This week I had my test for the semester on Robotics and Mechatronics. It was a prompt related to the effects that automation within the workforce will have in the future. In addition to the prompt we were given two stimulus to help support our response. I looked at the effects this would have on an individual person within an effected career, as well as looking at a more general impact on the communities this would effect, and finally looking into the economic effects of automation. While the effects on the people were generally negative, I found that there is much reason to believe the effect on the economy would be greatly positive. This makes sense as robots would have the ability to work constantly and in doing so having the ability to produce more than any human could. However the idea of automation is limited to jobs that don’t involve creativity, and that human emotion. This includes jobs such as psychiatry and most arts related jobs. I looked into what effect limiting the career options could have on people.
I was given an hour to write this response, and I was able to submit nearly 1000 words discussing the benefits and deficits of automation, while asking the question of how to define the nature of its outcome. This question was important because I discussed two main elements – the social, and the economic. One of these had many more deficits than benefits, while the other was the opposite. Much of my final answer came down to whether economic benefit is more important than social. If we were talking more strictly about the effect on people then it would be negative. This is route i decided to take, while acknowledging that there is some gain in automation, it is not for the workers.
This was the only work given out for IT over the last week, so there isn’t too much to discuss. However, I feel that I did learn a decent amount in this one assessment piece. It was interesting to weigh up the different impacts to decide what the overall effect would be