In a scenario pulled clean out of a 1970s science-fiction thriller, 2017 poses the question towards its college graduates and employment markets loud and clear: has technology excelled to such a degree that machines may potentially replace humans at work?
The answer is yes, this situation is entirely plausible. In fact, many researchers would go so far as to claim it is inevitable.
A quick look at your smart-phone will provide an earnest testament to this concurrent technological process; packed within a slim, lightweight device are now your bulky leather-bound planners, innumerable books and text, a fully functional personal computer, you color-coded calendars, your urgent emails, and your infinitely-useful telephone.
A professor at Rice University stated during an annual meeting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science that machines may replace nearly half of all human jobs in 30 years. Additionally, Wendell Wallach, a consultant at the Yale University of Interdisciplinary Bioethics, claimed that technology has reached a point where it now destroying more jobs than it is able to create. The United States' progressive computerization has placed millions out of work in the past few decades.
So what compels a business owner to boot a couple hundred laborers and opt for shiny new machinery? Simply put, technology is smart, efficient, programmable, and perhaps reduces work-involved risks; a laborer packaging factory products by hand – during an entire day of work – would not be able to cover a quarter of what a machine might be able to accomplish in under 5 minutes.
As far as work-related risks are concerned, there can be no confirmation whether machinery is inherently positive or detrimental for human safety within the workplace. Where robots do eliminate the factor of risk and injury to a great extent (no more workers dangling off steep drops to repair buildings can only be seen as a positive), a machine is, at the end of the day, a machine, and is vulnerable to severe system defects, malfunctioning, and mishandling. If you are within the workplace, and have been injured due to malfunctioning machinery or lack of safety accommodations, in the US you are entitled to numerous workers' compensation benefits. Working with machinery naturally opens workers up to a range of health risks and potential injuries that can be promptly and properly dealt with.
And this automation is not restricted to industrial work either; experts have predicted that this steady computerization will likely replace around 5 million jobs by the year 2020. Who needs a personal assistant to handle your schedules when you have Siri? Or why employ an unpredictable staff of humans at a hotel when efficient robots are tailor-made and up for the job? Self-driving vehicles have become a reality as well, and computerized polling has changed the face of recent elections.
However, even though the truck drivers and vote-counters may no longer have work, this robotic takeover has created an entirely new niche in the market, and one which is greatly sought-after: the production, manufacturing, and repair of such machinery. After all, there was a group of humans behind the coding that created your monthly planner, and a group of human workers routinely plan and assemble those self-driving cars.
Will machinery take over human jobs in the next few years? Quite possibly so. However, will humans be put out of work indefinitely? Not quite. Though we may depend on the machinery to get our jobs done quicker, the machinery depends on us to come to life.