Is Automation the Future?
Although we created them, robots are quickly becoming more and more skilled and they keep replacing more of the jobs that are in our labor markets that humans used to have. This can be interpreted as both a good and a bad thing for our economy, although the first thing that comes to mind is “They’re stealing our jobs!”. This statement is obviously true but through the process of automation new jobs are being created as well. Automation is a crucial step to becoming a more advanced society and we are well on our way to that goal already, but there are some things we need to take into account when it comes to the future of technology and our economy.
Automation first came about when it was written about in science fiction novels a while back and was usually portrayed as a negative occurrence (again; “They’re stealing our jobs!”). Now, automation is obviously everywhere. From cars to soccer balls, everything is made by machines, whereas in the past those things would have been assembled by hand by real people! It’s hard to imagine seeing people put together a car with their bare hands. It’s not only the assembly of goods anymore. It’s also transforming the way that we control things such as the use of autopilot in cars and planes. Is this process tearing apart our economy because people can’t find such jobs anymore? Or is this a good thing?
If machines can do things more efficiently than people, there is not much reason to keep people doing these jobs if they could be doing other jobs that machines can’t. For the production of goods such as cars, machines outperform humans 100% of the time. They complete the task faster and with more precision. What our future holds is going to take us in the right direction in terms of a more advanced society. Machines will occupy those unskilled jobs such as assembling goods so people are more likely to go to college and learn how to do things that require more knowledge than simply assembling parts. This could include jobs in engineering or business. In the long run this will create new businesses and help advance the technological progress of our world.
Automation is a necessary step to becoming a more advanced nation because it will get people working harder. Bill Gates had a very interesting point on automation. He says we should “tax the robots”, which really means tax the businesses that make the robots. His point behind this is that the people that were replaced by robots had to pay taxes, so taxing machines seems like a good idea also. I’m not completely sure if I agree with this because we aren’t paying the robots anything to do the job, but what I do agree with is his next point. This taxation would ideally give the government more money to put into funding other types of employment and education. He believes that if the people that were replaced by automation could go and do more difficult jobs that robots can’t do, that will greatly help our economy, but we can’t just give up that income tax. He says that if we have these people get trained in on helping other sectors of our economy and finding different (and more skill demanding) jobs, we are “net ahead”. This means we are employing our people in the best way possible.
There are some things to take into account when talking about the future of automation. If we continue progressing with automation at the rate we are going at right now, it has the potential of taking more jobs than we might like to see go away. A study done by Oxford University found that roughly 47% of jobs could be lost to machines within the next 20 years. Again, this is definitely something to take into account because we obviously need jobs. However with automation comes new jobs such as the assembly and design of the machines themselves, and even so, if the businesses aren’t spending as much on new employers, they can invest that money elsewhere which will lead to business growth in the long run.
Another thing we need to take into account is that we can’t give robots too much responsibility. Technologies such as auto pilot in both cars and airplanes work most of the time, but there have been some very tragic accidents when those systems fail. For example, in aviation pilots only touch the controls for a total of three minutes. This is both good and bad because it leaves a lot of room for error for the auto pilot but eliminates the room for the pilot’s error. This erodes the pilots skills because they never end up having to actually fly the plane and when they do, it doesn't turn out well.
Despite its drawbacks, in the long run automation will have a very positive impact on our nation’s economy. Robots can do assembly line jobs much more efficiently than humans, and humans can go elsewhere and do jobs that machines can’t. We will move people out of the unskilled jobs in assembly of goods and into more skilled jobs which will boost our economy and we will progress to a more technologically advanced society.
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