Robot, Robot, Wherefore Art Thou Robot?
By Fran Orman
As I write this I am waiting for a phone call from work telling me, “There is no need to come in today, as we have replaced your job with a robot.” I never get this call. Where is that robot? Popular imagination speculates that the robots are here to take our jobs. I look around optimistically, but the robots never come. I am still here working my mundane job.
Illustration: Todd Bane
Society’s attitude towards the future of work is fearful. The notion that technology will force people out of work is a common belief and source of anxiety for many university graduates.
Professor Borland says there is a “bias to believe that we live in special times.”In Are Robots Taking Our Jobs?, Borland argues that concerns about robots in the workplace have been overstated. These intensified public perceptions contribute to further worry about young people’s future job prospects.
An Australian study predicts that 40 per-cent of jobs are likely to disappear in the next 10 to 15 years. The report was written four years ago, and today the expected dystopia associated with automation is far from a reality. Driverless cars and cafes run by robots are still not a part of the everyday. Predictions can go incredibly wrong. After all, it was John Maynard Keynes who predicted that his grandchildren would only have to work fifteen-hours per week. Yet I’m still here juggling full-time work and study.
If we are on the edge of a workless future, why are there more jobs than ever? Australia’s employment trend continues to remain positive, with unemployment remaining around 5 per-cent.
We need not be so worried about robots taking our jobs. Compared to other economies, Australia lags in engagement with automation. Many firms refuse to adopt technology due to the enormous up-front costs of capital to labour.
Perhaps we need to take a different approach to robotics. Technology can afford us with a wealth of opportunities in the workplace. Robots can make our experience more engaging through doing the dirty, dull and dangerous. Mundane and repetitive jobs, like inputting data, can be replaced through artificial intelligence. This would not make the individual redundant. Rather the technology would change the way a job is performed. It would free up the individual’s time and allow them to specialise in more satisfying work. A study found that technology could be integrated into the workplace to eliminate two hours of tedious work per week.
Today’s society values and attaches our occupation to our sense of identity. When work is an integral aspect to our self-worth, is it not better to engage in meaningful work? Why not let the robots do the boring, so we can do the more satisfying?
Of course, the benefits of job automation may not be shared equally. Those with low skills may be adversely affected. However, for many of us students, a university degree is a good way to prepare against any possible robot overtake.
The second machine age is not some new phenomena. If we wanted robots to take our jobs, we would have given our jobs to them by now. I don’t think robots are here to take our jobs. I just think they will change the way we work, and probably for the better.