Will robots take over our lives in the future? It’s a question that has been stressing out humankind since the advent of robotics, automation, and Artificial Intelligence. The continued portrayal of super-intelligent robots endangering the Homo sapiens on the silver screen and conspiracy theories has only aggravated that belief. Even if we let our minds wander off to the extremities of machines bringing on the end of humankind, there is significant tension among the working class, where the common belief is that robots will steal their jobs. 

While one can expect significant changes in the job landscape along with the need for the working up to hone up new skills, the concept that robots will take over all jobs has been shrugged off by a lot of experts. Robotics is an advanced form of automation, where although there have been instances when human employees were removed from the production line, there is no denying that ultimately automation needs human commands and interaction to work properly and show favorable results. 

The concept of robots usurping humankind and steal all jobs comes from the vision that most have about humanoid androids doing human tasks. The argument here is that should think of it on a much smaller scale than fixating on the extinction level. If you look around us, we will find automation, robotics, and AI already integrated into lives. In recent years, industries have been working on creating smarter systems by incorporating these technologies into their existing infrastructure. 

Automation across Industries

Automation is almost every known industry, and there is heavy use of robotics in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, etc. Nevertheless, in all those cases, it was hardly the machines replacing human jobs, but rather making those tasks easier and less time taking for us. For instance, in robotic surgery, it is a human surgeon who leads the procedure with robotic assistance. 

Apart from AI and robotics, blockchain has a significant part to play in the future of automation and digitization, especially through the use of smart contracts. The smart contracts are used to automatically execute a set of terms between two parties or systems once the required terms are fulfilled. When fully integrated across industries, this will replace certain manual human resource operations and simplify the repetitive tasks. However, it does not necessarily mean it will impact the workforce of the planet.     

What Our Robotic Future Holds

Just like the robotic surgery that we mentioned before, the small-applications like AI-powered call centers will need human commands and operation. The AI will be serving as chatbots, voice routing system, and likewise, offering solutions to the generic queries. Such a system will allow the human workers to take care of the issues which need the human touch for solving, while the machines keep routing and analyzing the data to better serve the client or customer. This goes for the majority of the companies that are gradually integrating their existing systems with AI to manage the magnanimous load of data and streamline the repetitive and tedious tasks which were previously undertaken by the human employees. 

The fear of losing the jobs comes from losing the direct touchpoint of visibility to the above-mentioned tasks. It is deeply rooted in the human psyche of shutting off to adaption and opening up to something new. This mind-set has no novelty and dates back to the days when automation was first introduced into the manufacturing of automotive. Nevertheless, we have always adapted even if it took some time. With more and more AI systems getting employed to simplify the tedious tasks associated with data management, more people are being urged to take their new roles within the working space that accommodates automation.  

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Creation of New Jobs

We have to open up to the idea of robots taking up our old tedious jobs and, by doing so, creating new job roles for us. Almost every robotic and automation process creates a new job role for the human employee. This new work culture demands robotic implementation along with balancing roles that ensure that humans work in conjunction with the machines. Artificial Intelligence needs to be fed information and trained; robots need maintenance, with other advanced technology needing their very own significant human involvement. This is not to say that the task which the robots will take is unworthy of the human effort to keep as long as possible.

To hand off task-oriented and functional jobs properly to automation, it needs to be studied and practiced into tiniest bits of data and information, which after then, can be programmed and fed to an AI system or robot. That kind of programming training will help the AI to evolve through machine learning. However, the entire process and the progress of the same need to be carefully monitoring and documenting to create use cases and applications. This task falls upon humans. 

We need to realize that given the current speed of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and the way that it is being incorporated across industries, both large and small, one will have to expect attrition leading to innovation and evolution ultimately. This evolution concerning business processes is related to things that predict how our smart machines will communicate with other smart-machines and the way AI systems will be utilized to allow sustainable technology in energy, manufacturing, and other sectors. These advancements will not come to being without combatting through the resistance of automation taking away human jobs.

The idea that robots will take away human jobs has always brought forth a pessimistic and generalized view of the entire scenario. The focus has remained on a single job that may be replaced by the AI or robot, instead of focusing on the jobs that are getting created or can be created by automation. AI and robotics present the ability to analyze the bulk load of data sets, automate processes that were previously unattainable, thus creating a smarter future for the working class.