Robots and the Economy
Robots have become a necessity in a lot of jobs. Including farming, service in restaurants, building machinery (such as cars ) and have even taken up the task of babysitting and being a nurse or pharmacist, but what will this do to our economy? Our jobs? Our way of gaining money and food?
In the end, maybe the only job left to us, will be the things we can do for ourselves, such as farming. As for our businesses hiring robots, it’s about the best thing that ever existed when it comes to little pay - or none at all.
In Middletown, SUNY Orange’s cafeteria workers will be laid off at the end of the spring term, to be replaced by food-dispensing robots. Not only do robots take the jobs of cooks and servers, but they are also taking waitressing jobs too, and getting better at it. They have also taken places of online diagnosers who decide what disease you have just from a list of symptoms. However, if you describe your symptoms inaccurately then the diagnoser may over-react and give you the wrong diagnosis: leaving you with the thought that you have a big illness that will kill you in weeks with no cure. Humans, however, may be more persistent in getting an accurate diagnosis and Doctors are also obliged to tell you the truth.
As for the robots themselves, people love them when they don’t think about how they will affect your salary, job or life. Children love seeing something that looks like it came out of their favorite time travel movie that is set in 2400, and with kids, if a dream comes true, their hopes of life have gone to infinity and beyond. What parent wouldn't love their kid believing in anything?
The negatives are battery / power, reliability and make. Any of these can be flawed and bring the whole project down. Each variable must be used in teamwork, and without, will, for babysitters - overfeed, nurse - wrong medication, waiter - wrong meal, machinery builder - car door put on the printer, and this can go for any small mistake made by the creator. In addition, it would take a long time to create an idea and would need a first, second and third draft to make the final model. Then to make more, you would need another month. To make a whole staff crew, another 10 years. Mass production? You will need robots/computers/machinery for that too.
Furthermore, businesses owners will love not having to spend loads of money paying staff, but when they spend millions on buying the robots, weeks later they break and you will need another 5 million dollars to fix them again. Without thinking it through properly, every business owner will fire everyone they have as staff and buy their own robot staff. If you think deeply, you’ll be spending more money than the richest man in the world even has. In the end, as a business owner, you don't want to be buying robots as staff any time soon: maybe when flying robots exist and the ones you want now are 2$.
In conclusion, thousands and millions will lose their jobs and will be forced into turning all their property into a farm for their own money - or as the best solution, have their own company (which will be increasingly difficult) and hire real people over a high budget so that they are not just helping themselves. Hopefully this time will never come. So ask yourself this: are robots really what the economy wants?
