• Question: Do you think that robots will begin to take over peoples jobs e.g builders?

    Asked by Amrit to Siobhan, Katie, Iulia on 13 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Iulia Motoc

      Iulia Motoc answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      Robots will take over some jobs. Construction is going to be one of the area that will be dominated by robots. However, this is mostly a good thing. As in constructions builders have to work with very heavy materials, you would prefer to have a robot getting damaged in case of an accident, that a person dying.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      Yep, they already do. There was a striking example in China where 90% of people were replaced with robots. This only increased the number of items per day they produced, and bumped up the quality as well!

      Transportation, construction, and a few other fields, I’d imagine, would want robots instead of people, as robots don’t get tired, do things precisely, and actually cost less over the long term (costs are what usually drives these changes).

      It’s good that some jobs can be done by robots, especially those that are dangerous to people, like mining coal. We are still debating, however, about what to do with people displaced by robots.

    • Photo: Katie Pavey

      Katie Pavey answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      We use robots to make cars now, whereas even as little as 50 years ago they would have been made by people, so robots have already taken over jobs in this area.

      Or what about when you go to the supermarket – have you used a self checkout? 10 years ago they didn’t exist.

      Your example of builders is interesting. We’ve been working with a housing company in the last couple of years to see if the technology we use in car factories can be applied to houses. It’s still in it’s early stages, but I think it’s something that will definitely happen in the future.

    • Photo: Siobhan Duncan

      Siobhan Duncan answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      Yes they will.

      As a robot engineer I make sure that I think about the effect my technology has on society.

      This doesn’t mean that I don’t think robots shouldn’t do those jobs, but I think it means that we need to think about how as a society we deal with this.

      There has been some really great work done around the idea that we should have universal basic income, also called a citizens wage.

      Where everyone is paid, by the government, a wage that is enough to pay for the basics, food, rent, bills etc…

      And then if people can find work on top of this they can afford more like holidays and expensive gadgets etc…

      But this means that as we move as a society to robots doing all of the jobs (this will take a while and will not happen overnight) that we have a safety net in place that allows people time to re-train or volunteer or even look after their family full time, rather than suffer because robots have taken all the jobs.

      I think this will happen with jobs where people drive being replaced with autonomous vehicles within the next 10/15 years or so. But we are still a while away from replacing builders.

      Hope this doesn’t worry you too much 🙂
      Siobhan

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