Will lose job

Productivity is a myth

hings have changed. Outsourcing is not restricted to humans anymore. Instead of worrying about other people stealing your job, you may now be anxious that you might lose it to automation. In simpler words, you should be worried that robots may take away your job.

Now, robots not only mean machines that look like humans (the ones we typically see in movies). Pre-Programmed Robots are used for building cars. Those are also used in the medical industry. Autonomous Robots are mostly used as labor-saving devices, such as automated vacuum cleaners. Tele-operated Robots are controlled by humans. Doctors can operate you from a remote location using Tele-Operated Robots. Augmenting Robots are attached to human bodies. If some loses an arm, Augmenting Robots can be attached to their body as a robotic prosthetic arm.

To begin with, this seems like a legitimate concern. There are reasons why some people have been highly skeptic about the use of robots in the employment sector. More precisely, they suspect humanoid robots may replace human beings soon in major areas of operation.

SoftBank opened a mobile phone store in Tokyo last year. The Japanese company employed robots instead of humans to do the job. The humanoids, called Pepper, can recognise emotions by looking at human faces. They can identify if the customer is in a bad mood or a good mood and act accordingly. In 2013, a group of researchers at the Oxford University claimed that almost half of all the jobs in the United States could be automated in the next two decades.

So, there is no denying the fact that a significant percentage of all jobs is going to be automated in near future. Sooner or later, you are going to be attended by a robot at a store near your home. The humanoid robots may fill the gas, serve you pizza and even receive you at hotels.

On paper, using automated technology should dramatically increase the productivity of a company. Automation does help companies produce more with fewer employees. The past decade has seen much more use of automation than any other decades in the past. Strangely enough, the growth rate of productivity is quite low compared to the past decade.

In the US, labour productivity grew 3 percent on an annual average between 1947 and 1973. In the last couple of years, the growth rate of

A robot waiter serving Indian customers at India’s first robot-themed restaurant with robotic workers in Chennai

The humanoid, called Pepper, can recognise emotions by looking at human faces The Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot, or BEAR may soon have the ability to rescue wounded soldiers under fire without risking additional lives