AI & Robotics' Impact On Employment & Society: An Essay.

Impact on Employment and Society

Discuss about the Artificial Intelligence and Professional Roles.

Sophia, a social humanoid which is developed by Hong Kong Based company Hanson Robotics when made a public appearance for the first time in mid-2016, it was a moment of sheer joy and happiness for the tech enthusiasts and industry leaders. However it sure sends some chills down the spine to the working class population. People are scared of their current job and predict that technological innovation like Humanoid will replace them in a couple of decades or even earlier. In the similar manner Artificial intelligence is seeing a deeper penetration in tech industry and even in manufacturing industries (Tirgul & Naik, 2016). The technology has been refined and further curated to make the optimum utilization of the technology and expedite the business processes and increase its effectiveness and efficiency. However, the technology is a big concern for the employees across the US and the globe; people are scared of the potential job losses due to advancement in the Technology. This is the preamble and synopsis of the entire project here, understanding the effect and trends in Artificial intelligence and Robotics in employment and the society (Russell & Norvig, 2016).

There are no two doubts that the fear of people is genuine regarding the advancement of technology to impact the society and their present jobs. Development of self-checkout kiosks, self -driving trucks and cars are the recent examples where advanced automation will play an important role. The newly opened Amazon Go store in Seattle is one big example of advanced automation. The entire store has just a couple of store employees and rests all the retail process is catered by automation. This helps the company to increase the productivity of the store and in the longer run reduce the cost of business operation. Further to this, the business can possibly reduce the human error and also reduce the cost of identifying, managing, training and managing performance of the human resources (Nilsson, 2014).  Some of the high risks job clouded by robotic automation is; Cashiers and toll booth operators, car driving, fast food jobs and jobs related to increased usage of information technology.

Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines especially computer systems, it is the intelligence depicted by machines in comparison to the human and animal intelligence. Artificial intelligence is of great use in the present day world; however, its impact on the society is debatable. As, one side of the spectrum lies accelerating transformation and on the other lies the fear of millions of job losses. However, the magnitude of impact on the society cannot be ascertained with utmost surety as of now, nevertheless, the certainty lies in the fact that there will be plethora of job losses.

Areas where AI and Robotics will play a key role

The purpose of the report here is to identify and assess the areas where Robotics and AI will play a key role, and would disruption in the existing system. The report will also highlight 3 occupations which will be highly affected by AI & Robotics and a comparing the situation with earlier times.

There was a time in US when the population of Horses has peaked at around 26 Million; however it has now declined significantly, thanks to the machine invented by Humans (Cars). The same fear is clouding humans in the present day, the advancement in technology, proliferation of Artificial intelligence and Robotics is giving sleepless night to the human working population. Artificial Intelligence and Robotics will most definitely affect the employee jobs; however the jobs which do not require much human analysis like data entry, data mining and other jobs requiring less human interaction will be impacted(Laird, Lebiere & Rosenbloom, 2017).

There are over 24,000 Taxi drivers as per the statistics conducted in the year 2006. The maximum shift in the pattern has been before the year 1986 when Asian and European population started migrating to Australia with a view of better employment opportunities. The shift in in the demographics have moved towards the people with higher age category, especially the age group from 40-60. Younger population is moving towards new streams of jobs which are created due to the advancement in technology.

Taxi industry is very popular in Australia and 2 out of 3 people use taxi services to commute from one place to another. The change in the demographic shift is an indication that people in the older age, mostly from foreign country drive taxis because of low utilization of skill sets in other industries. Thus, Taxi drivers are the people with limited skills for future growth; they will definitely be affected by the change in the technology (Iqbal, Islam, Abbas, Khan & Azwad, 2016).

Taxi driving is one of the most important occupations of the Australian population, more than 24000 taxi drivers are playing in Australia with an estimated population of 26 million. Train commutation is very popular in Australia still 2 out of 3 people chose to move from one place to another by the usage of Taxi. Taxi services in Australia are managed through Application, websites and individual Taxi unions and owners. The demographics show that more and more Asian drivers are coming into the Taxi industry (Tussyadiah, Zach & Wang, 2017). It is difficult predicting the state of Taxi employees 32 years from now; however, technology will play a very important and defining role in shaping the industry for the future:

• Some of the world’s biggest tech companies are Uber and Google are investing billions of dollars in experimenting with the self-driving cars. However Uber has been asked to hold its development stage due to a recent accident it had with it’s Beta testing of self- driving cars. However, Google is persistent on Self driving cars and is experimenting heavily on making its useful and viable for the customers. It is estimated that close to 5 million jobs will be hampered due to the use of AI and Robotics in the Taxi industry.
• However, the impact is still uncertain because the robots are still not capable of loading and unloading of the material which forms a very important job function of taxi drivers.
• Tesla is experimenting with high speed cars using Artificial intelligence and amalgamation of advanced technologies. He is also in the process of creating pavements below the road which will have a contained tube to travel into. In such a fast mechanism people will move towards driving themselves.
• Another impact of AI can be the use of flying cars to commute from one place to another, if this thing becomes a reality, the problem of increased traffic will vanish and it will severely hurt the jobs of people in the Taxi industry.
• Artificial intelligence devices like Alexa & Google Echo will take over and replace the people involved in booking cabs and taxis for people.
• Taxi unions will disappear and be replaced by advanced system of machines which will pick up the keywords spoken by the customers and provide them with vehicles for their commute.

Occupations highly impacted by AI and Robotics

It can be said that the occupation which allows easy automation will be severely impacted by the Artificial intelligence and robotics, thus Taxi occupation will most definitely be one of the terribly affected victim of Automation.

Australia has 3.6 doctors per thousand people and its workforce in medical practice is increasing considerably. There were around 91,504 doctors in the year 2012 which increased to 114675 doctors by 2018. The growth in medical workforce has been immense during the period 1970s to 2018. Overall the number of practisers in the medical science increased by 30%. The growth however can be seen as uneven across geography and other types of doctors. The increase in practisers increased to 67% in comparison to general practisers which stood at 33 %( King, Hammond & Harrington, 2018).

(Source: Treddinnick, 2017)

The changing trend in the profession of doctors can be described as following:

• Increase in specialist in the profession of doctors.
• Decreasing in general practiceners and increase in the teaching and assistance staff.
• Increase in People with young age to adopt doctor as profession.
• People migrating from Asian and OECD countries to work in Australia in the profession of doctors (Norman, 2017).

Medicine is a very human field in comparison to taxi occupation; people still appreciate a human touch and human emotion in the practice of medicine. However, with the evolution and advanced usage of technology, the field will also be impacted, but not considerably. People will definitely lose their jobs but pertaining to less complications in the medical process. However, within the purview of the assignment some of the predictions for Doctors in 2060 can be:

• Rise in popularity of surgical robots from the present times. They are even capable of carrying patient from the care room to Operation theatre. The way they handle things will be further refined in the future, thus it can be said that surgical robots will become increasingly popular.
• Robot delivering food and other medicine will also become popular by 2060. They will replace the job of medical assistants and bring more efficiency and productivity in healthcare services.
• In one of the recent articles published by Vinod Khosla of Silicon Valley, he mentioned that 80% of doctor’s job will be replaced because of the advanced care medical facilities, automation and machines become smarter every passing year.
• Robots are really smart when it comes to pattern recognition, thus the jobs of general practiceners is also in Jeopardy due to this advanced feature of automation.
• Doctors who have been diagnosing patient to find the cause of illness will also be replaced by Robotics and AI because of their higher knowledge and wisdom, and their enhanced ability to diagnose a patient with more accurate results.
• The jobs which will be in exact danger will be related to quantifiable data, robots are more power of analysing raw data than human and create qualitative result out of it.
• A potential disadvantage of Robotics and AI in healthcare is the inability of robotics to take ethical decision when the life of person lying on the operation table is in danger. A robot will think from the perspective of a high functioning doctor and not as a human, this is one of the possible concern area for Robotics and AI in healthcare sectors.

All the above points mentioned above imply that AI and Robotics will replace millions of Jobs in the sector, but at the same time, Doctor is a profession which needs human touch. Thus, the penetration and potential loss of jobs is hard to predict.

Teachers are the base of any nation and the prime force responsible in developing and shaping the career of a human. Thus, teachers are very important resource in the development of a country and organization (Kim, Gu & Heo, 2016). Human population represent the country, which are shaped and influenced by Teachers. Thus, teaching is a very important profession which involves high level of human touch. There are more than .4 Million teachers in a population of 26 Million, this shows the high importance Australia lays on teaching its population. However, the teaching profession is primarily dominated by Female staffs which are 74% of the entire workforce and the rest is male dominated (Ashrafian, Darzi & Athanasiou, 2015).

• The mean age of Known employed teachers is almost 43.7 years.
• 26% of the entire teaching workforce is 55 years or older, which includes 24% of the known employed teachers and 30% of additional registrants.

• 82% of the teaching workforce is of Australian origin, with the remaining 18% born in 192 different countries.
• 89% of the teaching workforce was born in the commonwealth countries.
• UK, NZ, South Africa and India are the most common overseas countries of birth.

The above data shows how the demographics are distributed according to the age group and population. The landscape has changed considerably over the last 30 years and more and more young people are focussing on securing a teaching job to safeguard the future of the nation.

Comparison with earlier times

Teaching is one such profession most of the people relate to because almost everyone in his/her life goes through the teaching profession. It is an extremely noble profession and people in the teaching sector value it highly. Some of the prediction for the teaching sector is as follows:

• The use of Smart technology and Artificial intelligence to cater to a large group of teaching student.
• AI will replace the job of teaching in making examination papers and correcting them to provide best feedback to the students.
• Humanoids can be used in advanced teaching and not in elementary teaching.

Conclusion

There is no uncertainty that Artificial intelligence and Robotics will take the job industry by storm and create a wave of disruption. However, the penetration of the disruption is hard to predict in the present day. The jobs which require mechanical tasks and data entry or processes where limited human intelligence is required will be replaced at the onset of the technology. The effect will permeate other sectors much later. The implication for the employees is to look to develop strength and skill in understanding the field of robotics and AI. It is a known fact that when one invention kills job, the same invention creates even much more jobs. The same happened when the manufacturing industries were automated, opening up of e-commerce sector, use of AI in data mining and so on. But with the extinction of jobs came new opportunities as well, which called for developing skills in new field. In the similar way employees have to ascertain the opportunities in the field of advanced science and technology, robotics, Artificial intelligence and digital technologies to save themselves from being a sufferer of the advancement of technology. More they acquire the skills, the better they would be to compete with the technology and make themselves fit in the future ecosystem. After all, however advanced Robotics and AI may get, human touch , feel and emotion is beyond any comparison, thus the only implication for the employers is to be in sync with the technology wave and develop the technology skills in their respective sectors.

Managers and Leaders are the people who are responsible for aligning the goals and objectives of the employees and align them with that of the organization. Managers have to understand that with the evolution of Robotics and Machine learning, their job will get easier and at the same time far more complexes. They would have to understand in depth how the robotics and AI function and how they can be used to derive maximum utilization of the advanced technology. They will have to look for jobs which require less human involvement and would yield higher productivity in Robots do the same task. The bigger picture here will be to use Robotics as an aide to the present employee base and increase the overall productivity of the organization. Managers have to onus of getting the job done right for the organization; they ensure the same by team activities, delegation of job responsibility and by the virtue of establishing trust and relationship with the employees. With the advent of Robotics and AI this will not be possible, because a machine works under a given set of instructions with no proven result in human emotion, thus it will be really tricky to put them to good use. Thus, managers have to ensure that they are well versed with the technology and know how to better use the advanced tech for the better productivity of the organization resulting in business sustainability.

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