authors while cooperating with some rural SMEs of agro-industrial and agrobusiness sectors in Central Italy to implement actions of innovation and know how transfer. The experiences reported have been made within the framework of article 15 of the Ministerial Decree (Ministry of University and Research) n. 593/2000 which allows temporary deployment of personnel from research institutions in SMEs. In this paper the authors outline some methodological guidelines developed and adopted to analyze and meet the innovation demand from SMEs involved in innovation transfer processes