Question

1. What makes these new robots with artificial intelligence so different from the first wave of old robots?
2. Will the new robots replace workers? If so, the employee with which type of skill sets will be replaced – high or low skill level?
3. What kind of education and knowledge will the employees working with the automated robots need?  What does it mean that workers will be trained for higher level jobs?  Can you provide any examples of such jobs? 
4. Although the video references US manufacturing, do you think that Canadian manufacturing will benefit from increased use of robotics? In the near future, do you think robotics will be applied to European and other countries that manufacture products?

Answer 1

1. The old robots were defined by movements , which were designed to reduce human labor. The new ones with embedded artificial intelligence may not move at all. They are fir with programming to reduce repetitive jobs and do away with workforce that are used to do typical low skilled jobs.

2. In the United States , Artificial Intelligence is slated to reduce 40% of the workforce. The workforce needs to re-skill and up-skill themselves to find new jobs. Most repetitive and low skill jobs like truck driving. office clerical jobs and lot of other jobs both in service and manufacturing sector will be replaced by artificial intelligence.

3. A handful of countries with strong education, worker training, and research and development sectors — such as South Korea, Germany, and Singapore — were found to have substantial leads. But even they, along with the rest of the world, will need to take bold action to prepare for the coming automation wave.

Technology may destroy work, but it can also create it. Jobs such as app developer, social media manager, and drone operator did not exist until recently; today, millions of workers hold such titles. According to LinkedIn, data scientist positions in the United States increased 650 percent between 2012 and 2017. As recently as 2015, there were just over 2.3 million data science and analysis job openings in the United States, each boasting salaries of upwards of $80,000, according to a joint report by IBM, the Business-Higher Education Forum, and the data analytics company Burning Glass Technologies. In 2017, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University showed that half of all U.S. job growth from 1980 to 2007 came from the creation and expansion of brand-new job categories. Historically, technology’s positive impact on productivity has also generated broader employment across the economy. Accenture estimates that AI could double economic growth rates by 2035 and boost labor productivity by up to 40 percent.

4. All countries will be effected by artificial intelligence in the near future. Canadian manufacturing will definitely benefit from use of robotics. Canadian manufacturers can decrease the cost of production drastically in the long run while eliminating human errors . Robotics will adopted in a large scale in the European and other developed markets as well. US , being one of the nations which is technologically advanced and superior have already adopted robotics while the same will slowly spread to the other developed nations in the world like the Western European nations, Japan , South-Korea and then to the developing nations like China, India, Brazil etc. In the next phase robotics will also be adapted in other developing and under developed nation. It is imperative for any manufacturer to reduce cost and increase profit margin while maintaining quality aspects. Robotics helps in the same and hence will be adopted through out the world based on the level of technological advancement of the countries.