​The robots are here and they are getting smarter

Written by: Dan Tamir and Idan Portnoy

Innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics raise controversial questions that concern policy makers, stakeholders, and not so surprisingly almost all of us. [1] One common concern is the effect on the labor market.

For instance, the service industry’s use of robotics in the hotel industry has shown that service robot systems can scale to provide extensive and affordable machine-human interactions in large organizations. Recent polls suggest that almost three quarters of consumers believe that robots could improve service in the hotel industry, 62% actually welcome robots on hotel check-in desks, 68% welcome robots for room service and 73% welcome robots as hotel porters.[2]

Fast food is another low skill service sector that might soon be taken over by robots. McDonald’s announced recently opened a store in Phoenix AZ managed almost entirely by robots. McDonald’s explained that there were incentivized by rising minimum wage and costly human error to pursue this technology.[3]

In a widely cited study from 2013, Oxford professors Carl Frey and Michael Osbourne suggested that machines could replace about 47 percent of the current workforce over the next 20 years.[4] |Professor Andrew Moore, dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, disagrees, arguing that there is no evidence that this technology has increased unemployment. In fact, he argues that the freedom from tedious jobs will lead to new opportunities for employees willing to retrain.

While highly skilled workers may be able to retrain or pivot to other jobs, low skilled and older employees will likely become part of a lost generation, too old or unable to be retrained. To prevent unprecedented unemployment, some have suggested that limits be placed on the robot workforce (i.e., we can determine that only 10% of the employees can be robots, similar to the Mexican labor law, which allows 10% of foreign work per employee.)[5] Alternatively, the use of robots can be made legally onerous, either through increased taxes for robot workforces, to offset savings from firing humans, or a high bar of legal responsibility.

Despite the conflicting opinions on this matter, in either scenario, the earlier we acknowledge the ascendancy of this technology, the better we will be prepared to deal with the legal and social repercussions. Like any other area of disruptive emerging technology that threatens the status quo, the law ought to proactively create regulatory frameworks, that would enable us to enjoy the advantages of this technology while minimize the social disadvantages.

References
[1] Addressing the social, legal and ethical issues raised by robotics and artificial intelligence
[2] Richard Singer, Robots and Artificial Intelligence in the hotel industry (2016)
[3] New McDonald’s In Phoenix Run Entirely By Robots
[4] THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT: HOW SUSCEPTIBLE ARE JOBS TO COMPUTERISATION?