When I saw this topic, I knew there was no way I could not make an entry. This topic has been on my mind for a couple of weeks now and after I went to a workshop which also talked about it, I see it as a topic in the community. Can this be a just a coincidence?
Last week Saturday, I attended an IOT(Internet of Things) workshop at Opoku Ware II Museum in KNUST, a university in Ghana where we spoke about the impact of technology in our world today. During the presentation, the topic of robots and the world came up. A question was asked, it was along the lines of "Do you think robots are coming to take over all our jobs".
The whole place went quiet for a while since everyone was thinking about this question. After a short moment of silence, answers started trooping in. Some answered in the affirmative while others answered in the negative. After all these different answers, we all agreed on the fact that yes even though robots are going to take over most of the jobs, they are also going to create more jobs in so doing.
To be honest, how that was going to happen, I wasn't sure of but I did agree with them anyway.
The positive impact of robots in our world today cannot be denied. They have reduced the workload of humans and increased productivity. In fact, they have made living a lot more easier.
On the other hand, we are to assess the negative implications too. The strain it has brought on human and social interaction is disturbing; not to talk of limitations in creative thinking and the number of jobs they've taken over.
I was watching a cartoon called The Mitchells vs the Machines, which talked about how robots took over the world of humans and finally had control over humans. Apparently, a human developer developed an app which brought so much ease to humans but then made an upgrade to the app. It was not an app again but rather the robot version of the app. The app got angry that it had been replaced and started misbehaving. Because it had the source code, it was able to manipulate the robots to turn against the humans and caused a lot of distraction.
I don't know if that can happen in the real world but to avoid that as developers, we have to make sure we have full control of our robots or technology and can shut it down anytime it goes south. Also to reduce the occurrence of high unemployment as robots take over most of our jobs, we have to prepare for the jobs that will be created when that happens.
Maybe robots can do some things better than humans, but there are a lot more they can't and it's up to us to find what those ones are and specialize in those fields.