The more you think about it, the scarier it is. The takeover has begun! Our reliance on technology is starting to get a little worrisome. You call a company at work and you are greeted by an automated message; you go to the local supermarket and you find yourself at a self-service station – you lose your phone, it’s almost certain you’ll feel as though you’ve lost your best friend in battle.Yes, machines are all around us and we have become quite accustomed to it; as some may say it is for the better, it’s progress, right? Well, no, not entirely.
Yes the use of technology in the modern world has helped a great deal; especially in the business world, where deadlines are tight and negotiating can be time sensitive, the use of machines have been priceless. But there has always been the fear that at one point, machines are going to take over.
Just look out our obsession with what might happen if machines started thinking for themselves. There are quite literally hundreds of books, films and TV shows about this real life fear; the machines will control us all. We just have to look at The Matrix, a trilogy based around a civil war between humans and machines – the machines literally grow humans to use them as an energy source. Or The Terminator, a film series about machines turning on its masters and going back in time to kill the leader of the human resistance: The frightening thing is, this fear may become a reality. Hasta la vista, human race.
Recently, Foxconn (a company that sounds like it’s straight out of a sci-fi movie but actually is the supplier for Apple and Samsung) announced that they had reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots. That’s right, over half of the employees at Foxconn have lost their jobs to robots. What is alarming is that these robots aren’t doing simple jobs such as cleaning, or moving heavy equipment, nope. The robots will perform skilled tasks to create parts for smartphones. Smartphones, you know, those hand held devices that we, as a population, are on so much?
It is happening, they have their robot hands in our innards. Imagine if a number of your responsibilities at work were redistributed to robots. It just wouldn’t work – could you really place your faith in a robot to tailor its service to each client, interpret text or even negotiate effectively? Of course not.
Unless the people you are negotiating with are also robots…in which case it’ll be time to find a new profession.
It will not just be the workplace either, artificial intelligence will encroach into our personal lives too. For example, a few companies such as Google, Masdar and BMW have already prototyped, made and had clearance to sell driverless cars. It’s only a matter of time before the unthinkable, driverless trains, driverless planes – are we really ready to trust technology with our life? Heck I can hardly trust technology to wake me up correctly, boil the kettle quick enough or record the latest episode of Game of Thrones, so I’ll be alright for now thanks.
