Advantages And Disadvantages Of Robotics

Robots can effect employment in a negative way,as said by the author Kelly “It may be hard to believe… 70 percent of today’s occupation will likewise be replaced by automation...even you will have your job taken away by machines”(Kelly Page.300), this quote comes to show the negative aspect of robots taking over the world in the near

Will robots take over the world? Will there be no need for humans at all in 50 years? Will the world be solely run by robots? The answers to these questions is no. Kevin Kelly’s essay title, “Better than Human: Why Robots Will- and Must- Take Our Jobs” gives us clear reasons not to fear robots, but to eagerly await their robot “takeover” which in his opinion has “already begun” (301). Kelly gives many clear and insightful facts from our past, present and predicted future about robots and the innovation that is to change our world for the better. While Kelly’s essay thoroughly persuades the reader that robots are all good, we should not jump to utopian conclusions. Robots will take many of our current jobs. In the past, innovation has taken certain jobs and replaced them with totally new positions that we could never have imagined. We must be ready for unemployment to rise in many levels of the economy because robots will replace diverse sections of labor from taxi drivers and house cleaners to pharmacists and surgeons.

Can anyone imagine a factory rid of workers and filled with robots? In the course of the next few decades it may be possible and technology replacing the jobs of hardworking people in the U.S. is an all-around controversial topic. Eventually, it will be an epidemic that will need to be resolved in the near future. Even though it may seem impossible, the age of new technology and no humans is coming.

We have already seen a decrease in jobs due to automation. Since 2000, the United States has lost 5 million factory jobs, while from 2006 to 2013, manufacturing grew by 17.6% (roughly 2.2% a year). 88% of those jobs were lost due to “productivity growth,” cites a study by Ball State University. The study also found that all sectors grew in terms of productivity by at least 32% from 1998 to 2012 when adjusted for inflation, with computer and electronic products rising 829%. In fact, the researchers found: “If 2000-levels of productivity are applied to 2010-levels of production, the U.S. would have required 20.9 million manufacturing workers instead of the 12.1 million actually employed.” In summary, due to companies’ expenditures in automation and software, the output per U.S. manufacturing worker has doubled over the past two decades. Indeed, “the real robotics revolution is ready to begin,” according to the Boston Consulting Group, who predict “the share of tasks that are performed by robots will rise from a global average of around 10% across all manufacturing industries

Compared to last century, workers in manufacturing jobs feel more threatened by automation than ever before. While the number of jobs eliminated by automation continues to increase, employers are also less willing to create jobs. In the article "Special report: Automation puts jobs in peril," Nathan Bomey, a business reporter for USA Today, explores the current position of manufacturing workers. In the article, Bomey explains how, "about 58% of CEOs plan to cut jobs over the next five years because of robotics, while 16% say they plan to hire more people because of robotics" (3). Only the United States Government has the power to create a solution to the quandary of workers affected by the switch to technology in the workforce.

Currently, there are jobs that robots can do better than humans, such as weaving and car manufacturing (Kelly 306). Again, when those machines first came to fruition, they eliminated human jobs, but then created jobs. Additionally, there are jobs that humans simply cannot do without robots such as making computer chips (Kelly 306). Looking toward the future, Kelly concludes that if we collaborate with machines and allow them to take over, we will “let them help us dream up new work that matters” (Kelly 312).

90,000 jobs were developed in robotics but 300,000 workers lost jobs. New technologies affect workers need for training and more education. For instance, employees need to gain new skills constantly to keep up with the ever-changing technical world of work. Last, even though computer-engineering jobs are supposed to be one of the quickest expanding jobs, the total number of jobs available will be low in the future (Hodson & Sullivan, 2012). Of course, there are people gaining jobs due to technology.

Some science fiction authors have predicted horrible futures due to AI and robots taking over jobs and later humanity, but many writers like Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson (authors of The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies) dismiss this idea as one unlikely extreme. McAfee and Brynjolfsson describe in their book the nature of machines and manual labor as complements and how their slow delving into becoming economic substitutes as objectively good rather than negative. Businesses naturally do risk cutting automated jobs, but such a move would open an entire new field of jobs for humans to fix and build machines. In turn, businesses like RobotWorx argue that they can make more profit, increase wages for the quality of work from their skilled workers, and remain at the competitive level expected in the modern economic market (more extensive list can be found in their website here). Naturally, such statements beg the question that our economy would not crash because it would naturally adapt and shift due to the moves as it has when such inventions like the assembly line and textile mills came to invention.

Many other jobs are also being replaced by robots such as cashiers, phone operators, salespeople, drivers, bank tellers, and even surgeons (Alkins). When you go to the grocery store and go to a self check-out station, you are being checked out by a robot. If you call the number on the back of a credit card, chances are you’ll speak to an automated artificially-intelligent machine. Self-driving cars are being introduced into society as taxi, bus and truck drivers. While the use of automated artificially intelligent machines is beneficial to companies by lessening the amount of money they put out to employee pay checks, in the long run it will be detrimental to our economy as a whole. Robots will and are taking away jobs from people around the world, which will take away a source of income to many families, potentially putting them into poverty, lessening the amount of people who would be able to use the robotic

Humans losing their jobs from companies like Amazon because of robots is not the problem in our workforce, because there are many other job opportunities for humans that robots simply cannot replace, but the main problem is the uneducated individuals who offer ordinary skills and abilities, are losing their jobs, and simply cannot compete against robots. In order for individuals to be even considered in the modern-day workforce among robots, they must get a higher level education, and obtain tech degrees and parents need to urge their children on education from a very young

As society becomes more technologically advanced, so does the workplace. More and more people are being put out of their jobs each year due to companies replacing them with cost effective robots. Even though they may cost the companies less money overall, it costs the families a lot more. My questions for this research project is What jobs does this affect, what causes companies to replace workers, and what steps could we take to limit job loss?

Robotics back in the 1900’s were considered are due to expensive equipment and programming systems until People started to make them to sell to others and become rich. The robotic industries started with

Over time our lives seem to have become more and more integrated with our technology. Some may say that this is a very bad thing because this change may result in the loss of jobs for millions of people. Jobs such as, cashiers, bankers, legal assistants, and maybe even taxi drivers. The future may appear bleak at first, but the truth of the matter is that robots taking over our simple and automatable jobs just mean that our jobs can evolve with the technology. A very similar thing happened during the industrial revolution when technologies were developed that massively increased the efficiency and yield of farming. This in turn led to a vast increase of food in the country which led to a lesser need for everyone to be a farmer. With a massive amount of food, former farm workers, and advanced technology, a business of mass production and manufacturing began. The loss of jobs due to technology led to a

One of the countless uses of robotics is that robots are capable of doing things humans are physically not able to do, one such thing is manual labor. Manual labor robots have made it easy for humans accomplish difficult manual labor jobs, and made the work environments safer for the workers. Also countless manufacturing factories are filled with robots, which makes manufacturing and distribution of goods faster, and more rapid. Companies such as Tesla, and Apple have already started using robots for manufacturing purposes. According to the New York Times these robots vastly differ from the older generations of robots, such that these robots have high flexibility, and faster and precise movement. By being flexible, these robots are capable

If you think robots are the kind of thing you hear about in science-fiction movies, think again. Right now, all over the world, robots are performing thousands of tasks. They are probing our solar system for signs of life, building cars at the General Motors plants, assembling Oreo cookies for Nabisco and defusing bombs for the SWAT team. As they grow tougher, more mobile, and more intelligent, today’s robots are doing more and more of the things that humans can’t or don’t want to do and in many cases taking away the need for human labor.