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For a long time, the development of robotics technology has caused people to worry that machines will take away human jobs. However, in the United States, due to the difficulty of many companies in recruiting employees, robot orders have hit a record high. According to data from the Association for the Advancement of Automation (A3), North American factories and industrial companies ordered a record 29,000 robots in the first nine months of 2021, an increase of 37% from the previous year. Fixed-function robots have become a common feature of factory production lines, helping to manufacture everything from cars to food. In addition, the advancement of autonomous technology has promoted a global boom in robotics, with a wide range of applications, from artificial intelligence-enabled mechanical frying pans to autonomous industrial factory inspection devices.
As shown in the figure above, the use of robots and automation is on the rise. A3 said that leading adopters such as automakers are integrating more robots into their operations, while first-time users are appearing in industries such as agriculture, construction, electronics, food processing, life sciences, metal processing, and warehousing. "Companies just can't find the people they need-that's why they are racing to automate," A3 president Jeff Bernstein told Reuters.
According to the 2020 Employment Outlook Report of the World Economic Forum, the combination of the pandemic-induced recession and the ever-expanding footprint of automation is causing "double destruction."
The short-term economic disruption caused by the response to COVID-19, coupled with the sudden shift of many people to remote work, has accelerated the pace of technology adoption.
The report predicts that the adoption of cloud computing, big data and e-commerce is expected to continue to grow in the next few years. For example, by 2025, the cloud computing of companies participating in the annual survey is expected to increase by 17% compared to 2018.
The distribution of tasks between humans and machines also looks set to change. Among a wide range of activities, respondents to the 2020 Future of Work survey expect that robots will take on more repetitive or trivial tasks, allowing humans to freely focus on more substantive tasks.
By 2025, an estimated 85 million jobs may be replaced by the shift from human to machine workers. So, our increasingly automated future will create more roles, and which ones will disappear?
In a range of industries, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data experts are in great demand, as are analysts and scientists who can interpret data.
Just as roles related to data, automation, and digital strategy are booming, some traditional jobs are disappearing, from administration to accounting functions, from assembly line work to bank tellers. The World Economic Forum predicts that automation will create 58 million more jobs than it replaces.
The World Economic Forum is the first forum to draw the world's attention to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is an unprecedented period of change driven by rapid technological progress. Policies, regulations, and regulations cannot keep up with the pace of innovation, and there is a growing need to fill this gap.
The forum established the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network Center in 2017 to ensure that emerging technologies will help rather than harm humanity in the future. The network is headquartered in San Francisco, opened centers in China, India, and Japan in 2018, and is rapidly establishing locally-operated subsidiary centers in many countries around the world.
The Global Network is working closely with partners from governments, companies, academia, and civil society to jointly design and pilot agile frameworks for managing emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, blockchain, and data policies , Digital trade, drones, Internet of Things (IoT), precision medicine and environmental innovation.
Learn more about the groundbreaking work of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Center Network for the future.
Want to help us shape the fourth industrial revolution? Contact us to learn how to become a member or partner.
As the pace of technological change accelerates, labor training, skills retraining, and skill upgrading have become increasingly important to prevent the skills gap from widening. As more and more robots are used to take on more tasks, the forum stated that critical companies and policy makers support workers at risk or displaced to learn new skills and adapt to the ever-changing work world.
Johnny Wood, senior writer, formative content
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and have nothing to do with the World Economic Forum.
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