Robotics is influencing every aspect of modern life. Surgery robots, for example, are being used to assist with surgery. Industries are also using robots to allow them to manufacture more units of products with impeccable quality. As space travel continues to become more and more important, robots are being included in things such as surveying the solar systems and engaging in exploratory missions.
Many of the predictions we’ve seen lately, regarding jobs of the future, assume that we’ll even have jobs once the robots take over. That’s a possibility, but soon, there will still be jobs for the taking (including jobs overseeing robots). Robots are likely to replace humans in performing monotonous and hazardous activities which humans prefer not to do, or are unable to do.
Anything that can be automated, will be. If the human intervention is not essential to the task, it’s fair to assume that it will be automated. Over the coming decades, robots will enter the lives of every person on Earth on more levels than we ever dreamt possible.
Many reports estimate that several lakhs of jobs will be lost to automation by 2020 and that number will keep growing. Jobs that seemed like ‘safe jobs’ – like being blue collar office workers and legal executives, manufacturing, and even chemists — might be hit the hardest. On the other hand, an abundance of robots will also create a demand for engineers who can make robots, fix robots, program robots and break them too if they go out of control. Robotics engineers are likely to study things like electronics, control systems, mechanical, electrical, artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things, and related software engineering.
The future is going to bring about problems you’ve never seen before in the world. In order to solve these problems, you’ll need to have the mental ability to think outside of the box, see the big picture without losing your eye for detail and rearrange things to find a solution. Luckily, this skill is highly developable and simply takes practice.
Technology may be able to automate many of the jobs that currently exist, but you probably wouldn’t trust it to make critical decisions for you. You’ll constantly need to be analysing various situations, considering multiple solutions and making decisions in a jiffy following logic and reasoning.
Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) jobs are trending currently. As technology progresses, you’ll need to have more advanced STEAM skills to keep up with the pace.
To survive such fierce competition from the robots, you need to develop a certain set of qualities which will be hard to replace. The more creative you are, the less likely you are to lose your job to a robot! While robots may be better than you at calculating and diagnosing problems, they are not very good at creating original ideas, thinking outside the box and innovating, or smart enough to replicate itself without human intervention.
Sooner or later, we will figure out a way to convert this threat into an opportunity. We always have. The human instinct to survive has always been our most powerful drive. Be careful, the robots are on the way!
(The author is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Robolab Technologies, Pune. Amol is a roboticist, who has deep experience in designing and manufacturing complex and task-specific industrial robots. The venture was also chosen as the ‘Startup of the Year’ under the Future Education category at World StartUp Expo 2016, Bengaluru. It was also selected as the best startup you can work for in the year 2017 by ET and the Top 25 Tech Companies in India by Insights Success Media.)
