Today with broader range of robotics technologies at or near commercialization—including stationary robots, nonhumanoid land robots and fully automated aerial drones, in addition to machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence—are attracting significant business interest in adoption.

Body:

Likely to render humans jobless:

There is fear of massive job loss and millions unemployed as AI and robots are implemented on a global scale keeping in mind productivity and labour laws. Augmentation of existing jobs through technology may free up workers from the majority of data processing and information search tasks. Their adoption is likely to make many of today’s jobs redundant, eliminating routine and intermediary tasks.

The study of 46 countries and 800 occupations by the McKinsey Global Institute found that up to one-fifth of the global work force will be affected. Up to 800 million global workers will lose their jobs by 2030 and be replaced by robotic automation.

Concerns with respect to India

• Creating jobs is important for socio-economic reasons in India.
• Government’s strategy to address jobs issue has been to absorb large labour force by promoting manufacturing sector.
• However, with increasing automation and concerns of companies shifting their manufacturing base (as economic consideration of cheap labour is done away), government’s strategy is at stake.

No, they won’t:

• Like previous industrial revolutions (IR), IR 4.0 driven by AI and robotics, may take up few but is likely to create new jobs.
• New technologies will give rise to new job roles, occupations and industries, with wholly new types of jobs emerging to perform new work tasks related to new technologies.
• Large workforce will be supported in high-value tasks such as reasoning and decision-making. There will be greater need for workforce with tech-based skill sets.

Conclusion:

World Economic Forum (WEF) in ‘Future of Jobs’ report reads:

As technological breakthroughs rapidly shift the frontier between the work tasks performed by humans and those performed by machines and algorithms, global labour markets are likely to undergo major transformations. These transformations, if managed wisely, could lead to a new age of good work, good jobs and improved quality of life for all, but if managed poorly, pose the risk of widening skills gaps, greater inequality and broader polarization.

Thus it is important for government to address the impact of new technologies on labour markets through

• Upgraded education policies aimed at rapidly raising education and skills levels of individuals of all ages, particularly with regard to both STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and non-cognitive soft skills, enabling people to leverage their uniquely human capabilities.
• Relevant intervention points include school curricula, teacher training and a reinvention of vocational training for the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, broadening its appeal beyond traditional low and medium skilled occupations.