Andrew Dvork Robots

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.

In an age where technology is so advanced that robots replace humans in the workplace, it is no surprise that increasingly fewer Americans are considered full-time employees. While proponents of advancement argue that technology adds a high level job for every low level job it takes away, low class manufacturing jobs will not be the only newly-automated jobs. Due to rapid advancement, computers are projected to be one thousand times more powerful in the 2030s than computers today (McChesney and Nichols, 2016, 246). With these improvements, no human’s job is safe.

Robotics continue to take over industries in every field of production. From food service to

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.

However, blue-collar unskilled laborers are vulnerable to be displaced by machinery, new technology reduced the necessity for these kinds of jobs and on the other hand it has boosted the demand for more educated skilled workers. Decades ago the demand for unskilled workers far outpaced the demand for educated workers but due to technological advances the demands have shifted in the opposite direction. Manual tasks require basic straightforward skills that are considered primarily innate abilities or modest training. For this very same reason, these workers can’t be substituted by computers or machines, but their skills are not scarce, which inevitably means they typically make low wages. As a result, technology has promoted a division of employment, creating more jobs in lower paying jobs and high paying jobs, while at the same time job creation in the middle have declined. In other words, employment has risen both in high-wage managerial, professional and technical occupations and in low-wage, in-person service

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).

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.

In the article “Better Than Human: Why Robots Will- and Must- Take Our Jobs,” Kevin Kelly tells his audience about what is going to happen with robots in the future. He shows us how robots are beginning to be more advanced and are going to start taking jobs from humans. Kelly talks about the growth from the past century, the upcoming growth that robots will take, and how smart they are becoming.

Although there was so much talk in the past eight years about how automation is going to take over the jobs, technology has not done much to impact the hours that humans have; in fact, robots taking over the jobs in the future is not a sure thing due to the lack of evidence. This is a great article because it furthered my knowledge about the topic. For example, I learned strategies people are using to help humans fight against automation. This article is about automation and how confident people are that robots will take over human’s jobs in the future. The argument that The Atlantic is making is that there is not much evidence that automation will take over; however, this can all change once a recession comes again. As we are on the brink

One of the biggest controversies with the advancement of artificial intelligence is the debate on job automation. Many people believe that artificial intelligence will advance to become better than humans and replace humans in most jobs. The opposite belief is that AI will be used to improve the standard of living and will be a tool to support humans, not replace them. Job automation has many benefits such as performing more dangerous jobs and complete tasks that humans do not desire to do. Even though job automation has benefits, there are many people who believe robots will take over the job market and the unemployment rate will skyrocket. There are multiple supporting factors for each side of the job automation debate, but the argument will never be settled until AI is further advanced and utilized.

Early in “A World Without Work,” The Atlantic expresses fear for future employment by predicting “an era of technological unemployment” (Thompson 7). However, The Atlantic also notes, “The U.S. labor force has been shaped by millennia of technological process….the total number of jobs has always increased” (Thompson 7). While in the past, employers searched for pinsetters, milk men, newspaper readers, ice cutters, and typists, now, those occupations as well as similar jobs have been eliminated due to the increased role that technology has played. However, the United States Department of Labor shows that new jobs are constantly appearing. In fact, “During the Clinton–Gore administration, more than 19 million new jobs…[were] created—a rate of growth more than twice that of the previous decade. High-technology industries account for one million of these new jobs” (“Futurework”). With the increase in technology around the world, thus, an increase in globalization, new generations have used technology as a resource rather than a limitation in order to create more unconventional work, as demonstrated during the Clinton-Gore

In a recent study(pdf), economists Daren Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University try to quantify how worried we should be about robots. They examine the impact of industrial automation on the US labor market from 1990 to 2007. They conclude that each additional robot reduced employment in a given commuting area by 3-6 workers, and lowered overall wages by 0.25-0.5%. (Kopf)

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.