Robots are friends, not job-stealing foes
A new study says they'll most likely be working side-by-side with humans.
Robots aren't taking our jobs -- at least not all of them. A new study by the VDMA Robotics and Automation Association shows that jobs in Germany's automotive sector actually grew the more it relied on robots. If Europe had a robot capital, it would be Germany. What the association believes is that more and more routine tasks in factories will be automated, so robots will be taking some jobs. But in turn, our knowledge, creativity, dexterity and other human skills hard to replicate, will become more valuable.
VDMA thinks that robots will be used to amplify our abilities instead of to completely replace every human worker. In fact, a number of robot-makers are already developing models that can interact with people better and reduce the risk of injury. Hopefully, we do end up working side-by-side, because the alternative -- the World Economic Forum predicted in January that we're losing 5 million jobs to machines by 2020 -- is just too grim.
