Impact of the Development of Autonomous Robots - Essay Example

Research paper: How the development of autonomous robots will change our lives positively and negatively. Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Introduction In the global business, many organizations are contemplating on how they can improve their competitive advantage through effective application of technology. The rate of technology advancement is very high and organizations are moving from the analog way of conducting business to digitalization. This includes management information systems and using robots instead of the human labor. Robots are automated machines which can work with little human intervention as shown in the appendix figures. Organizations are using robots in their production processes with the aim of improving the utilization of resources and maximizing the output (Nomura et al 2009). The development of the autonomous robots has led to positive and negative impacts on the human life. In this regard, this report will discuss the impact and changes robots will have on our lives when they are preferred than human labor. Positive impacts on robots in our lives The development of the robots has great impacts on the lives of the people. From the research, it is expected that robots are likely to impact on the lives of people positively and negatively. The autonomous robots help to create jobs which improve the household incomes for the people. There are those who argue that robots destroy jobs, however, they help to create jobs at the same time. Some of the jobs which are created by the robots include manufacturing robots, assembly of robots, designing websites and database systems for managing the robots (Nomura et al 2009). Moreover, the robots create jobs for the experienced people in the automation industry since they will be hired to operate the robots. The services of the technicians will also be required in order to service the robots when they maintenance is being undertaken. Therefore, the robots will change our lives by improving the living standards of the people. The robots will enable the people to have more time for their leisure activities. This is the most significant impact of the robots on our lives. Once the robot is programmed, it can work for a long duration without human intervention. This implies that there is little or no human intervention required since the robots can work unattended (Nilsson 2010). This is important in changing lives since people will have time to balance their work and life. The people will have more time for their lives since they will have time for their personal issues and this will improve the wellbeing of the people hence there is a need to introduce autonomous robots at workplaces. In addition, the introduction of robots will change our lives in that they can do dangerous and risky jobs. The cases of people dying while working have been reported in various workplaces especially the manufacturing industries. This is why people are reluctant in handling some of the riskiest jobs like oil handling and working in a manufacturing factory (Nilsson 2010). Those who work in risky jobs like in handling heavy cargo will benefit with the introduction of the robots. Job related stress will be managed with the introduction of the robots because the work will be automated hence less human labor required as the robots can be programmed to handle the jobs. This improves job satisfaction which is good in managing stress among the people, which can otherwise lead to health issues. Therefore, the robots will improve the wellbeing of the people. For instance, robots can be used during the wars to operate the machines as indicated in appendix figure 2 . The robots will also help to change our lives by improving the production and performance of the organizations. This is because they will help to minimize the cost of production, which is a benefit to both the organization and the employees as they will be paid extra bonuses as a way of motivating them (Singer 2009). This is important in changing our lives by increasing the earning for the households and also making working easier and subsequently helps to manage stress among the employees. This implies that, the employees will work for few hours and there will be no exploitation. This helps to change our lives by increasing the household income. Furthermore, robots will change our lives in that they will enable the employees to avoid working for long hours in the same job which will lead to boredom and fatigue. The employees will work for a few hours and they can practice job rotation using robots which is important in managing boredom. The employees will not be repeating the same work for a long time since the robots will handle the work. Repeating jobs daily can lead to carelessness among the employees which can lead to accidents at workplace (Singer 2009). This will improve the human safety and reduce high cases of workplace related accidents. With the introduction of the robots, the employees will not work during adverse hours like working throughout the night. Instead, robots will be programmed to handle the jobs and this is important since the employees will have adequate time to take their rest. This helps to avoid exploitation of human skills by working them throughout since in many industries, the manufacturing process is conducted throughout even at night (Surveys 2014). The organization will benefit as well as the employees because they will have time to relax their minds. This helps to improve the wellbeing of the employees because they will have enough time to rest from heavy work especially those who perform manual work. Finally, the robots are accurate when performing their tasks as compared to human labor. This is because the robots are programmed and they handle the work as programmed with high levels of accuracy (Arora 2008). The robots cannot make mistakes like overestimating or underestimating. This is important in meeting the manufacturing accuracy. Unlike human beings who make some minor errors, the robots cannot and this implies that the quality of the products being manufactured is high. This is especially in the food manufacturing industry whereby, an error in the manufacturing and measuring process can cause serious problems to the human health and general reputation of the company (Arora 2008). Therefore, the robots help to ensure accuracy of the products. This affects our lives in that the health standards of the people will be met by managing quality during the production process. Finally, robots help to promote flexibility at the workplace. Since the robots can work for 24 hours continuously, it is possible for the employees to work in turns and at their convenient time. This is another strategy for implementing work life balance (Arora 2008). The employees can work in turns since they can program the robot for a fixed period of time after which it will be programmed again. This improves the satisfaction of employees, thus improving their wellbeing. For instance, some employees will prefer to work during the night while others will work during the daytime (Arora 2008). Working in shifts is possible since one employee can be able to monitor the operations of the robot. How the robots will change our lives negatively Despite the fact that robots have a positive impact in our lives, they will also change our lives negatively. In the first place, the robots will hinder the creativity of human beings. This is because the robots can only work as programmed and they cannot be creative to develop effective strategies of improving their working. This hinders the creativity of the employees since they depend on the robots to handle their jobs (Heerink et al 2008). The work of the employees is to program the robots and let them work. This hinders creativity among the employees as they will focus on automation to handle their tasks. This will affect our lives in that there will be no development in terms of the manufacturing process which implies that the changing needs of the customers cannot be met. This hinders human development as well as the development of new products (Heerink et al 2008). Furthermore, the development of robots can replace people’s jobs. This is so because the work that can be done by several people will be handled by one or two people who will only need to operate those robots. This is as illustrated by appendix 4 where robots for milking is on increase in Michigan. Therefore, this can highly change the living standards of people whereby we will have low employment (Heerink et al 2008). Thus we will have fewer jobs with low amount of payment leading to inequality of income stability, and we will have social unrest due to permanent unemployment and high dependeny ratio of those without jobs. Nevertheless, the development of autonomous robots will lead to labor market whereby non-routine work will be performed by anybody with or without experience and there will be no gain out of it. Therefore, more losses will arise because nobody will be willing to work freely without being paid (Heerink et al 2008). In addition, the robots will affect our lives in that the craft skills will be abolished. The handwork skills which are possessed by the employees will be forgotten since the organization and people will focus on automated machines to perform their services (Henderson 2006). The craftsman skills will no longer be useful which will lead to decline in the knowledge and skills which have been important towards steering ahead the skills of many young people leading to increased employment. The end result is that the people will struggle to earn a living by undergoing training to develop their skills so that they can catch up with technology development. This will affect the living standards of the people in the society. Further, the robots are not good at learning from their mistakes. This is in the context that when the robots make mistakes, they cannot learn from their mistakes and they can repeat the same mistake. This is risky, especially to human beings (Tabuchi 2008). For instance, in the manufacturing industry, if the robot makes the mistake in the portioning of the ingredients, this can always reoccur until the issue is identified. This will have led to manufacturing default on products which may not be fit for human consumption. This will not only lead to losses for the company, but also affect the health of the people in the society. In this regard therefore, the robots affect the living standards of the people in the society. Moreover, there are some jobs which can only be handled by the people and not the robots. This is because the jobs require some creativity and critical thinking to solve issues. Elimination of these tasks that should be handled by human beings will lead to accidents. For instance, self driving vehicles may not work effectively since they will not sense the unexpected circumstances. This means that there will be many unexpected accidents since the robots cannot sense the unexpected circumstances instead the robots can only perform their tasks as programmed (Tabuchi 2008). This will affect our lives since there will be many accidents if all tasks are automated without human intervention who can be creative in unexpected circumstances to develop emergency solutions for problems as indicated in appendix 3 below where there is the development of driverless cars. On the other hand, the development of robots can be a job destroyer. Whereby we have millions and billions of jobs being created by technology, but the side effect of it is that, these millions or billions jobs created gives less employment opportunities because much is done by robots. In addition to these robots can lead to laziness of mankind whereby everything is done by them even something that needs human labor (Hemal & Menon 2011). Hence, it will encourage less commitment and carelessness of work. Finally, the use of machines like computers can destroy a job if one enters figures wrongly, it will also give a wrong answer. Therefore, they should be operated with a lot of care. The development of autonomous robots will lead to antisocial behaviors like increased crimes ad terrorism using the robots. For instance, the robots will be used by terrorists to perform their attacks without the human intervention. This implies that the activities of terrorists will intensify since the robots will be used to perform their attacks. For instance, the pilotless planes can be used by terrorists to perform their attacks by using robots (Hemal & Menon 2011). The end result is that the human life will be at stake since the attacks will affect the human existence, unlike when the autonomous robots will have not been developed and used since this will be a hindrance to the operations of the terrorists hence putting the life of people at risk. Finally, the robots will affect the wellbeing of the people in our society since the people will rely much on the automated services hence they will not perform any tasks. This is not be good for the health of the people as they will develop lifestyle diseases which are associated with lack of exercises. In this effect, the development of autonomous robots will affect the way people live in terms of conducting exercises. There are some tasks which people perform which is part of their daily exercises (Jia 2006). For instance, automating laundry implies that the people will not perform any exercises if they don’t go to the gym. This will affect the life of the people since people will be reluctant in doing exercises which can lead to lifestyle disorders like obesity. Conclusion The rate at which technology is changing globally is very high and there is aneed to focus on the future effects of these developments. The automation of services like development of robots impact positively and negatively on our lives. The positive impacts of development of autonomous robots will lead to the creation of jobs, improved resting time and there will be improved safety at workplace. However, there are also the negative effects of developing the autonomous robots and they include income inequality, loss of jobs, hindering creativity thinking among employees and also can lead to increased accident rates. Therefore, the robots have both positive and negative influences on our lives. References Arora, M 2008, Design and Development of Friction Compensator Algorithm for one Link Robot, Department of Electrical and Instrumentation Engineering Thapar University, Patiala. Heerink, M., Kröse B., Evers, V & Wielinga, B 2008, The Influence of Social Presence on Acceptance of a Companion Robot by Older People, Journal of Physical Agents, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 1-8. Henderson, H 2006, Modern Robotics: Building Versatile Machines, Chelsea House, New York. Hemal, A. K & Menon, M 2011, Robotics in Genitourinary Surgery, London, Springer. Jia, M. J 2006, Research on face detection and tracking algorithms of humanoid robot vision, 2006; Nilsson, N. J 2010, The Quest for Artificial Intelligence, London, Cambridge University Press. Nocks, L 2008, The Robot: The Life Story of a Robot, The Johns Hopkins University Press. Nomura, T., Kanda T., Suzuki, T & Kato, K 2009, Age differences and images of robots. Social survey in Japan, Interaction Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 374 – 391. Singer, P. W 2009, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, Penguin Press, New York, NY. Surveys 2014, The 2014 survey: Impacts of Al and robotics by 2015, retrieved on Nov 2014 fromhttp://www.elon.edu/eweb/imagining/surveys/2014_survey/2025_Internet_AI_Robo tics.xhtml Tabuchi, H 2008, Japanese robots enter daily life, New York, Associated Press. Appendix Appendix 1: Images of autonomous robots Appendix 2: Robots handling risky jobs Appendix 3: Robots driving driverless cars Appendix 4: Robots milking on increase in Michigan Appendix 5: Increased shipment of robots Appendix 6: Increased use of robots Read More