Are we going to lose jobs to the 'robots'

No one knows for definite, we are getting some extreme views on both sides – from slaves to the robots to robots as slaves to us. The answer, like a lot of things, is probably somewhere in the middle, but there will be change. There are those who are calling this a fourth industrial revolution (Schwab, 2016 see the link at the bottom); there is probably a lot of truth in this, the German government is looking at Industrie 4.0 announced in 2011 integrating ICT with industry - the videos from various organisations below can explain this more easily than I can.





We can see changes around us in the way we buy things, booking holidays on-line, ordering groceries online and the rise of Amazon to buy goods as well as books.

By Clockready (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

Is my job is safe? 

Arguably traditional automation has replaced low skilled or 3 Ds jobs (dirty, dangerous and demanding physically), but what about now? There  seems to be a suggestion that the more creative jobs would be safer from automation and that the retail and administrative jobs are at risk.  So are medical staff and legal professional safe? Short term probably, but systems such as IBM’s Watson are making that a little more uncertain. So is it this creative bit that makes the difference? Well that is being weaken by the ‘robotic’ article writers than are starting to appear, and being published, to a certain extent there maybe some overlap with the legal role, through the requirement of presenting evidence in the most effective way for its audience.



Medical staff must be safe surely, well DaVinci robots (see below) have been around for a while now under the control of a surgeon but what next? There is a long history of expert systems in medicine are they going to get better (no pun intended), systems such as  Watson seems to use yes.

Medical Illustration, Wellcome Images

 

Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc-nd 4.0, see

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Well perhaps this looks bleak, but  is that because we are in middle (or even the start) of this revolution? Personally I think we will see different roles and roles being redefined; perhaps the ‘robot’ will be the assistant helping to provide the information or sifting the information a bit but final decision will be in human hands. What will happen is change - roles will change, so perhaps the key is think flexibly; to stop demonising these things and think how we can live with the changes.

The opinions are the author's and do not reflect necessarily the views of any organisation the author has any association with.