If industrial robots get cheap enough, they may replace almost all Essay

If industrial robots get cheap enough, they may replace almost all unskilled factory worker in the future. discuss the benefits and costs of this to society - Essay Example There are certain estimations, which indicate that, by year 2025, robots would have taken almost 50 percent of the total jobs in the United States. The impact of industrial robots on employment patterns would vary amongst different industries, and there are reasons to believe that the automotive industry, food services industry and the manufacturing industry would be amongst the ones that would be impacted the most. In these industries, robots would replace as much as 95 percent of the total workers (Skaar & Castillo, pp. 63-64, 2012). These three industries, combined, would replace more than 44 million workers. In fact, calculations also indicate that by the end of 2012, the number of industrial robots, within US alone, would increase to the level of 1.2 million. More importantly, despite the dismissal performance of economy and recessionary pressures, there has been a 20 percent average annual increase in the employment of industrial robots. By the year 2013, there would be one rob ot worker for every 6000 people living on this planet and there are reasons to believe that, within a few decades, the world would have more robots that people (Briggle, et al., pp. 104-106, 2011). Proponents of replacing human workers with robots believe that this would mark a new era in improving the quality of living of people. Life on this planet would become more comfortable, and industries would be able to reduce their costs, drastically, thus allowing consumers as well as industries to gain from the savings (Skaar & Castillo, pp. 63-64, 2012). On the other hand, proponents of these ideas believe that it will only increase the problems in developing and third world countries of the world, which are plagued, already, by problems of high inflation, poverty, and unemployment. In many of these countries, a significant chunk of people is employed in the manufacturing sector, performing