Are Robots Taking our Jobs?
Have you ever heard a conversation between your parents or grandparents discussing how robots are taking jobs? Have you ever wondered if that is true or not? Today we are going to be finding the answer to that question.
First things first what classifies as a “robot”? a robot according to Google, is “a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer.” A few examples of this could be a Roomba, which is a robot that is made for vacuuming, as well as simple things like a tablet at a table at a restaurant. Below is a video that goes further into what a robot is, what they can do, what they look like, and what we can expect from them in the upcoming years.
Now that we all know what robots are, as well as what robots can do, We need to find out if robots are taking jobs.
The easiest way to see something like this is to look at a graph. Below is a line graph from the U.S Department of Labor Statistics showing the data of the bottom 90 percent of Americans over roughly 60 years.
As we can see not only are people starting to lose money, but people are getting straight fired from their jobs because of robotics. Furthermore, this data was only from 1945 to 2005! These are crazy statistics and these are from years ago!
So now that we have an answer, and we have seen how robots have been increasingly taking jobs for the past few decades we have to ask ourselves, are robots still taking jobs today? And yes! with newer and better technologies Robots have been on the rise lately, with many people fearing they will lose their job.
Above is another chart, however instead of this one showing jobs that have been taken, this chart is showing the some of the more common jobs that are at risk for being automated.
Now just because your job or future career is not on here does not mean that it is not threatened by robots. As of currently, there is talk of robotics taking over doctors jobs. doctors, for example, have been working alongside robotics for years, but because technology has evolved and doctors have been comfortable working with robots, scientists and engineers have developed certain robots that can completely handle a surgery by themselves.
Now that we know robots are taking jobs, what can we do about it?
- Tax the robots. This would see the upward trend of automation slow down, as it would make the robots more expensive. However this would only be beneficial to countries who already have a large amount of robots per workers. This could be very detrimental to countries with low productivity.
- move displaced workers to other jobs. This plan revolves around letting robots take jobs, and simply moving the people that lost their job to another job. This plan could work as it would allow more jobs in the elderly care area, and more jobs for supporting special needs children. However, this plan could not work as people may be upset about having to transition. This plan also looks at humanity as a whole rather than seeing people as being different and special.
- Do nothing. This theory revolves around simply letting the robots take and control as many jobs as they possibly can. This would allow people who do not want to work to … not work. If you did want to work however, your job choices would very limited and would revolve around maintenance and coming up with new ideas for robots.
So that’s it. It is inevitable that robots are coming and taking jobs. However, do not be too scared as complete automation control is years and years ahead of us. However, that does not mean that you shouldn't be aware of what is happening between jobs and robots. Below is one final video that discusses the main points that we learned about today.