When Will You Lose Your Job to Robotics?
May 27 2008 / by Alvis Brigis / In association with Future Blogger.net
Category: Technology Year: Beyond Rating: 6 Hot
Futurist and professor Paul Saffo thinks that just as Japan will transition to a robotic society, so too will the United States and the rest of the world. He predicts the transition over here will be “more messy” and that a booming robotic manufacturing industry could potentially devastate the economy.
“New technology may destroy old jobs, but it also creates more
jobs than it destroys,” explains Saffo in a recent Fora interview (see below), but
“that may not be the case with the world of ubiquitous
manufacturing robots.”
He points out that rapidly advancing robotics are replacing large manufacturing chunks one industry at a time. “What you see are industries calving off like icebergs, just a whole industry drops away, suddenly the human operators disappear,” he says. (cont.)
