University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) had the privilege recently of hosting Google’s Chief Economist, Dr Hal Varian, who gave a presentation in which he addressed the ever present spectre of automation and robotics and it’s perceived threat to human participation in the workforce. The event hosted by UTS Business School and the Centre for Policy and Market Design, allowed Dr Varian to provide a rational, reassuring forecast of the role robots will play, at least in the near future. He suggests that they will in fact, be additions to, rather than substitutes for humans in the economy.
Humans are extraordinarily complex creatures and the tasks we perform innately are actually quite difficult to reproduce robotically.
The ageing population will lead to natural attrition in the labour force which means there will, by default, be less people engaged in active work. So robots will effectively be filling a gap in the market.
It’s less gloom and doom than images of dancing robots might lead us to believe.
To read more visit:
UTS – News

Leave a Reply