In their recent comments on "60 Minutes," and at the Techonomy 2012 conference, MIT economists Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfssonn may have given the impression that robots are poised to swipe the jobs of U.S. workers. As reported in The New York Times, robotics experts assembled at the Automate 2013 trade show in Chicago offered a different outlook. Henrik I. Christensen, Chair of Robotics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that while he agrees that automation could make certain types of jobs obsolete, it will also create new, higher-paying jobs. The International Federation of Robotics reinforced this argument with the release of findings from a report that predicts the robotics industry will help create 1.9 million to 3.5 million jobs by 2020. More
Tag Index / Showing 1 - 6 of 6 results for “robots”
Why Robots Might Boost Industry While Killing Jobs
Globalization is an easy culprit for the recent wave of U.S. unemployment, with domestic jobs shipped overseas to be replaced by cheap labor, often without adverse impact on the quality of a company's products or services. Apple is just one high-profile example of this trend. But automation and robotics may be contributing even more to our stubborn unemployment figures. Paradoxically, robots could also help bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. The Jan. 13 broadcast of 60 Minutes featured several Techonomists to help explain how this might happen. More
Skills Don’t Pay the Bills
What is the biggest threat to jobs in American manufacturing: robots or a skills gap? Many manufacturing jobs are vanishing because of computer-driven machinery, as discussed at Techonomy 2012, and nearly as many jobs have been outsourced. Thus, the industry’s future seems to lie in a new generation of highly skilled manufacturing employees who can run the computer that runs the machine. This means they must have a basic understanding of metallurgy, physics, chemistry, pneumatics, electrical wiring, and computer code.Some say there’s a skills gap, and employees with the right training simply do not exist. But that may not be the whole problem. More
Manufacturing Techonomy 2012 Video
Where’s My Robot (Highlights)
Your children may prefer their company, you may “hire” robotic workers, they may do our dirty work, and one may care for you in your old age. The future for robots seems boundless. Is there a limit to the invasion? Rodney Brooks of Rethink Robotics, MIT’s Andrew McAfee, and John Markoff of The New York Times take a closer look at the present and future of robotics at the Techonomy 2012 conference in Tucson, Ariz. More
Techonomy 2012: Where’s My Robot?
Your children may prefer their company, you may “hire” robotic workers, they may do our dirty work, and one may care for you in your old age. The future for robots seems boundless. Is there a limit to the invasion? Rodney Brooks of Rethink Robotics, MIT's Andrew McAfee, and John Markoff of The New York Times take a closer look at the present and future of robotics at the Techonomy 2012 conference in Tucson, Ariz. More
