Ethics in the digital workplace
Digitisation and automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can affect working conditions in a variety of ways and their use in the workplace raises a host of new ethical concerns.
Computer company IBM has announced 100 new jobs due the expansion of its Irish software labs in Dublin, Cork and Galway. IBM is already in the process of recruiting people for the positions and expects to have as many as 50 per cent of the new positions filled before the end of 2009. The new jobs are in the area of skilled software developers and will entail work on projects such as cloud computing collaboration software for business customers, as well as IT systems management tools and data warehouse software with analysis features. The project has been supported by Ireland's Industrial Development Agency (IDA).
IBM presently employs approximately 500 staff in its software labs across the three sites and this will now increase to 600. IBM currently employs about 4,000 staff in total in the Republic of Ireland, making it one of the largest multinational technology companies in the country. The announcement comes only months after IBM offshored its high-end server manufacturing facilitity from Dublin to Singapore, resulting in 120 redundancies (see related fact sheet).
Eurofound (2009), IBM, Business expansion in Ireland, factsheet number 69191, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/69191.