Robots replacing Humans


I had a dream last night about an assembly line in a car manufacturing plant and it got me thinking. What happened to all the workers who use to put the whole car together from scratch. Make no mistake, the build quality of cars are has never been better, those automotive assembly robots do the job with extreme accuracy and precision. 


We are designing robots that do the dull, repetitive work and leave the humans to do the work that requires thought and judgement. Well to a certain extent we are doing just that, except we are also designing systems to make judgement calls, this is becoming a threat to the large unskilled labour market, they are feeling inferior to the systems and in quite a few cases they are. 

The other fear they have is that manufacturers will begin to reduce all work to repetitive motion and they will slowly be replaced by robots. Such concerns have led to increasing unhappiness, and even destructive actions, on the part of the humans toward robots. As happened in 1811, by what was known as the 'Luddite riots’, when a group of workers tried to destroy the cotton looms. 

There is an ethical responsibility by the management not to demean their unskilled labour, but rather take advantage of their cognitive abilities, however challenging that may be. Sadly progress always comes with a price, normally human hardship, until we adapt.



Comments

  1. A Swiss think tank predicts that robots will displace 75 million jobs globally by 2022 but create 133 million new ones - a "net positive". Don’t be to quick to bash progress it’s brought us out of the caves...

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  2. Unions talk Mr Glen Michael Smith

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