Industrial Automation Magazine India

Humans can focus on more cognitively demanding jobs

Published on : Tuesday 30-11--0001

Are robots a boon or a threat to human beings, especially when it comes to jobs?

In 1900, 40 per cent of all employment was on farms. Today, it's less than two per cent. Why are there so few farmers today? It’s not because we are eating less. A century of productivity growth in farming means that now a couple of million farmers can feed a whole nation. That's amazing progress, but it also means there are fewer jobs left in farming. So clearly, technology can eliminate jobs. Farming is only one example. There are many others like it. But what's true about a single product or service or industry has never been true about the economy as a whole. Many of the industries in which we now work – health and medicine, finance and insurance, electronics and computing – were tiny or barely existent a century ago. Many of the products that we spend a lot of our money on – air conditioners, sports vehicles, the computer and mobile devices – were unattainable expensive or just hadn't been invented a century ago. As automation frees out time, increase the scope of what is possible, we invent new products, new ideas, new services that command our attention, occupy our time and spur consumption.

Is the robots-taking-jobs argument exaggerated, as there are still jobs waiting to be filled?

In the 45 years since the introduction of the automated teller machine, those vending machines that dispense cash, the number of the human bank tellers employed has roughly doubled as of today. What are all those tellers doing, and why hasn't automation eliminated their employment by now? ATMs, automated teller machines, had two countervailing effects on the bank teller employment. As you would expect, they replaced a lot of teller tasks. The number of teller per branch fell by about a third. But banks quickly discovered that it also was cheaper to open new branches, and the number of bank branches increased by about 40 per cent in the same time period. The net result was more branches and more tellers. But those tellers were doing somewhat different work. As their routine, cash-handling tasks receded, they became less like checkout clerks and more like salespeople, forging relationships with customers, solving problems and introducing them to new products like credit cards, loans, and investments. More tellers doing a more cognitively demanding job.

While robots are adapting fast to new roles, are their human counterparts slow in doing so?

If you think about it, many of the great inventions of the last 200 years were designed to replace human labour. Tractors were developed to substitute mechanical power for human physical toil, assembly lines were engineered to replace inconsistent human handiwork with machine perfection. Computers were programmed to swap out an error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection. These inventions have worked. And yet, the fraction of adults employed in the labour market is higher now that it was a long time ago, in 1890 and it has risen in just about every decade. This poses a paradox. Our machines increasingly do our work for us. Why doesn't this make our labour redundant and our skills obsolete? Why are there still so many jobs? There's a general principle here. Most of the work that we do requires a multiplicity of skills, brains and brawn, technical expertise and intuitive mastery, perspiration, and inspiration in the words of Thomas Edison. In general, automating some subset of those tasks doesn't make the other ones unnecessary. In fact, it makes them more important. It increases their economic value.

Compared to the advanced economies, robot penetration in India is still low. Will there be a dramatic change in the near future?

There will be a dramatic change in the near future. With the advancement of robotics education in India, automation is entering the technical industrial space at a fast pace than ever before. As employment and entrepreneurship opportunities in this field are opening up for science and technology enthusiasts, the future of automation in India seems bright and fruitful.

Finally, will man and robot co-exist in harmony?

Definitely, when the robot helps humans with repetitive boring jobs, humans can focus on a more cognitively demanding jobs. These helps to increase the ability of what humans can do, come up with new ideas, discoveries, inventions, and services.

Aswath Suresh is currently, working as an Autonomous Driving Software Engineer for Leidos Inc. Formerly known as Science Applications International Corporation, Leidos is an American defense, aviation, information technology, and biomedical research company headquartered in Reston, Virginia, that provides scientific, engineering, systems integration, and technical services. Aswath is very much passionate about Advanced Robotics, Autonomous Driving Cars, Hyperloop, and Mars Exploration Rovers. He has years of Robotics, Electrical and Mechatronics Research Experience working as Research Assistant of Mechatronics and Intelligent System Research Lab and years of Industrial experience working for Leidos, DURO UAS, and Swarm Robotix. Apart from publishing over 17 journals and conference papers related to the field of robotics, Aswath has worked on research projects like Self-Driving Car, Computer Vision Based Soccer Playing Humanoid Robot, Brain-Controlled Prosthetic Hand, Mars Rover, Intelligent Smart Glass for Visually Impaired, Multi-Fingered Dexterous Hand Using Virtual Reality, Robotic Fish, Pet Feeding Robot, etc.