For the purpose of keeping the argument rational and consistent, “Automation is the technology by which a process or procedure is performed without human assistance” (Groover. M. 2014).
As the world is continually thrust into the future by the ever-growing technological industry, the question of human redundancy draws nearer.
This Essay will gradually argue both the positive and negative sides to Automaton in the context of the twenty first century lifestyle, with a reference to current automated systems, such as Driverless vehicles, Robotics, and various automated software systems.
Some of the main areas that will be focused on are the industrial and manufacturing sectors of society, as many people fear that robotics will takeover in the workplace. (The Guardian)
According to surveys conducted by The Guardian, in the next hundred years around four million UK jobs could be taken over by automated systems, and therefore leave a large portion of the human workforce unemployed.
Not only will this leave people jobless, but also create a large initial dent in the UKs nationwide “JSA” fund, which will undoubtedly have a distinctive negative impact on the overall economy.
Apart from the fore mentioned impact on the human workforce, installing various types of automated systems is more often than not, initially extremely pricy, as well as to introduce into current facilities, and therefore can be a high-risk investment. (VIP Webpage)
All that said, although having a high initial cost, generally speaking the over all productivity of automated systems greatly out way they’re costs, and still this is not the only positive aspect of automation, as the other major upsides are the lack of human unpredictability and fault which ‘ones and zeros’ are simply not capable of producing. (VIP Webpage)
Another major emerging market of automation is transportation. This is predominantly so as according to a study conducted by the “Wards Auto” in 2010, more than 1.015 billion consumer owned vehicles are “on the road”, (Huffington post website, 2018) and as a result this makes transportation an important, and regular part, of day to day life, and human time in general.
With the knowledge of knowing that approximately one in seven people across all age groups, currently owns a road vehicle, it can clearly be established that the action of commuting to and from places, is an unproductive use of time in the extremely fast moving lifestyle of the twenty first centaury.
To substantiate this, a study conducted by the Telegraph indicates that people in the UK spend approximately 10 hours per week driving. This amounts to people spending more than an entire working day commuting, and therefore reiterates how conventional transportation methods substantially waste the small amount of time “we” as humans have.
This however, both creates and has created, an opportunity for the application of automation in transportation industry. There are many large companies heavily invested in “the future of transportation”, such as Tesla, Volkswagen, and many other pioneers in the alike field, and it is these fore mentioned flaws of current transportation trends which drive companies to solve societal issues related to the topic of transportation.
Apart from transportation, one of the other major forms of automation that impacts society is robotics, particularly regarding sectors such as manufacturing. Although not guarantied as common knowledge, over that last few decades, the fear of robots “taking over” in the workplace, has dramatically increases. This is directly due to the correlation of recent technological advancements, and “popular” public belief and or concerns.These fears however are not without reason, as particularly in large-scale manufacturing, robotics are rapidly becoming “the chosen” workforce over humans. (The Guardian, 2017). The Primary reason for this is that Humans are flawed from a perspective of production. This can be reiterated as humans are both required and entitled to human wrights which although seems a necessity, is nothing more than a liability when factors such as production speed and overall turnover are taken into account. According to in-depth research conducted by the Guardian and other corporations, it was estimated that approximately thirty to forty per cent of jobs would be superseded by up and coming technological advancements within the next 10 years. (University of Oxford, 2015). This does dramatically “hype up” the working population and many feel that not only their jobs, however also their lively hood is at stake, and in fact, it was the Bank of England which stated that “up to 15m jobs in Britain were at risk from robots”, and as well as that it “hollow out the workforce”. These both are reputable sources for financially based sectors and therefore bare validity.
The final, and yet major aspect of automation that has not yet been mentioned is the less notable one, being software based automation. Although not immediately obvious, automation in software has already had an enormous impact on society over the last few decades. In fact many are oblivious to it, as it seems so “normal”.
Some prime examples of such automated systems are things as simple as predictive typing, spellchecks, and many others, which make decisions on their own. A more obvious example might be considered systems such as “Siri”, and “Hey Google”.
Automated systems such as these are more commonly know by the term “Ai”. This is term given to anything that can closely mimic “Ni” which is natural, biological intelligence, however is not true intelligence. (Poole, Mackworth & Goebel 1998)
The main upside of conventional automated systems however, is that they can perform digital tasks, at a substantially higher rate that humans can, as well as never needing to take a break, which in short means that they often better than humans when it coms to “crunching numbers”. To add more to the human “fear” of loosing jobs, a visual bar graph created by the Guardian clearly indicates that the finance and accounting sectors of society will be the most effected by the ever growing technological progressions, with some 30% of the workforce being predicted as becoming obsolete, by current employers in the for mentioned departments. This clarifies the previous statement, and indicates that although software automation will and currently is a definite cause of job loss, it is substantially more efficient and more “worth” the money fro a commercial perspective.
Taking all the previous statements into account it is clear that all aspects of automation mentioned, are substantially more efficient due to factors in their favour such as, the lack of human error, as well as the rebuff for human wrights as a necessity. The other major positive still remains that in the long run automation is significantly more cost efficient as after the respective amount of time the systems production, out ways its costs.
On the other hand, the implementing of automated systems does inevitable result in the loss of jobs. Not only this, but automated systems are more often than not initially costly. However, as recently fore mentioned, the costs are gradually outweighed by the profits, as well as the certainty of consistent production as apposed to the gable of human error.
References
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