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Raphael Thys
How successful a treatment for colon cancer will be can be predicted based on the activity of immune cells. Mainz physicians have trained an artificial intelligence for this task. Their predictions achieve an accuracy of up to 80 percent.
FResearchers at Mainz University Medicine have developed artificial intelligence that is intended to be used to more accurately predict the chances of recovery for colorectal cancer patients. The model analyzes microscopic images of the tumor tissue and assesses the activity of immune cells that attack the cancer (photo). According to the first author Sebastian Försch, the method enables better predictions about the success of the therapy than, for example, the manual counting of white blood cells.
To train the artificial intelligence, the scientists used more than 300,000 microscopic tissue images from around 1,000 people with colon cancer. By analyzing the recordings, the program has determined a value that provides information on how effectively the body’s defenses are attacking the tumor. From this, a prediction of the relapse-free survival time can be derived. According to the information, the accuracy of the forecast was 80 percent.
Skill shortage: Rising wages act as a productivity whip and drive automation.x
There is a shortage of workers in Germany – in almost all sectors and professions. Companies cannot fill two million jobs. Economists are increasingly demanding higher wages as an antidote.
How can this work? After all, higher salaries do not automatically mean more workers. Behind the demand is the old concept of the “productivity whip”.
Rising costs are forcing companies to rationalize. Demand for labor falls, productivity rises. This whip drives companies to peak performance and balances the labor market. Here are the arguments and the critical points.
The dramatic shortage of skilled workers is paralyzing Germany: There is a shortage of workers everywhere. In cafés and IT departments, in schools and authorities, in hospitals and in trade. Companies are currently unable to fill two million jobs. This is record. So what to do about the shortage of skilled workers? Ifo President Clemens Fuest and labor economist Simon Jäger have a seemingly simple suggestion: “Increase wages!„
Can this work? After all, Germany lacks so many workers because the population is aging. Baby boomers retire from working life. Fewer young people start their working lives. The gap is growing every year. If wages now rise, there will not automatically be more people of working age who will become craftswomen, teachers, temporary workers or engineers.
However, there is no wishful thinking behind the economists’ demand, but a fundamental economic thought: if labor is scarce, its price must rise in order to balance supply and demand again. And the price of work is wages and salaries.
First, rising wages increase the supply of labor. ‘Cause when there’s more money, there’s more incentive for people at all to work, more to work or longer to work, for example in old age. Higher salaries would also make Germany more attractive for the urgently needed skilled workers from abroad.
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Secondly, higher wages also lead to fewer workers being sought. Because if wages rise, the incentive for companies to replace human work, i.e. to automate and rationalize, increases. As a result, more workers are required and the productivity of labor increases. In order to offer the same number of goods or services, fewer working hours have to be worked. We are currently seeing an example of such rationalization in supermarkets, where self-service checkouts are increasingly replacing checkout staff.
The shortage of skilled workers promotes automation: self-service checkouts in supermarkets.
For a society as a whole, increasing productivity is an advantage. Productivity gains can be shared. They are available for higher earnings or for shorter hours (but not twice for both). Aging societies like Germany are even particularly dependent on increasing productivity because fewer working people maintain prosperity and have to ensure the care of the growing number of old people.
So higher wages can not only help to increase productivity. You can even force companies to do it. Economists therefore somewhat martially call the effect the “productivity whip”. For similar reasons, the strong D-Mark was seen as a productivity driver in the old Federal Republic. The strong Mark made German products relatively expensive abroad. There was also a high wage level. In order to still be successful in the export markets, the companies had to constantly increase productivity (and quality). Incidentally, this compulsion eased with the introduction of the euro. As an export country, Germany, as a strong euro country, benefited from the relatively weaker euro – as a result productivity increased more slowly. Productivity in Germany even fell last year.
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Higher wages against the shortage of skilled workers?
But every whip causes pain. Companies that cannot pay higher wages are left behind. And with them also their employees. This can currently be observed in cafes and restaurants that are closing or restricting their opening hours. The very large increase in the minimum wage also has a whiplash effect. Higher wages lower the demand for labour. Anyone who loses their job in this way tries to switch to companies with higher productivity and pay – but also displaces people there who are less well trained or less productive.
In times of high unemployment it was therefore even cynical to justify the demand for higher wages with the productivity whip. Because it pushed people out of the labor market into unemployment benefits and finally into social welfare.
However, in times when workers are being sought everywhere – from IT specialists to temporary workers – higher wages can contribute to mitigating the labor shortage in an economically sensible way.
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Shortage of skilled workers as an opportunity for modernization
The Dresden Ifo economist Joachim Ragnitz therefore advocates the shortage of skilled workers as an opportunity for one “modernization boost” to see. “If there is a shortage of workers, this increases the incentive to ensure that the workers who are still available are used more efficiently: by providing more relevant qualifications, by better technical equipment at the workplaces and by developing and using labour-saving technologies,” argues Ragnitz.
And even the pain would have something good: “Structural change that forces less productive companies out of the market and thus frees up workers for more profitable uses can also help.” The economist Joseph Schumpeter shaped this power to constantly replace the good with something better the famous notion of “creative destruction”.
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As wages rise, the use of machinery becomes more profitable. In times of labor shortages, this can help against the shortage.
Ragnitz describes the effect of higher wages on an overall economic shortage of skilled workers as follows: “When workers become scarcer, their price (i.e. wages) rises. Companies must therefore offer higher wages in order to be able to fill vacancies – and to avoid internal tensions, this applies to all employees in a company when in doubt. Higher labor costs, in turn, provide an incentive to substitute capital or technology for labor. This then leads to an increase in labor productivity. This is the old argument of the productivity whip, which has often been used by unions in the past to justify high wage demands. In the case of persistent unemployment, that was of course wrong, but in the case of a labor shortage, this argumentation is entirely justified.”
If productivity increases sufficiently, even with a labor shortage, the loss of wealth can be avoided. Employees would then benefit from higher wages and, in the long term, companies would benefit as they become more competitive. At least all that survive the productivity whip.
Ifo President Fuest formulates the consequences as follows: “Some companies would withdraw from the market. Some unpleasant activities would be eliminated or automated. Employees move to higher productivity jobs. That would be bitter for individual companies that cannot keep up with the competition. Overall, however, this results in a profit.”
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