WILL ROBOTS STEAL HUMAN LABOR?

Worrying hypotheses have been circulating for several years about the mass unemployment that would be created by the development of computer technologies and artificial intelligence: the thesis is that robots would be increasingly capable of replacing human work. However, these changes may not lead to an overall increase in unemployment. This mechanism is based on the new tasks that accompany innovation, creating new jobs.

According to the economist Autor workers such as: drivers, assemblers, plant operators and office employees are at risk in a context of innovation. But there is also another risk concerning workers’ salaries. High-skilled workers, therefore, have been able to benefit from an increase in demand for their work, given the reduction in unit costs due to the introduction of new technologies. For low-skilled workers, on the other hand, there has been a modest increase in demand, which has been accompanied by a fall in the prices of goods produced by these workers, precisely because of the introduction of robots.

In conclusion, the only strong result that emerges is that which denies that there is a significant effect of wage polarization.

Robots will not steal jobs and wipe out human labor forever. And even if they can, that day is decades away.

The widespread fear that automation will lead to mass structural unemployment does not match reality. In particular, in Italy, technological changes have had substantially no effect on overall employment, suggesting that there has been a substantial balance between the destruction of old jobs and the creation of new ones, that is to say, between work replaced by machinery and work complementary to it.

I think it’s still too early to worry, although the COVID-19 pandemic itself has contributed to an increase in technological evolution, which has become indispensable in recent times; in fact, many people continue to work in smart work. In any case, although robots might be super perfected, you can never do without the hand of man and his intelligence.