Humans VS Robots
In recent years, we have witnessed robots and machines replacing many jobs that used to be done by people. The questions on everyone’s mind are when will it stop, will robots replace humans in everything, what jobs will be left? As technology continues to progress, robots are becoming cleverer than people and computers learn to perform tasks with greater efficiency than us, it is worrying to think that one day robots will be in every workplace and there will be fewer and fewer jobs available for people.
Computers bring many benefits for companies, who make fewer mistakes, save money and work faster and more precisely. This is why many businesses in all fields are beginning to use more machines.
Once upon a time, people built cars and drove them. Machines can now do both of these tasks, with robots developed that can drive cars safely, which could mean job losses in the future for bus and taxi drivers. For years now machines have slowly been taking over the role of building cars, in every company and every factory. Toyota however, has decided to take a pace back and hire more human employees, as they feel that as long as they are well trained and really understand the task they are doing, they will bring better quality work than robots. Toyota’s opinion is that machines are like a lot of average workers, whereas people who are trained well are like masters in the workplace, therefore creating better products.
There are now less people employed in the retail and bank industries, as self-serve machines and ATMs mean that customers can do the most tasks themselves on these, and fewer employees are needed. This is the same for pharmacies, where some are now using robots instead of people to fill in prescriptions. There is even software now that can generate stories and articles, which means less work for writers and reporters, and software that can review documents that would have previously been analyzed by lawyers.
Machines can now do a lot of human tasks, with even robot astronauts being developed by NASA. Soldiers are also slowing being replaced, first by drones and also with robot soldiers being developed, though this may be seen as an advantage to many as it will save lives.
There are now over 1.2 million industrial machines and robots working across the globe and will grow as technology advances. However, there are many fields in which humans will not be able to be replaced, like artistic jobs that use our creativity and imagination, something that computers are not able to reach and places such as hospitals. Whilst there are now robots that are performing surgery, not all tasks in a hospital can be undertaken by robots. They may have steadier hands but aren’t capable of connecting on a human level with patients.
Robots are unable to show compassion like people do and should never be able to replace us when it comes to human interaction.
For example, there are 3 areas that humans outdo robots. The first one is empathy. While building robots that can empathize with humans is the focus of much current research, keep in mind that neither scientists nor philosophers can agree on what emotions actually are.
Besides, no matter how sophisticated a robot’s emotional equipment becomes we still understand that it is merely a set of behaviors a machine has been programmed to sense and exhibit. As long as robots lack true empathy, complex human interactions will continue to require actual humans. The second one is flexibility. Robots are getting better at learning and applying their learnings to new situations, but they are still far from being able to respond to unexpected situations with the same resourcefulness as a person.
Most of the time, new situations still require human intervention and, when available and appropriate, new programming. And the third one acceptability and trust. We, humans, are gradually getting used to having robots in our environments. It will be awhile, however, before the average adult responds to a fully autonomous robot the way they do in futuristic movies — discussing an injury with a quasi-sentient machine as if it were fully able to comprehend the distress. And our most basic response to a non-human thing that can move around on its own is still, at the level of the reptilian brain, “Animal!”
For empathy, flexibility, acceptability, and more, there is still no replacement.
