Comments by "Nigel Johnson" (@nigeljohnson9820) on "The Exchange: Should we be worried about the robotics revolution?" video.
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Earlier adopters of robot technology may make money, but the robot revolution is self limiting, as robots do not consume or pay taxes, so an economy that is based on extensive use of robots will stagnate and decline. There will be no market for the products and services that the robots produce. Essentially an unemployed human work force will not have the money to keep the economy running.
It is also a fallacy that robot automation will replace many low skilled jobs. Robotics is expensive to buy, and it makes no sense replacing a low paid worker with a very expensive machine. The depreciation in the capital value of the asset, most likely will exceed the pay of the casually employed worker. It is artificial intelligence that will be taking over the role of the highly paid management and skilled workers, where the return on the investment is likely to be much higher in replacing wages and pensions.
That said, there are jobs that machines will replace. Those where it is difficult to find the Labour willing to do the work, and where one machine can cost effectively do the work of many low skilled employees, for examp,e in the harvesting of agricultural crops. This should not come as any surprise, since the combine harvester has for decades replaced the work that was once done by a army of farm workers equipped with sickles and string. The newer technologies have the ability to identify and pick, produce that once required the sight and dexterity of a human. Produce such as fruit and soft vegetables.
There are other jobs that will be taken by robots, simply because they are too dangerous, unpleasant or repetitive to attract human workers to the task.
It is very likely that the use of robots will create additional jobs, with humans acting as supervisors. Complex machines are already used to carry out routine testing in many technical fields, such as biochemistry and engineering.
What is clear is that business cannot afford to remove humans from the workforce, as they need human economic consumer power. It is the hidden driving force behind innovation. The only other model would be a system that paid people not to work. This is a utopian model, that does not stand any analysis, as it is quickly revealed to be dystopian in practice.
The trick will be finding work for all the human skill levels, not everyone is caperable of being a computer programmer, engineer or scientist. It is questionable if even the best AI will be able to match the skills of some of the creative professions, such as journalist, or fiction writer. It maybe a long time before an AI truly thinks, and generates an original idea.
So far robotic music compositions have been extremely poor quality, lack that spark of genius that we have yet to understand and copy in hardware.
Today's robots are extremely impressive, some claiming to be as intelligent as a dog, but they really cannot match the size and behavioural performance of even the humble house fly.
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