China will soon have a new Five Year Plan. Here's how they have changed the world so far China's top leaders are gathering in Beijing this week to decide on the country's key goals and aspirations for the rest of the decade. Every year or so, the country's highest political body, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, convenes for a week of meetings, also known as a Plenum. What it decides at this one will eventually form the basis of China's next Five Year Plan - the blueprint that the world's second largest economy will follow between 2026 and 2030. The full plan won't come until next year, but officials are likely to hint at its contents on Wednesday and have previously given more details within a week of that.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt discusses the U.S. inflation rate, peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and more on'America Reports.' "Real Time" host Bill Maher challenged one of President Trump's central arguments as he wages a tariff war among several countries. "I have one basic question: Why do we want to bring back manufacturing?" Maher asked his panel on Friday. "It's so 70s, you know? I mean, that ship has sailed. You know, there are countries that make jeans for 11. We're never going to be that country again."

Phantom Auto, a California-based startup focusing on remote vehicle operation, has struck a deal to provide logistics equipment heavyweight Mitsubishi Logisnext Co. with software that enables forklifts to be operated remotely from thousands of miles away. A unit of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Kyoto-based Mitsubishi Logisnext is the third-biggest company in the $45 billion-plus global market for forklifts. Via their tie-up, Bessemer Venture Partners-backed Phantom Auto and Mitsubishi will offer forklifts that can rove around a warehouse in California, controlled by workers sitting at a desk a continent away. "We're moving warehouse workers into office jobs," Elliot Katz, Phantom Auto co-founder and chief business officer, said in an interview. Because it removes geographic labor restrictions and improves efficiency as drivers can be "teleported" into factories experiencing surges, the software offers the potential to knock 30% or more off forklift operation costs, Katz said.

The American workforce is at a crossroads. Digitization and automation have replaced millions of middle-class jobs, while wages have stagnated for many who remain employed. A lot of labor has become insecure, low-income freelance work. Yet there is reason for optimism on behalf of workers, as scholars and business leaders outlined in an MIT conference on Wednesday. Automation and artificial intelligence do not just replace jobs; they also create them.

"Pop culture does a great job of scaring us that AI will take over the world," said Professor Daniela Rus, speaking at a virtual MIT event on Wednesday. But realistically, said Rus, who directs the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), robots aren't going to steal everyone's jobs overnight -- they're not yet good enough at tasks requiring high dexterity or generalized processing of different kinds of information. Still, automation has crept into some workplaces in recent years, a trend that's likely to continue. Throughout the daylong conference, the "AI and the Work of the Future Congress," which convened speakers from academia, industry, and government, one key theme consistently emerged: Task automation shouldn't be viewed as a replacement for human work, but a partner for it. With the exception of some middle-skilled manufacturing jobs, automation has generally improved human productivity, not eliminated the need for it.

Silicon Valley Bank, which has helped fund more than 30,000 startups, yesterday released a report on "The Future of Robotics: An Inside View on Innovation in Robotics." It described trends in production, business models, and the adoption of robotics reflecting the increasing maturity of Industry 4.0. The report also addressed concerns about automation displacing jobs and public-policy reactions. Overall, the free Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) report (download PDF) was cautiously optimistic about the prospects for industrial automation. It cited rising U.S. productivity, maturing technologies and suppliers supporting a variety of applications, and a steady climb for robotics deployments, particularly in Asia.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and smart devices are gaining more and more traction in the manufacturing market. AI can be used to automate multiple things, and the technologies behind it keep getting better, and smarter. And combining AI with the IoT means fewer people will be required to take decisions and to execute those decisions. If things keep evolving as they have been so far, one thing is certain: the manufacturing industry will never be the same. But, how can AI and IoT affect the manufacturing job market? How can they improve it?

For many ASEAN nations, manufacturing takes up a sizable chunk of the national GDP. For example, manufacturing in Singapore contributed 20.9 percent of Singapore's GDP in 2019, according to the department of statistics Singapore. Successful companies readily acknowledge one key factor contributing to their achievements – hardworking, committed and skilled employees who are the foundation of the companies. However, manufacturers today face the primary challenge of filling open positions with skilled workers, which in turn affects overall productivity and growth. In addition to the human capital challenge, manufacturers are facing immense costs associated with workplace injuries.

When we get to a point where literally just about everything can be done more cheaply and more efficiently by robots, the elite won't have any use for the rest of us at all. For most of human history, the wealthy have needed the poor to do the work that is necessary to run their businesses and make them even wealthier. In this day and age we like to call ourselves "employees", but in reality we are their servants. Some of us may be more well paid than others, but the vast majority of us are expending our best years serving their enterprises so that we can pay the bills. Unfortunately, that paradigm is rapidly changing, and many of the jobs that humans are doing today will be done by robots in the not too distant future.

Up to 20 million manufacturing jobs could be lost to robots by 2030, according to a new report by Oxford Economics. The study found that robots will lead to twice as many manufacturing job losses in low-skill areas, thereby aggravating income inequality. The report, "How Robots Change the World", estimates that each new industrial robot eliminates 1.6 manufacturing jobs on average, and calls on governments to prepare with policies including better training and welfare programs, and a universal basic income. It suggests that in Australia, South Australia is most vulnerable to the future robot rollout. The state is Australia's most manufacturing intensive but has the slowest-growing economy and low levels of manufacturing productivity, the report argued.