The machines are coming for a few of our jobs. Be afraid or welcome our new robot overlords, as you like.
The robots are coming, and that they want our jobs. That’s progress. Inside the 20th century, they wanted our women.
Actually, the robots don’t need all of our jobs. They’re said to be ready to competing for approximately 47% of them, a minimum of within the US, given current technological expectations. So only 1/2 us might want to retrain. The opposite option is to affix the Resistance. Who knew The Terminator was an employment double entendre?
The other 1/2 us should get used to being lonely at the job, that may evolve into making certain our mechanized colleagues don’t malfunction or do something unexpected. Small consolation though it can be, if you are the last human at the factory floor, you will not have to worry about turning out the lights if you happen to leave. That is the type of task robots do all right.
Google’s acquisition of 7 robotics and technology companies up to now six months and its decision to offer its nascent robotics business to former Android chief Andy Rubin suggests a major commitment to automation. This is not a Google Wave-style expeditionary mission. It is a beachhead to be able to allow the corporate to expand beyond the sea of ones and zeroes and into the territory of producing, logistics, and commerce.
Automation have been a reality in manufacturing for years. But now that we’re attending to the purpose of adjusting state laws to permit driverless vehicles, it’s clear the robot revolution won’t remain confined to factories.
Google’s competitors are advancing the state-of-the-art. Last year, Amazon bought Kiva Systems, the maker of the robots it uses to hold goods in its warehouses, for $775 million.
In fact, robots are already here among us. You simply don’t see them because they’re hard to acknowledge, or they operate outside the general public view.
According to the International Federation of Robotics, industrial robot shipments inside the US increased 9% from 2011 to a record 22,414 units in 2012. From 2014 to 2016, global robot installations are expected to extend a typical of 6% per year. On the end of 2012, there have been 1.2 million to at least one.5 million operational industrial robots on the earth.
Losing a task to a machine can be a tragedy on a private level, but it surely may well be quite desirable on a macroeconomic scale. A knowledge Technology and Innovation Foundation paper published in September argues that fear of robots amounts to neo-Luddism, and that we must always deploy more robots to extend productivity, so we can improve the economy.
Though the paper veers from supported argument to dubious speculation in places (as when it states, “There isn’t any upward limit to our like to consume”), it is usually that things will workout finally between humans and robots — a minimum of with regards to our relationship with deferential, unarmed machines. But it’s worth wondering whether the ITIF will change its tune when robots become able to filling executive and managerial roles.
Click the picture above to explore just a few jobs that robots are already doing or have demonstrated the power to do. Be afraid or welcome our new robot overlords, as you like.
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