Robots and other programmed
machines: how will they influence the life on Earth?
Rise of the robots will harm the Earth as well as
humans
Machines have been a significant part of human reality
for a long time. However, it was the industrial revolution that marked a major
breakthrough in the adoption of automated machines or robots. Since the
introduction of robotics, work has been significantly shared between man and
machine. And, as robots become more technologically advanced and autonomous,
they will operate alongside humans in increasingly collaborative ways.
Robots will destroy our jobs – and we're not ready for
it
Two-thirds
of Americans believe robots will soon perform most of the work done by humans
but 80% also believe their jobs will be unaffected. Time to think again
The McDonald’s on the corner of Third Avenue and 58th
Street in New York City doesn’t look all that different from any of the
fast-food chain’s other locations across the country. Inside, however, hungry
patrons are welcomed not by a cashier waiting to take their order, but by a
“Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automated touch-screen system that allows
customers to create their own burgers without interacting with another human
being.It’s impossible to say exactly how many jobs have been lost by the deployment of the automated kiosks – McDonald’s has been predictably reluctant to release numbers – but such innovations will be an increasingly familiar sight in Trump’s America.
A concern about the decline of middle-skilled,
middle-income jobs and increasing wage inequality is warranted but cannot be
attributed solely to automation. Whilst automation appears to be increasing the
demand for high-skilled, high-income employees, its impact on low-skilled,
low-income employment is less clear. Wage stagnation appears to be far more
attributable to structural issues such as employment conditions that force down
wages and dampen investment by employers in skills training. A reduction in
robot usage would neither help low-skilled workers, nor resolve these
structural issues.
Broader Economy Wide Issues
The analysis of potential displacement, described in the
previous section, would provide useful information to human resource planners ,
but does not address the critical issue of how robotics will effect employment
throughout the entire economy. We view the long, term economic growth issue and
the economy wide employment impact as the highest level constraint and
information input into human resource planning. Even though robot manufacturing,
programming, and maintenance itself will provide some new jobs, it appears that
most new jobs will not be in manufacturing. Yet, we have no idea of how many of
these displaced workers and new workers can be expected to be absorbed in other
sectors. This issue niust be addressed if we are to go beyond identifying
vulnerable workers, and actually prepare them --as well as the entering
workforce-- for the likely changes to come
The Problem of Human Capital Most of the published
literature on robots describes physical capabilities and particular
applications, or deals with the narrowly defined economics of robot use, based
primarily on the difference between amortized robot cost and the
"all-included'' cost of hourly labor.
the World Economic Forum predicted that robotic automation
will result in the net loss of more than 5m jobs across 15 developed nations by
2020, a conservative estimate. Another study conducted by the International
Labor Organization, states that as many as 137m workers across Cambodia,
Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – approximately 56% of the
total workforce of those countries – are at risk of displacement by robots,
particularly workers in the garment manufacturing industry.
“Automation and robotics will definitely impact
lower-skilled people, which is unfortunate,” Zhang told me via phone from his
office in Singapore. “I think the only way for them to move up or adapt to this
change is not to hope that the government will protect their jobs from technology,
but look for ways to retrain themselves. No one can expect to do the same thing
for life. That’s just not the case any more.”
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There is no
doubt that this appointment will affect the opportunities of students keen to
launch a career in Stem. Private schools such as Carnegie Mellon University,
for example, may be able to offer state-of-the-art robotics laboratories to
students, but the same cannot be said for community colleges and vocational
schools that offer the kind of training programs that workers displaced by
robots would be forced to rely upon.
1. Robots can certainly handle their
prescribed tasks, but they typically cannot handle unexpected situations.2. The ROI of your business may suffer if your operation relies on too many robots. They have higher expenses than humans, so at the end of the day you may not always achieve the desired ROI.
3. Robots may have AI but they are certainly not as intelligent as humans. They can never improve their jobs outside the pre-defined programming because they simply cannot think for themselves.
4. Robots installed in workplaces still require manual labour attached to them. Training those employees on how to work with the robots definitely has a cost attached to it.
5. Robots have no sense of emotions or conscience. They lack empathy and this is one major disadvantage of having an emotionless workplace.
7. Robots operate on the basis of information fed to them through a chip. If one thing goes wrong the entire company bears the loss.
