Industrial Robots - Essay Example

Industrial Robots
Despite its widespread use over the past several decades, scientists, experts, and scholars have failed to agree on a particular definition of robots. However, one possible way to define robots could be to label them, as mechanically programmed devices that are capable of performing multiple and complex functions. Robots have been the focal point of many Hollywood stories and recently, many news stories as well, thus increasing the widespread concern about robots that within a few decades, they would take over the industrial sectors thus creating a new wave of unemployment, poverty, and hunger that would only lead to destruction and chaos. 
There are certain estimations, which indicate that, by the year 2025, robots would have taken almost 50 percent of the total jobs in the United States. The impact of industrial robots on employment patterns would vary amongst different industries, and there are reasons to believe that the automotive industry, food services industry, and manufacturing industry would be among the ones that would be impacted the most. In these industries, robots would replace as much as 95 percent of the total workers (Skaar & Castillo, pp. 63-64, 2012). These three industries, combined, would replace more than 44 million workers. Calculations also indicate that by the end of 2012, the number of industrial robots, within the US alone, would increase to the level of 1.2 million. More importantly, despite the dismissal performance of the economy and recessionary pressures, there has been a 20 percent average annual increase in the employment of industrial robots. By the year 2013, there would be one robot worker for every 6000 people living on this planet and there are reasons to believe that, within a few decades, the world would have more rob than that person (Briggle, et al., pp. 104-106, 2011). 
Proponents of replacing human workers with robots believe that this would mark a new era in improving the quality of living of people. Life on this planet would become more comfortable, and industries would be able to reduce their costs, drastically, thus allowing consumers as well as industries to gain from the savings (Skaar & Castillo, pp. 63-64, 2012). 
On the other hand, proponents of these ideas believe that it will only increase the problems in developing and third-world countries of the world, which are plagued, already, by problems of high inflation, poverty, and unemployment. In many of these countries, a significant chunk of people is employed in the manufacturing sector, performing mundane low-skilled tasks because of their illiteracy. When industrial robots replace these jobs, many of these people would starve to death, and the rest of them would have to resort to extreme measures. This is true because their corrupt and weak governments are less likely to be able to support these people, thus, leading the way for bloody revolutions (Briggle, et al., pp. 104-106, 2011). 
Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that these fears are overestimated. Similar concerns were expressed when new technologies were being introduced during the industrial revolution. Workers feared that it would lead to mass unemployment but after a short period of high unemployment, the industrial revolution created widespread prosperity. This is true because technologies allowed people to save more, something that induced more investments. Furthermore, new technologies created new industries thus creating new employment opportunities. More importantly, the countries with the highest human-to-robot ratio are Japan, Singapore, Germany, and South Korea and all of these have low unemployment levels all these countries are progressing very quickly (Skaar & Castillo, pp. 63-64, 2012). Read More