Robots As Coworkers
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, wrote in their book, Race Against The Machine: “The root of our problem is not that we’re in a Great Recession, or a Great Stagnation, but that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring. Our technologies are racing ahead but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind. So it’s urgent that we understand these phenomena, discuss their implications, and come up with strategies that allow human workers to race ahead with these machines instead of racing against them. “
It’s a warning about what could happen in the future and its implications in the labor market of the United States of America and the rest of the world. McKinsey Global Institute predicts that 50 percent of the activities that humans currently do will be automated by 2055.
According to the International Labour Organization, unemployment in 2017 should increase by about three million mostly in emerging and developing countries.
The United Nations predicts that the world’s gross product will expand by 2.7 percent in 2017 and 2.9 percent by 2018.
Okun’s Law empirically demonstrates that when the economy grows, the rate of unemployment decreases. However, Brynjolfsson states that in our time that can not happen with the use of robots.
The European Union tops the list of regions where there is a greater use of robots in industries.
According to data from the World Bank, the proportion of jobs threatened by automation reaches 69 percent in India, 77 percent in China and no less than 85 percent in Ethiopia.
One of the most important proposals is from Bill Gates. He proposes to create a tax on robots that allows to distribute the wealth generated by them in a more equitable way among humans.
Another is from Mark Zuckerberg, who proposes the creation of a universal and equal wage for each human. The entrepreneur also calls for creating tomorrow’s jobs, such as creating and repairing robots, and creating the new global citizen and not just members of a single nation.
Generally, the technological revolutions throughout history have generated more jobs than they have destroyed.
The expansion of robotics and artificial intelligence will generate important economic advantages which will lead to a higher per capita product growth. MIT economist Robert Solow showed that long-term growth is determined by technological change and not by the rate of investment, so economic growth is assured by the robots.
Market research firm Metra Martech conducted a study on the positive impact of industrial robots on employment which concludes that, thanks to the use of these robots, a million high-quality jobs have been created around the world.
Robotics seems to be an opportunity for humans to solve the huge global problems of today in a world ravaged by poverty and violence, although there will undoubtedly be others.
