The word "robot" was coined in 1920 by the Czech writer Karel Capek. In Rossum's Universal Robots Capek imagined artificial, fully functional servants. For most of their history, however, robots have been stupid mechanical devices, sitting out of sight in factories.
Things are starting to change, however. Robots have benefited from rapid innovations in smartphones, which brought cheap cameras and sensors, fast wireless communications and powerful, smaller computer chips. More recent advances in machine learning have added software to make robots better informed about their surroundings and equipped them to make wiser decisions. Robots are becoming so advanced as to be used for everyday life and in the coming years, will increasingly work in supermarkets, clinics, social care and much more.
They could not be coming at a better time. Many industries are facing a shortage of labour –the demand for workers has recovered much faster than expected from COVID-19 and some people have left the workforce, particularly in America. Goods delivery has grown rapidly thanks to the growth of e-commerce. Robots are now picking items off shelves and helping people pack a rising number of boxes.
And yet many people fear that robots will destroy jobs. In fact, concerns about mass unemployment are overblown. The evidence suggests robots will be damaging at first but ultimately beneficial for labour markets. Japan and South Korea have the highest level of robot usage but very strong workforces. A Yale University study that looked at Japanese manufacturing between 1978 and 2017 found that an increase of one robot unit per 1, 000 workers boosted a company's employment by 2. 2%. Research from the Bank of Korea found that robotisation moved jobs away from manufacturing into other sectors, but that there was no decrease in overall vacancies(空缺).
As is to be expected, some people will be on the losing end of change even as robots make society as a whole better off, so firms and governments should ecognize the value of retraining and lifelong learning. As jobs change, workers should be helped to acquire new skills, including how to work with and manage the robots that will increasingly be their workmates.
