ay iThere has been concerns related to the emergence of robots in the workplace and its impact on the future employment. Some predicts that robots will significantly displace numbers of jobs and this will open on to massive unemployment while others anticipate that jobs will be undertook by robots but because of human ingenuity new jobs will be created. The first group believe that Jobless future arising from automation is frightening, because jobs will be taken by intelligent robots and software. They argue that robots will be substitute for human capabilities even in the most sophisticated tasks such as judgement. Also they imply that robots will have an absolute advantage and will dominant the jobs. While the second group believe human has been experienced the emergence of automation during industrial revolution and the future ahead of human is prosperous. The replacement of jobs by automation or robots did not lead to unemployment crisis. The workers who were replaced by robots have found different form of jobs in other industry (David). This movement is similar to the invention of steam engine by changing the nature of jobs.
Prat who is an expert in robotics discussed that robots have an absolute advantage in a job. He further explains “Cloud robotic” and “Deep learning” abilities enable robots to do sophisticated activities at human levels{Pratt, 2015 #9}. With this new ability robots can learn from experiences of all other robots and they can also generalise their association.
Impact of emergence of robots and automation can be seen from a broader perspective that automation will substitute some jobs but it will complement others. As occupations are consisted of bundle of tasks automating all the tasks are not easy. In particular automation aiming at doing certain tasks rather than doing the whole occupations. Autor brings ATMs as an example of complementary between bank industry and IT technology. ATMs are invented to do repetitive and routine aspect of teller’s task such as cash handling and transferring. But the emergence of ATMs leads to the introduction of variety of credit cards and new services to customers. Tellers are now focusing their time on doing problem solving tasks to answer customer’s requirement. Automating those unnecessary routine tasks increase the economic value of the services provided for customers (Autor, 2015).
The misconception in this situation arises from this fact that the negative effects of automation are obvious to people such as unemployment but the positive effect of the increased welfare is not obvious as it dispersed to many. Automation will increase the purchasing power of the people in a way that purchasing an additional quantity will cost few dollars. If firms successfully deploy robotic labours the productivity of the manufacturing company will increase as the number of units produced with robotic labours will increase and lead to decrease in the prices. In the end it leads to prosperity of human. So they will have more money in their pockets which mean wealthier than before.
Ford argues that a robot will likely be replicated and deployed till all competitors are eliminated {Ford, 2015 #11}. The fallacy of the argument is that he considers the short term effect of technological changes without considering long term effects. In the short run technological advancement will cause unemployment in specific industry such as elimination of majority jobs in the farms but in the long run other jobs will be created in the new industry and people will move on other work. New tasks such as supervisory performance created to oversee the new factory structure while many jobs were lost due to automation of assembly lines.
Invention of assembly lines in the manufacturing overcomes the physical limitation of human in doing repetitive jobs. But this time is different as sophisticated algorithm enables computer to scan thousands of legal briefs for assessment of pre-trial research. These algorithms enable advanced robots to do non-routine cognitive tasks (Markoff 2011). Ford also argues that robots capabilities are evolving very fast and they will displace a great number of current jobs in a shorter time in compare to previous times (Ford, 2015). They ignored the emergence of new and unknown demands in the future. As human has unmet demand and needs, new technology will bring more new products and services that were unpredictable in the past. Customer will demand these new future products. In fact, these new products become as a necessity of a lifetime. Many jobs such as fashion consultants and cyber security have been emerged to respond to new changes in the creative, technology, business services and caring sectors (Autor, 2015). Labour-saving technology will reduce the demand for some jobs, but it will raise the demand for others. Predictions about unemployment mostly concentrate only at process innovation and ignore the importance of inventions for new products and services in the long term Mokyr, Vickers, and Ziebarth (2015).
Effect of technological advancement does not mean reduction in the amount of jobs however it will affect the quality of jobs in the labour market. As Demand for cognitive tasks and high skill tasks already happened in 2000 (Mokyr, Vickers, & Ziebarth, 2015). In the past robots overcome the limitation of physical power but this time robots will overcome the limitation of individual mind. The number of jobs in the middle-skilled employment will disappear as these jobs can be codified in rules and procedure in softwares that can be executed by computers. On one side high skill educated doing professional and technical jobs on the other side many people doing low-skilled jobs which is refer to job polarisation. Jobs that are manual tasks such as food preparation, cleaning, maintenance and other jobs in security shows challenges for automation. The challenge for middle skill workers is not drying up of jobs but that they are not high educated or qualified enough for the new jobs {Autor, 2015 #8}. So the shift of middle class workers to either higher or lower skill jobs will depend on their competence for the new jobs. Middle class workers will shift to either higher or lower skills jobs.
Technological change can be seen like a trade. This can be viewed from a Ricardo and comparative advantage model. Countries are better off by having voluntary trade, Human are also better off by letting robots do the job. If both countries concentrate on their comparative advantage they gain a benefit from the trade between them. Robots can do jobs faster and cheaper than human which is their competitive advantage. Human can trade what they are worse at. If we do trade with robots, we can be better off by working away in this area and shifting works to more specialized jobs. This round of innovation will be different as the robots become smart. They believe that the value of human labour in many sectors even in highly educated societies will become lower (Pratt, 2015). The creative jobs such as song writing are not unaffected to this innovation. Robots can replace tasks that are explicit, repetitive and well defined. As Both pattern recognition and communication are now automated. So does human now have a comparative advantage? Creativity and human ingenuity is the answer. Despite the power and speed of robots show little creativity. They can’t compose very good songs, write great novels, or generate good ideas for new businesses (Worstall, 2015). Human ingenuity and creativity is the absolute advantage of humans to robots. If technological advancement increases notably, workers still have comparative and absolute advantage to perform useful tasks (Mokyr et al., 2015).
When safety is introduced the number of the fatality increased and people become more risk takers. Job security is like a safety belt or an insurance that guarantees income and will make employers redundant and less productive. Technology or better say robots will motivate people to respond to new changes by achieving future-proof expertise to act as more creative and inventive. Without technological change people experience lower standard of living and rampant unemployment.
To be worry or not? Who is predicting the right future? the technologists who picture the future in a dramatic way that jobs will be increasingly eliminated by robots or the economics who are mostly optimistic about future and expect that eventually robots will create jobs due to human unmet demands?? The picture of the future will be something in between. To me, mass unemployment will not happen as the way is describe by techis but some levels of jobs will be eliminated by robots and the nature of jobs will shift to more computer related jobs that requires workers to upgrade their skill to match the requirement of jobs. Even if the advances in robots speed up, its effect on unemployment will depend on demands. New technologies will address unpredicted human demands. In fact people will respond to changes by technology in the short run by adopting themselves to advanced skills in the long run. It is true that robots can do variety of tasks but it is unlikely that jobs be eliminated by robots.