Robot videos are on the internet showing a robot doing a task we take for granite everyday. Opening a door. Walking or running through the park. Basic stuff like that. Then you see a video of a robot picking up a heavy object you would need a forklift to pickup. It makes you wonder if the robots will take all the jobs.
At heart I am mostly neutral. I don’t think too optimistic or too pessimistic. If you asked me if a glass of water is half empty or half full I would say it’s both. I like the idea of robots doing all the work and people doing stuff they want to. However, there is the problem. If robots are good enough to take all the jobs. Robot makers believe this is the case they are just not ready yet. Why would humans have anything left to do? Suppose you wanted to be a painter. Robots would already have all the painting jobs. Suppose you wanted to farm and make quality produce for your neighborhood and family. Robots would already be doing that. Suppose you want to want to be a member of Star Trek and explore space. I hate to break it to you. Robots are better suited for that as well.
This leads me to to another question. How would a human be productive? If your not productive how do you survive? By owning a robot? It seems that world governments would rather make robots citizens instead of allowing ownership by citizens. If the world governments make robots citizens in order to tax robots. How does a human citizen benefit? It would seem the only people that will benefit are the people making or fixing robots and the government. Everyone else would be out of luck so to speak. I am not even sure you would be able to get a job fixing robots. After all can’t a broken robot just be broken down the parts inspected and be rebuilt by robots?
I suppose the biggest reason I don’t feel comforted by the idea robots will be taking the jobs is the existing system we live in. If you work for a company and for some reason can’t continue there. Your almost out of luck. Why would it be any different if a robot took my job? I suppose at some point there would be no more paying jobs for humans. The humans may get upset. This could go in different ways, see the robots are all citizens they would get a vote in the political process. We could one day see a robot president.
I think Robots taking all the jobs is a nightmare on the horizon for anyone that needs to work to make a living. It may not even take that long to happen. There is a company now that hires out robots to work for 15 dollars and hour. The robots don’t take breaks, no lunch, no holidays, and are required to work at least 16 hours a day. The extra long day means nothing to the robot but it makes the company that services the robots enough currency to keep the operations growing.
Companies that use robots are cautious at this point in time. They make sure not to fire people to hire robots. It would be a public relations problem for them. It’s also thankfully to expensive to start a new business with robots. There will come a time. I am not sure when someone, somewhere, will lose a job to a robot and the company will say, sorry but we just can’t afford the human in that job. It maybe the beginning of the end.