The Impact Of Robotics On Neurosurgeons: An Essay On The Future Of Work.

The Impact of Robotics on Future Jobs

Question:

Discuss About The Neurosurgeon Industry Impact Future Of Work?

The advancements in technology has resulted in more efficient means of making work easier. The use of robotics is one of the greatest invention that have been borne by such advancements. Robots are machines that have been programmed to work as human beings. Since they doesn’t require much supervision, their usage is so efficient; the robots do not need labor payment, they do not eat or sleep; they are in operation 24/7 if programmed to do so. Although their initial outlay for the introduction of robotics use in the businesses is very high, their maintenance costs are lower. Since the robots are machines, their usefulness is extended to the future. This is making it more attractive for robotics use to be incorporated in businesses. There is an increased use of robotics in many developed world economies. However, this is creating a challenge on the future of work. There is discrepancies on the impacts that the increasing automation will have on the future for work. Some argue that it will have little impact on employment, others argue that it will kill many repetitive jobs and thus many people will be displaced from their jobs. Another group argued that it will result in creation of more jobs where many workers will be employed including those that were displaced (Karsten and West, 2015). Irrespective of the argument laid out, there is still uncertainty of what the future of work will be with the increased competition by robotics.

The main aim of this report is to identify the impacts of the increased use of robotics on the availability of future jobs. This research will most likely affect the employees, employers, the students and the government. The major concern however will be on how neurosurgical students will adapt to the changing technology. The existing issues will be highlighted and various resources will be used to give a clear insight on how such technological changes will have an impact on neurosurgical students. It shall cover the human resources job allocation decisions and how they will be influence in the future when the number of robotics will be on increased use. The resources will also give information of the future projections made by various parties that have analyzed this situation. The source of information for this research will be obtained from scholarly and also from non-scholarly sources. An interview will be carried out to determine how the students view the use of robots would impact their acquisition of jobs. Secondary data will be obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), commissioned reports, subjective journal articles and various websites. This report shall consider the empirical evidence provided by other economists who have already done an analysis on the possible outcomes and will use such evidence to bring logic to this research paper. The paper research shall also consider information from other evidences that are not related to Australian technological impacts on job future. The paper shall draw from the conclusion made on those evidences, reports and other research papers and thus the information provided will be from a wide range of sources and thus will be more reliable.

The Relationship between Robotics and Labor Supply

The increased usage of robotics have a negative impact on the availability of jobs to the neurosurgeon students and other industries where the investment on robotics is taking place. The medical profession make become less preferable since students may consider the future of their jobs to be very uncertain. Students have to make course decisions that are not competing with the usefulness of robots.

The machines are becoming less costly compared to the labor costs; this is the case especially for Australian economy where labor cost on the manufacturing industries are very high. According to Watson (2017), the government should introduce new industrial strategies as the society is being faced by profound unstoppable changes resulting from technological advancements. This research is meant to create an insight of whether the increased use of robotics is positively or negatively impacting the future of employees. Generally, the high labor costs and other unavoidable factors are raising the need for capital intensive production. There is a great shift from labor to capital intensive requirements. Literature reviews both theoretical and empirical will be used to determine the usefulness of the increased use of robotics and how they will impact the future of work. Primary and secondary data will be used to support the research findings. The primary data will be obtained from firms that have already introduced the use of robots in their work place. The data to be obtained will be mainly on the number of employees. Answers will be requested for question such as; how many employees were employed before the introduction of robotics? How have the number changed after the introduction? This will help in a direct determination of the immediate impacts of the increased robotics use on employment.

How the Use of Robotics Relate with the Labor Supply

Generally, there is a high rate of unemployment in Australia; this means that many people are looking for jobs but no job vacancies are available for them. Economically, the increased use of machines will increase the supply for labor. The labor marketing won’t be able to adjust to the increase supply bearing the fact that there is a challenge of wage rigidity; thus, wage rate which is the price for labor won’t be flexible to accommodate the supply changes. This will result in the businesses choosing the option that the least cost is incurred. Given the high costs of labor, the businesses are on a high probability expected to consider employing the capital intensive production (robotics) and reduce the labor-intensive production (workers). Thus there will be a loss of jobs to the workers (Muro and Andes, 2015). Robotics can do many tasks that a human can do, thus, less workers will be required to do only the tasks that the robotics cannot handle. Thus, it can be argued that the usage of robotics will make some employee’s jobs redundant and since the companies cannot protect this jobs (Arntz, Gregory and Zierahn, 2016). The government has to regulate the robotics use to make these companies responsible for their workers.

The Importance of Highly Specialized Skill-Sets and Social Skills for Future Employment

Fig: The increased usage of robots by developed economies

Source: Muro and Andes (2015)

Germany is the leading user of robotics among the developed economies analyzed. The graph represents the change that was experienced from 1993 to 2007. These are the ten major robotics user; for all these countries, there has been an increment in the usage compared to 1993.

Other than the reduction of production costs, robots are very useful in boosting productivity for a business and that’s why investors may consider them over the laborers (Ford, 2017). However, the complete transition from labor to capital could be detrimental to the Australian economy. The question is; if robots were used to do all the task that humans could do? Which jobs will there for the human beings? This question emphasizes on the need to lower the usage of robots so as to protect the job future for the Australian population.

Robotics despite their usefulness, they should be used in limited number. There increased usage will not be god for the economy in the future. Their implementation could only be effective if they were regulated by the government. The number of students who should take the training is undefined because this is a necessary requirement for every student who wants to become competitive in the labor market. 

According to RelishCareers.com (2017), social skill are important skills that can guarantee high paying jobs in the future even with the presence of robots. Generally, those workers who possess highly specialized skill-sets are guaranteed some future job security as they will be able to enter into highly specific areas. The decision to employ robots and lay off some workers will be determined by the workers productivity. Workers who will be less productive will be laid off whereas those with highly specialized skill-sets will not be replaced with robots. The workers to be laid off will be considered to be less productive.

Holmes (2015) noted that the usage of robots will create jobs since they require supervision, but the rate of job creation will be lower than that of job killing. He therefore proposed the following to the students who want to be well equipped to compete for jobs with the robots in the future. He claimed that the answer to these was to make human smarter than the robots, this could be achieved by rethinking education where the human seek to develop skills that are not replicable by the machines. Heath (2016) noted that there is a need for identification of the future skills requirement and how these skills can be acquired. These skills include ingenuity, problem solving and higher-order functions. This is by embracing the idea that humans have unique creation and innovation gifts. Creativity and social intelligence are some of the unique human abilities that needs to be cultivated. He also argued that the industrial revolution system of education in not compatible with the machine age since it produced people of uniform citizenry–literate, interchangeable, and compliant. The cultivation of unique skills require nurturing exceptionalism but not uniformity. Through this cultivation, the humans will be able to do tasks that cannot be systematized or codified. In the short term, students who need to get jobs in a robotic economy will be helped to do so by encouraging independent thinking and promotion of creativity. Frey and Osborne (2015) noted that complex manual dexterity is yet another skill that technology can’t replicate.

Conclusion

The complete change to a full robotic economy may take a century and thus the uniqueness of the students may be helpful only on the short run. In the long run, the machines will be advanced such that they will be able to carry out any task that a human can and do it better; their future capability will exceed that of the human beings. Lindzon (2017) noted that people who wish to be competitive for jobs in the future have to be ready to adapt to the ever changing technology. The best solution is to accept the technological evolution to be our friend and not our enemy; in that way, adaptation to such changes with be easier.  Just like people thought that the industrial revolution would take up all their jobs and this was not the case; the industrial revolution led to an increased production of output that was sold at a lower price and this benefited the people.

Conclusion

The use of robots is very beneficial to the neurosurgeon industry and thus cannot be avoided. In fact, there should be a promotion for the use of the same. However, there should be a limit set for companies not to exceed a certain number of robots and restrict their usage to only tasks that can harm the human’s health and those that can maximize the social welfare. The changing of students to be more creative and independent in thinking can only be able to prevent job losses in the short term. In the long run, robots will be more advanced such that even those with the best skills will be kicked out of their jobs. Problem solving skills and skills on Math or science can help in keeping the skills up-to-day and thus raises the adaptability to the changing technology. The increased usage of robotics despite the benefits delivered to the neurosurgeon industry will harm the future of jobs. Many people will lose their jobs to the robotics, the unemployment rate will be very high and detrimental to nation’s economic performance. It is thus important for the government to implement a regulation on the usage of robots.

References

Arntz, M., Gregory, T. and Zierahn, U. (2016). ‘The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis’, OECD Social, management and Migration Working Papers No 189.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2016). Education and Work. ABS, Canberra.

Ford, M. (2017). Rise of the Machines: The Future has Lots of Robots, Few Jobs for Humans. [Online] Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/04/rise-machines-future-lots-robots-jobs-humans/ [Accessed 12 Sep. 2017].

Frey, C. and Osborne, M. (2013). ‘The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerization?’ Oxford Martin Program on Technology and Employment Working Paper.

Health, W. (2012). Virtual reality and robotics in neurosurgery: Promise and challenges. [Online] ScienceDaily. Available at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121220143736.htm [Accessed 12 Sep. 2017].

Heath, A. (2016). The Changing Nature of the Australian Workforce. [Online] Reserve Bank of Australia. Available at: https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2016/sp-so-2016-09-21.html [Accessed 12 Sep. 2017].

Holmes, R. (2015). How to Plan now for Tomorrow’s Robotic Workforce. [Online] Fast Company. Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3050757/how-to-plan-now-for-tomorrows-robotic-workforce [Accessed 11 Sep. 2017].

Karsten, J. and West, D. (2015). How robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning will affect employment and public policy. [Online] Brookings. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2015/10/26/how-robots-artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-will-affect-employment-and-public-policy/ [Accessed 12 Sep. 2017].

Lindzon, J. (2017). How AI Is Changing The Way Companies Are Organized. [Online] Fast Company. Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3068492/how-ai-is-changing-the-way-companies-are-organized [Accessed 11 Sep. 2017].

Muro, M. and Andes, S. (2015). Robots Seem to Be Improving Productivity, Not Costing Jobs. [Online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2015/06/robots-seem-to-be-improving-productivity-not-costing-jobs [Accessed 11 Sep. 2017].

RelishCareers.com. (2017). What skills will be required to succeed in the future? [Online] RelishCareers. Available at: https://www.relishcareers.com/robots-mbas-the-future-of-work/ [Accessed 11 Sep. 2017].

Watson, T. (2017). When robots do all the work, how will people live? [Online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/08/robots-technology-industrial-strategy [Accessed 11 Sep. 2017].

Williamson, R., Raghnaill, M., Douglas, K. and Sanchez, D. (2015). ‘Technology and Australia’s future: New technologies and their role in Australia’s security, cultural, democratic, social and economic systems’. Acola.org.au Available at: <https://acola.org.au/wp/PDF/SAF05/SAF05_Report_web_17Sept.pdf> [Accessed 11 Sep. 2017].