Are Robots Destroying Jobs?

Extract

[...] Indeed, hiring an employee for a low-qualified job might be more expensive than buying a robot to do the same task. For the robot, the company will have to pay a fixed price once, which is less expensive than paying an employee a salary for years. Thus, buying robots instead of hiring employees is mainly a cost-effective strategy. B. The destruction of jobs went along with the creation of new ones, without leading to a "robolution" David Autor from the MIT and Anna Salomons from Utrecht University worked on the impact of robotization. [...]

[...] A robot is never tired. His inhumanity is its greatest quality. The increase of robots should allow the emergence of a new paradigm: robots can be part of our world without threatening us. B. If the whole society gets prepared to it, robotization can be beneficial for all The effects of robotization are still on debate. It could bring huge opportunities, but it could also deepen inequalities among social classes as we show it earlier. In order to help the society adapt to this new phenomenon, social actors such as trade unions and political parties have to work on preparing it. [...]

[...] Therefore, robots destroyed jobs in a sector and benefited to jobs in another one. However, the newly created jobs were mainly low-qualified and insecure service jobs. David Autor and Anna Salomons give the examples of the "gig economy" provided by huge firms such as Uber or Deliveroo. These newly created jobs are poorly paid and demand a lot of flexibility from workers. On top of that, the two researchers assert that capital owners are the only ones who benefit from the increase in productivity. [...]

[...] Manual or low-skilled workers find themselves downgraded into increasingly insecure and worse-paid jobs instead. To conclude, we are at a crossroads. Today, robots are destroying jobs to create less qualified ones. However, tomorrow it can be a way to emancipate the humankind from laborious and autonomous tasks. Governments, trade unions and citizens have to work hand in hand to ensure that robotization will lead to good-quality jobs and better conditions of work and life. In order to do so, reskilling less qualified workers and rethinking our labor legislation is necessary. [...]

[...] We all have been at a point where we saw a cashier, a waitress, or a maid doing a painful job and feeling uncomfortable and saddened at the same time. Replacing humans by robots for these kinds of jobs is a prospect that thrills many consumers as it would mainly free from the feeling of guilt while consuming. Robots do not express emotions or pain, which is what makes some consumers uncomfortable. Robots are programmed to serve us with happiness in all circumstances. [...]