We are currently in the 21st century and compared to the 20th century we have made significant technological advances such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops and it has come to the point where we have designed self-driving cars. And now some machines are in factories and assembly lines that help in manufacturing. But how far will this go?
When we think of robots taking over our jobs we believe of low-skilled jobs such as clerks, waiters, cleaners, etc. However, it’s not about robots replacing workers or their jobs, even though few jobs will be automated. It is estimated that with our current technology fewer than 5% of occupations would go according to research from McKinsey & Company. This is because some of the activities that we do will be done by the robot and not the whole job itself. This wouldn't just affect the low paid workers but also some of the most highly paid jobs such as doctors and CEOs.
These robots represent a set of AI-powered systems that can understand human behavior and make decisions on our behalf. Current technologies in this field include virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google Now as well as chatbots and automated robotic systems. In fact, there are Tesla cars right now which are able to drive by themselves.“By 2021 a disruptive tidal wave will begin. Solutions powered by AI technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact, felt in transportation, logistics, customer service and consumer services,” said Brian Hopkins from Forrester Research.
Global Perspectives
There are intelligent agents can go through calendars, email accounts, browsing history, playlists, purchases and media viewing history to create a clear view of any given individual. With this knowledge, robots can provide highly customized assistance, which is valuable to shops or banks trying to deliver better customer service.
Many fast food chains around the world already have a kiosk for customers to order food instead of them having to approach the cashier to order. Similarly some restaurants have tablets for people to place their orders without needing a waiter to attend to them. For example, the fast food chain Wendy’s has already added these kiosks to 1000 of its restaurants and according to a survey by Technomic, 40% of millennials said that they would use kiosks in a restaurant compared with 30% of all its customers. However, according to another website which talks about kiosks at McDonalds it seems that with the addition of these kiosks, jobs won’t be lost but they can actually increase jobs, this is because there is no interference with the drive thrus. Also, staff can be given more customer service roles such as concierge and table service where they can enhance the dining experience. Personally I agree with the website that everyone will benefit from the kiosks as customers can have more accuracy when ordering and now they will also feel more welcome and enjoy dining. As for both Wendy’s and McDonalds they are simply assigning their staff to a variety of different jobs.
Through observations, there are many blue jobs in particular that are in jeopardy of being taken away. In China, the government is already planning on replacing its factory workers with robots, taking away the jobs of millions of workers. For example the Changying Precision Technology Company which produces mobile phones and uses automated production lines. There used to be 650 employees, but now 590 people have lost their jobs leaving only 60 people now, According to the general manager, the number of required employees will drop to 20 at a point. Despite increased productivity and better quality this is just one company that is drastically reducing its labour imagine how many factories there are in China, the impact domestically will leave hundreds of thousand people unemployed. Between 1995 and 2002 about 16 million factory jobs disappeared, which is roughly 15% of total manufacturing employment. In mid 2013, the Chinese government revealed that only half of the country’s college graduates were able to find jobs, with more than 20% of the previous years graduates being unemployed.Personally, I fear that as the population grows, kids growing up in families that are not so well off will find it harder to be employed in the future.
In Japan, the abundance of vending machines scattered around is mesmerizing and considering the job opportunities sacrificed it is looking to be harder to be employed. There are currently 5.52 million. Not mentioning the robots that are found in hotels to entertain guests in the lobby, it wouldn’t be a surprise if in the near future the check ins of guests are managed by robots. However it isn’t a big problem in japan because the death and birth rate is both declining therefore labour is expensive and scarce.
In the US, each additional robot in the US economy reduces employment by 5.6 workers, and every robot that is added to the workforce per 1,000 human workers causes wages to drop by as much as 0.25 to 0.5 percent. Such are the conclusions reached by MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and Boston University’s Pascual Restrepo. This could have an impact on the standard of living as the lower incomes would suggest. By 2021, robots will eliminate 6% of all jobs in the US. This is because there are very few manufacturing jobs in the United States, this could be a problem for the people who are struggling to get education
It turns out that the percentage of jobs that can be automated for each country varies by a lot as, countries in northern europe such as Iceland, Finland, Denmark and so on have jobs less automable than those in Eastern and Southern Europe. Depending on the degree of severity, we may see an increase in people moving to nordic countries in the future. In the UK, more than 10 million UK workers are at high risk of being replaced by robots within 15 years as the automation of routine tasks gathers pace in a new machine age. PwC said 2.25 million jobs were at high risk in wholesale and retailing – the sector that employs most people in the UK – and 1.2 million were under threat in manufacturing, 1.1 million in administrative and support services and 950,000 in transport and storage.
National perspective
In Malaysia, palm harvesting processes are slowly being automated, and technologies will soon be able to track the number of fruits with 3D images and use sensors to monitor the health of each tree. It has even come to the point that the technology is used for detecting the DNA of some fruits and checking its genuity. Entire global industrial supply chains will soon be linked through smart technologies, improving standard and production, reducing costs and downtime, and increasing profit.These benefits come with significant costs and risks, however, led by cybersecurity issues: the vulnerability of manufacturing processes and hackers, for example, the potential instability and unreliability of machine-to-machine communication, and the unemployment lower-educated workers. Besides this, it is estimated that 65% of Malaysian jobs will be automated by 2050. Considering the fact that there are many foreigners who work in our country, this could be a major issue as the country will be suffering a financial crisis with the unequal distribution of wealth.
Personal perspective
In my opinion yes, most jobs would be taken over by robots but by doing that they are also creating opportunities for other jobs like repairing them, their programming, assembly, etc. So, in my opinion, it’s a win-win situation for people who are either unemployed or have dirty jobs as they will grab this opportunity.
However for the people who are well off with good jobs, they wouldn’t be handed over to the robots entirely, fragments of their tasks will as it will be ridiculous for robots to make big decisions for a company or a decision at all. Therefore to me, it’s a win-win situation.
Possible scenarios
It is a possibility as we become lazier, we will make robots do our tasks and for example show up to work for us, buy stuff for us, negotiate/make a decision for us, etc. There might be a possible robot takeover of the world as we choose them as a representative for us and in the event of that we would not be able to take care of ourselves anymore, and this isn’t just worrying for us but more worrying for people who make decisions in companies as the robots won’t always make the correct decision and they will also won't really take rules and human emotions into consideration.
Another possibility is that when there’s a shortage of energy like electricity, the robots can only be powered for a limited amount of time. If we rely on them totally then, we will be helpless for the amount of time that the power is cut and people might try and steal valuable resources and possibilities of fights and riots might occur.
Causes of action
We can make certain products compulsory hand made such as some food so that people still remember their culture and their recipes passed down from their ancestors and also to make people not lazy and take responsibility and understand the hardship of others before them especially before the automation of almost everything.
We shouldn’t completely rely on robots and assign each and every task to them. For example, certain products need the human touch like food specifically it tastes extra special when the cook puts extra effort in preparing it. Furthermore spare batteries and solar panels should be added to the robots in an emergency such as a power shortage. It will be useful as you never know what you need until you’re in that situation.
We should improve the education system and teach skills that are not easily replaceable. Employees should also be given a “test” to continue to keep up with the standards and “future
proof” their jobs. This would significantly reduce the unemployment due to robots.
Reflection
The reason i chose this topic in the first place is because technology plays a big part of my life, as i deal with it every single day and, looking at how we have progressed with development one can only wonder where this may lead us to. Honestly at the start of the research I strongly agreed and thought that robots are actually going to take over our jobs but, information from a wide range of reliable sources have really changed my perspective of the big picture. Based on that, I want to conclude that robots won’t be taking over our jobs but actually opening new career pathways and creating job opportunities for everyone.