Over the entire course of human history, the biggest enemy of any progress is and has always been fear. It is the fear of failure to be more specific. The technological revolution and new creations in robots manufacturing are perfect examples of this point. The fear of robots taking over the world and wiping out human race is widely illustrated in a modern cinematography. In the real world however, the fear of artificial intelligence takes place in a slightly different way. Many people believe that robots will cause millions of workers lose their jobs and the situation might even worsen in the coming years. The most interesting thing about it is that it already happened two hundred years ago, when 70% of American workers were farmers and were replaced by automation. All these people who lost their jobs found new ones in a machine producing factories (Frey, 254). As it was said in Kevin Kelly’s essay “Better than Human”: “This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with the machines.” Even though, the loss of millions of low-skilled jobs is inevitable, I believe that people can find a way to work with the machines and should take a step into a new evolutionary world of robots manufacturing.
According to Motor Trend the overwhelming majority of jobs in a logistics field are expected to be completely eliminated and replaced by driverless vehicles (Lassa). Nowadays, the biggest companies that promote the concept of automation are companies such as Uber and Google, which are constantly trying to publicize their ideas in the best light in front of the public that has to made this difficult choice of entrusting their lives to robots. On the other hand, with a rise and revolution of self-driving vehicles the number of car accidents will cut down to zero and people will be enjoying the high-class travel without even worrying about it. But, unfortunately, this technology advancement can also severely contribute to the loss of low-skilled jobs like drivers, delivery and other. What about other taxi drivers or truck drivers? Probably there would still be a need for somebody to unload the truck, but the driving will be completely automatic. One of the main reasons why transportation companies are so eager to replace human resources is profits. Not only trillions of revenues can be generated by eliminating human resources costs, but also the efficiency of any kind of transportation would be undeniably tremendous. Self-driving cars are now in a very close future to us and have a great chance of coming to fruition at least in the next 20 years. So, nowadays, despite of the fact that there are already 4 million jobs in a transport segment and this number is constantly increasing, people should already start working on finding the most suitable solution (Benedikt Frey, 263).
First, they have to admit that the loss of the jobs is unavoidable and look at the brighter side. For example, fully automotive vehicles will generate a multi-trillion-dollar industry. With a rise of self-driving vehicles, jobs like engineers, data scientists or experts in artificial intelligence or vehicle manufacturing will become very popular, because of the constant need to operate and maintain the self-driving cars. People must evolve alongside with the machines, teach and program them, rather than blaming them for the loss of their job. There is an entire separate ecosystem that must be created around the automation industry causing in a broader scope of employment. Besides manufacturing and programming, it is very crucial to ensure the safety and satisfaction of the customers by checking the operation and efficiency of the vehicles. For that to happen a huge amount of resources is required, beginning from designing and developing new apps and digital software, integrating other already existing services and systems into the vehicles, building and combining “smart” highways and roads with cities’ infrastructure. Every automated vehicle also should be equipped with remote operators and controllers in case of emergency situations. In additions, engineering and mechanics jobs will be prospering because of the growing demand for vehicles maintaining, repairing or upgrading. The cars will also have to be regularly cleaned inside and outside and also refueled or charged (Miller). And this is only a beginning of many other great opportunities that come together with evolution. The self-driving cars will have just as considerable impact on our lives as computers and internet did.
The fear of industrial revolution can be terminated by creating separate schools and colleges in order to educate and teach people automation technology. People are always scared of something unknown, thus by explaining them the benefits and advantaged of artificial intelligence they the fear will be gone, the machine learning can help people understand what machines are capable of (and not) and what they are. Knowledge of coding and programming would be a prior requirement in future, therefore fields like information technology and computer science are expected amongst the most dominant fields of employment. Programming robots will be very similar to trainers, where they tell (program) and assist robots in learning a skill or how a certain task must be done, it will not even require any coding, instead trainers can just simply demonstrate and show to robots what is required from them, while they will also be able to provide a feedback on status or completion of the task.
The number of companies that use AI is constantly growing, business companies can extremely benefit from implementing robots in different practices such company’s stocks analysis or preparing a report of its performance. Nevertheless, it is very difficult for one to predict future and possible impacts of the technology on our society, while our opinion in that aspect will be constantly changing as it has been before. However, I feel the advancements of the technology mentioned before will have an effect on life in the next 20 years.