Robohub.org
 

Xconomy Forum’s final word about robots and jobs


by
12 April 2013



share this:

zconomy jobs promo
At the Xconomy Forum held in Palo Alto earlier this week, the focal topic was “Robots Remake the Workplace.” It was expected that the jobs issue would permeate the event. Do robots take away jobs? Instead, what was evident to all in the room was that all the speakers were in the new Service Robotics sector of the industry and they were all creating new jobs.

This post is part of Robohub’s Jobs Focus.

A few simple facts emerged:

  1. It’s true: industrial robots do take away jobs, often in big numbers. Generally, these are jobs that humans don’t want to do or shouldn’t be doing. After a short time, the displaced workers are replaced in higher level tasks (and perhaps re-distributed downstream or elsewhere). This process has already begun, and will continue.
  2. On the other hand, Service Robotics create jobs that didn’t exist before, often in respectable numbers — numbers that today,  as Service Robotics grows, may very well equal or exceed jobs lost by the use of industrial robots. And these new jobs could grow to much greater numbers as the industry continues to flourish. These are jobs that people want and that pay well.
  3. There is a political component not presently being adequately addressed as automation transforms the workplace by replacing humans with machines that have encapsulated their skills and can perform those skills flawlessly. Retraining and upgrading the general educational system to enable the higher tech skills needed for these new jobs needs a shot of reality instead of spin.
  4. Under the rubric that success breeds success, each recent successful robotics venture was less focused on the metrics of labor cost reduction than on enabling growth limited by hard-to-find labor.
Curt Carlson, President & CEO, SRI

Curt Carlson, President & CEO, SRI

As we move quickly toward what Curt Carlson, CEO of SRI International, said is a “zero inventory, zero delay, and 100% personalized” world, it will likely be true that fewer people will be working in manufacturing.

Carlson’s catchy phrase encapsulates both the complexity and simplicity of the process — and the momentum required for it to happen. The process will likely be driven by (1) lower costs of sensors, CPUs and hardware and (2) more capable AI; and the drivers propelling it forward will be the aging population and global competitiveness.

Thus jobs were not the main topic at the Xconomy Forum; the issue was an aside. The main topic was really the progress and inroads robotics are adding to the global automation and business solutions process.

The jobs issue did lend itself to the two best jokes of the day:

  1. Ten years from now all the robots will be out on strike saying, “Those damn 3D printers are taking away our jobs!”
  2. Let’s reconvene this debate 10 years from now when we have all this time on our hands [after our jobs have been replaced by robots].


tags: , , , , , , , ,


Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.
Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.





Related posts :



Researchers are teaching robots to walk on Mars from the sand of New Mexico

  02 Sep 2025
Researchers are closer to equipping a dog-like robot to conduct science on the surface of Mars

Engineering fantasy into reality

  26 Aug 2025
PhD student Erik Ballesteros is building “Doc Ock” arms for future astronauts.

RoboCup@Work League: Interview with Christoph Steup

and   22 Aug 2025
Find out more about the RoboCup League focussed on industrial production systems.

Interview with Haimin Hu: Game-theoretic integration of safety, interaction and learning for human-centered autonomy

and   21 Aug 2025
Hear from Haimin in the latest in our series featuring the 2025 AAAI / ACM SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants.

AIhub coffee corner: Agentic AI

  15 Aug 2025
The AIhub coffee corner captures the musings of AI experts over a short conversation.

Interview with Kate Candon: Leveraging explicit and implicit feedback in human-robot interactions

and   25 Jul 2025
Hear from PhD student Kate about her work on human-robot interactions.

#RoboCup2025: social media round-up part 2

  24 Jul 2025
Find out what participants got up to during the second half of RoboCup2025 in Salvador, Brazil.

#RoboCup2025: social media round-up 1

  21 Jul 2025
Find out what participants got up to during the opening days of RoboCup2025 in Salvador, Brazil.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence