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ROBOTICS

Robots Are Taking Our Jobs

and we don’t care...

Robots are all around us taking the low cost of this new generation of robots and AI over the next 20 years.
our jobs – but we don’t notice robots will allow small and medium- This may well be true, but it isn’t the
them. They’ve been around sized businesses to add robot whole story. Most of these displaced
for decades. They’re in ATM cash “employees”. workers will find new occupations.
machines, in supermarket self- I don’t think we’re going to see mass
checkouts, in automated car washes, These so-called collaborative robots, unemployment caused by the robots
in jet plane cockpits – and even in coupled with new forms of 3-D additive before the year 2035. Human workers
humble dishwashers and washing manufacturing (which is itself a form displaced by technology will simply re-
machines. of robotics), is creating a renaissance train to provide services we haven’t yet
of manufacturing in the developed realised we need (perhaps we’ll have
More noticeably robots are in nations. The arbitrage gained by pet nutritionists, vacation consultants,
automated vacuum cleaners, self- shifting production from high-cost lawn designers, Christmas consultants,
parking cars and voice-recognition economies to low-cost regions is hoverboard coaches, friend finders,
phone systems. Soon most cars will now negated by the low cost of robot family tree researchers…).
have some robotic features and some labour. Even China – once the main
will be pure self-driving robots. beneficiary of off-shored manufacturing Going to college will become a regular,
– is now investing heavily in robots to repeated experience for humans in
The human-style “android” robot of the replace its own human work force. the future. Many of us will go back
movies that will supposedly one day to college in our thirties to gain
walk among us is a misleading concept Many commentators are suggesting replacement skills; we might then
when we try to think about the impact once again that robots and strong attend again in our fifties or sixties to
robots are having, and will have, on artificial intelligence (they’re re-train once more. Robots are here
business and society. essentially the same thing but in among us today and, rather than
different packaging and with different being the terrifying Terminator-style
Robots have been taking jobs abilities) will cause widespread human machines of science-fiction, they are
from humans for years – think of unemployment. A recent report from quietly, efficiently and uncomplainingly
typesetters, car washes and bank Oxford University claimed that 47 per freeing us from the dull, repetitive jobs
clerks – but displaced humans have cent of existing jobs will be replaced by that have blighted working lives since
simply retrained to provide more the start of the industrial revolution.
interesting human-based services. Human employment opportunities will
How many tattoo artists, personal remain excellent – at least for those
fitness trainers, life coaches, private who wish to work – for the next two
tutors and dog hairdressers existed 25 decades. But, after that, all bets are
years ago? Today they’re everywhere. off.

But now “proper robots” are starting Ray Hammond is Europe’s most
to arrive in force, and some of them experienced and widely published
do seem to be more like the stuff of futurologist and he regularly
science fiction. Low-cost, “soft” robots publishes micro-lectures; you
which can work safely alongside human can see his latest one here where
workers are beginning to transform he discusses the future of space
the economics of manufacturing – and exploration. n

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