Robots and Job Opportunities

Robots and Job Opportunities

The first of the Three Laws of Robotics by Isaac Asimov says: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm”.

Working robots are everywhere, but this is just the beginning: robots are going to be part of our life. As Carlo Alberto Avizzano (director of robotic perception laboratory at Scuola superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa) claims: “Robotics will be integrated into nearly every aspect of most people’s daily lives by the 2030. However, we need to invest in the Artifical Intellicence to take into the next level”.

At this stage robots are a step behind human brain. Scientists estimate that robot intelligence should be 100.000 time faster to match human smarts. Moreover, computers run on an algorithm that faces a real challenge: to generate a human creativity.

Would the rise of robots with AI lead to increases in unemployment in the future?
If the current predictions are correct, then in the next 20 years the 47% of jobs will be automized.
However, experts estimate that robots won’t cause unemployment, but rather reemployment into other fields that can’t be automated. One of these fields is Computer Science. If we think at what happened during the “electric light industrial revolution”, in which machines initially changed the manifacture method, but workers found increased opportunities for employment.

It’s happening now in the Silicon Valley, where the hot new job is being a robot’s assistant. Ventures like Facebook are in fact looking for a machine helper for its latest product “M”: a personal assistant built into Messenger, that can book flights, restaurants and make recommendations, etc.
Interviewed by The New Scientist, Facebook spokesman Ari Entin claimed “they invented a new job role. Once we learn something, there is something else more complex, it’s like a threshold that is expanding. The more we learn, the more there is to learn. It is never-ending learning”.

What do you think? Would you feel threatened by robots in pursuing your career?

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