FROM ISAAC ASIMOV TO AIMEE MANN, ‘ROBOPHOBIA’ PLAGUES HUMANS
Japan leads the way in workplace robotics but humans are still needed for many tasks
Robots are secretly plotting to kill us. Or enslave us. Or, at best, they will take our jobs, one by one. From science fiction written by Isaac Asimov eight decades ago to Dilbert cartoons today, the relationship between robots and humans has long fascinated and worried people.
There’s even a term, “robophobia”, for an irrational anxiety about robots and other advanced automation machines.
And there are concerns beyond the ones stoked by watching too much Terminator.
Apple computer pioneer Steve Wozniak once suggested that robots would turn us into their pets. Physicist Stephen Hawking and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk have also warned about the dangers of going too far, too quickly, in developing “thinking robots” with programmed i ntelligence t hat might keep evolving selfawareness, similar to the humanoids in the HBO series Westworld.
Prof Hawking told the BBC in 2014 that “development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”.
So there’s that.
Researchers vary in projections on how long from now, if ever, such a threat could exist.
For now, deaths by robot are very rare among industrial accidents. However, in July 2015, a 57-year-old technician was killed by a robotic machine in an Ionia, Michigan, plant that makes car bumpers, trailer hitches and chrome-plated plastics. Her husband filed a federal lawsuit, being contested by the defendants, alleging a malfunctioning robot took her “by surprise”, crushing her head.
As chief technology officer for a private-public effort to facilitate robotic solutions in US manufacturing, Prof Howie Choset of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh sees the fear of robots taking jobs making his mission tougher.
“You have to start this discussion with the baseline that automation and innovation create jobs,” he said, referring to new products and processes and the new jobs to make and operate them.
“Then you have to ask yourself why would robots be different. And people are very quick to say, ‘Well, robots are intelligent, they do what humans can do,’ and there’s this fear that was sort of instilled by science fiction.”
Comparing fear of robots to 19th-century worries about the impact of steam engines, Prof Choset said: “Robots are just the next generation of tools.”
Si n g e r Aimee Mann, with help from actress Laura Linney, humorously depicted the danger of letting robots help you too much in a music video.
Prof Choset was amused by a recent Dilbert strip about the boss’s inability to stop a robot worker who decided to quit.
Chris Boggess, 18, found the 2004 movie I, Robot, about a rogue killer robot drawn from Asimov stories, frightening, but he has come to understand and appreciate their potential through the Butler Tech robotics programme at Colerain High School near Cincinnati.
“The first day I walked in, I fell in love. I knew this was where I needed to be,” he said. “I like robots, anything about technology.”
And if some day thinking robots acquired the ability to threaten humans, he said, “I would probably try to make friends with them”.
As more employers move, shrink or revamp their work sites, many employees are struggling to adapt. At the same time, workers with in-demand skills or knowledge are benefiting. Advanced training, education or know-how are becoming a required ticket to the 21st-century workplace.
Thousands upon thousands of cans are filled with beer, capped and washed, wrapped into six-packs and boxed at dizzying speeds — 1,500 a minute, to be exact — on humming conveyor belts that zip and wind in a sprawling factory near Tokyo.
Nary a soul is in sight in this picture-perfect image of Japanese automation.
The machines do all the heavy lifting at this plant run by Asahi Breweries, Japan’s top brewer. The human job is to make sure the machines do the work right and to check on the quality the sensors are monitoring.
“Basically, nothing goes wrong. The lines are up and running 96%,” said Shinichi Uno, a manager at the plant. “Although machines make things, human beings oversee the machines.”
The debate over machines snatching jobs from people is muted in Japan, where birth rates have been sinking for decades, raising fears of a labour shortage. It would be hard to find a culture that celebrates robots more, evident in the popularity of companion robots for consumers, sold by the internet company SoftBank and Toyota Motor Corp, among others.
Japan, which forged a big push towards robotics starting in the 1990s, leads the world in robots per 10,000 workers in the car sector — 1,562 compared with 1,091 in the US and 1,133 in Germany, according to a White House report submitted to Congress last year. Japan was also ahead in sectors outside cars at 219 robots per 10,000 workers compared with 76 for the US and 147 for Germany.
One factor in Japan’s different take on automation is the “lifetime employment” system. Major Japanese companies generally retain workers, even if their abilities become outdated, and retrain them for other tasks, said Koichi Iwamoto, a senior fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry.
That system is starting to fray as Japan globalises but is still largely in use, Mr Iwamoto said.
Although data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show digitalisation reduces demand for midlevel routine tasks, such as running assembly lines, while boosting demand for low-skilled and high-skilled jobs, that trend has been less pronounced in Japan than in the US. The OECD data, which studied shifts from 2002 to 2014, showed employment trends remained almost unchanged for Japan.
That means companies in Japan weren’t resorting as aggressively as those in the US to robots to replace humans. Clerical workers, for instance, were keeping their jobs, although their jobs could be done better, in theory, by computers.
That kind of resistance to adopting digital technology for services is also reflected in how Japanese society has so far opted to keep taxis instead of shifting to online ride-hailing and shuttle services.
Still, automation has progressed in Japan to the extent the nation has now entered what Mr Iwamoto called a “reflective stage” in which “human harmony with machines” is being pursued, he said.
“Some tasks may be better performed by people, after all,” Mr Iwamoto said.
Kiyoshi Sakai, who has worked at Asahi for 29 years, recalls how in the past can caps had to be placed into machines by hand, a repetitive task that was hard not just on the body but also the mind.
And so he is grateful for automation’s helping hand. Machines at the plant have become more than 50% smaller over the years. They are faster and more precise than three decades ago.
Gone are the days things used to go wrong all the time and human intervention was needed to get machines running properly again. Every 10 to 15 minutes, people used to have to check on the products; there were no sensors back then.
Glitches are so few these days there is barely any reason to work up a sweat, Mr Sakai said with a smile.
Like many workers in Japan, Mr Sakai doesn’t seem worried about his job disappearing. As the need for plant workers nosedived with the advance of automation, he was promoted to the general affairs section, a common administrative department at Japanese companies.
“I remember the work being so hard. But when I think back, and it was all about delivering great beer to everyone, it makes me so proud,” he said. “I have no regrets. This is a stable job.”