The Future of Robots
Wow! A robot that can clean my house. Cool! A robot that can take me to school. A robot that can take my job, was I a fool? Technology is advancing further every single day, there are discoveries made to make life easier for human beings. Although, some discoveries contradict this goal and make life harder for the working class. Specifically, the ideology of introducing robots to take on jobs.
In the future, companies will benefit and employees will suffer because robots will invade the employment space. Although I believe that robots will reduce human employment opportunities, my opponents claim that robots will wipe out the current jobs and make new jobs (BBC 2018). For example, robots will replace telemarketers, but they will create new jobs like the maintenance of robots. But, to be fully informed about this topic we must look at both sides. Despite the aforementioned reason, I strongly believe that robots will reduce human employment opportunities.
My first reason as to why I claim that the introduction of robots will reduce human employment opportunities is that companies would prefer hiring robots instead of humans. This is because robots are more predictable, robots have flexible schedules, and are versatile and precise. Studies have proven that nearly 60 percent out of 1,000 U.S. managers think that robots and artificial intelligence perform higher-quality work than humans (King 2019). A lot of cruel companies and managers do not care about their employee’s well being. Therefore, managers would employ robots over humans which would lead to a reduction in human job opportunities.
As time passes and technology advances, robots will learn more skills and take more jobs away from the working class. To use the robot effectively, the robot must learn a variety of different skills. This costs more than expected, a large retailer using robots claimed that their labor costs went up 30%, not down by the 50% they had expected (Nova 2020). Now we know that robots may not be the way to go. The whole point of hiring robots was to avoid the horrible and hideous hardships and cost of employment, yet in the end, the companies aren’t avoiding it with robots.
As a response to my opponent, the rate of new jobs created by robots will not match the rate of increase in the human population. Studies have shown that one more robot per thousand workers reduces the nation’s employment-to-population ratio by about 0.18 to 0.34 percentage points (Rodgers 2020). In other words, a robot can replace a certain amount of jobs and the jobs created because of the robot will be less than those replaced. We must acknowledge that everybody matters, every job matters, let’s show that we care and help everyone out. If an employee loses their job they can face tremendous, terrible hardships. For example, they won’t get healthcare benefits that many companies provide, which puts their whole family’s life at risk. Also, they won’t be able to put food on the table. Let’s do families a favor and rethink our robotic decision.
Now that I have warned the public of the dangers of introducing robots to the workplace, I hope that we can consider this argument in the future. There is a great impact on the human touch in everyday life that robots don’t have. Talking to a robot is like talking to a blank wall, talking to a human is different. Even small human interactions can put a smile on someone’s face. For example, the Starbucks barista that talked to me yesterday. Especially during a time like this, when everyone is isolated. This year we didn’t see each other often which made us realize the importance of the small things that we normally take advantage of. I hope that in the future we can use these previous experiences to benefit the world.
Robots reducing human job opportunities is a huge complication and deserves a significant solution. To come up with a solution, we can compare America to what was proposed in Sweden. Even if Sweden is more generous than America when it comes to basic rights like health care and education. In Sweden, both health care and education is free unlike in America. This means that in America, robots would leave a greater toll on employees when it comes to job reduction. If your job gets taken by robots, you could just be paid $2,320 a month to do nothing (Preske 2019). This value could even increase as time passes. Therefore, it’s a win-win situation for both employers and employees. Now, you may ask, where will all this money come from? Well, the Swedish government is generous enough to pay for this. If we apply this genius model to the rest of the world we can protect jobs while still encouraging growth in artificial intelligence.
We are still many steps away from this futuristic plan. Right now all we know is that our jobs are in danger. It’s not a matter of “if” robots will take our jobs, it’s a matter of “when”.
Works cited:
Robots ‘to create 133m new jobs by 2022’. (2018, September 17).
BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45545228
Are robots better employees? Some managers think so. (2019, April 22).
HRExecutive.com.https://hrexecutive.com/are-robots-better-employees-some-managers-t hink-so/
Nova, A. (2020, June 8). Amid the coronavirus pandemic, many companies could replace their workers with robots.
CNBC.https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/06/how-companies-plan-to-hire-robots-after-coro navirus-layoffs. Html
You could live in Sweden and get paid to do nothing all day long. (2019, March 8).
Travel + Leisure. https://www.travelandleisure.com/jobs/eternal-employment-at-korsvagen
How robots are beginning to affect workers and their wages. (2019, October 22).
The Century Foundation. https://tcf.org/content/report/robots-beginning-affect-workers-wages/?session=1
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