Machines are taking away our jobs; true.
#Robots flip burgers and work in warehouses;
#Artificial Intelligence is handling insurance claims, basic bookkeeping, doing legal research, and performing basic HR tasks, human force is standing nowhere around them. Only those with spectacular skills and the owners of robots will thrive. True, but this is a partial truth. Yes, we don’t deny that some jobs will be taken by robots but not all. Let’s check out the optimistic point of
#automation.
Automating a Job can result in more of those jobs
500 years ago, Queen Elizabeth cited the same fear with the introduction of a knitting machine. But, what happened next was it opened the doors for more jobs while reducing the time to weave thus, increasing their productivity.
Present day version of this incident is not much different, today, we are warned of the ‘Rise of Robots’ and ‘End of Job.’ But why? I really don’t understand. If a factory cut off the cost with automation, there could be two cases-
- Lower price, making the product appealing thus, more sale and more production, leading to the need for workers.
- Make more profit or pay higher wages, thus, again leading to more consumption and production and ultimately more employees
Taking the example of Amazon, it has increased the number of Robots in its warehouses from 1,400 to 45,000 in the last three years. However, the employment rate remained constant.
With technology comes the opportunity
As automation kills jobs, it opens the door for others. With the end of the Industrial era, about half of the American workers were still employed in agriculture. And major of the agricultural jobs were about to be lost to machines. If nothing else had changed, almost the whole society would have been unemployed. But this is not the case. Different other sectors open up when a single one is closed.
Automation will make humans creative
According to a report from Oxford in 2013, it was estimated that about half of the US occupation would go automated. But McKinsey report of 2016 suggests that only 5% of them could be completely automated. If humans aren’t bogged up with boring tasks like weaving, moving from shelf to shelf finding items, and transcribing interviews; they could be occupied with more of their creativity. For example, if reports would be analyzed by robots then the team leader could spend time coaching his team.
To wrap it in a few words, we can just say that as the invention of the computer led to new opportunities, the dawn of automation will again create a set of new jobs. It will not take up the job rather more occupations will change than will be automated away.
