Robotics’ Sociopolitical and Economic Implications Report

Introduction

One of the most notable aspects of a post-industrial living in the West, is the fact that, as time goes on, the robotics-related technologies become ever more incorporated into people’s lives (Bajcsy 2014). It is understood, of course, that there are a number of the socio-political and economic implications to the process in question. This paper will reflect on the most important of them and expound on what can be considered the most notable effects of Robotics on the functioning of organizations/governments, and on people’s ability to take advantage of their existential potential. This will be done in the bullet-point manner, consistent with the provided questions’ structural framework.

The benefits and limitations of robotics for individuals

The foremost benefits of Robotics for individuals can be formulated as follows:

• The continual development/implementation of the Robotics-related technologies will increase the chances of self-actualization, on the part of the potentially affected individuals. The reason for this is quite apparent – while taking practical advantage of these technologies, people will be able to save the substantial amounts of time, as a result of not being longer required to take care of the (predominantly domestic) routine but time-consuming tasks, such as preparing meals, for example (Brooks 1991). Consequently, the concerned individuals would be more likely to capitalize on what happened to be their yet unrealized life-potentials. This alone creates the objective preconditions for the ongoing progress, in the field of Robotics, to continue gaining an exponential momentum.
• The implementation of Robotics in the workplace, encourages employees to invest in increasing the level of their professional competency. Given the fact that Robotics makes possible the automation of what used to be the human-handled manufacturing processes in the past, this naturally prompts employees to work on acquiring a number of the additional professional skills, as the mean of ensuring that they will be able to retain their jobs in the new ‘robotized’ work-environment (Probst 2014). This, of course, empowers the affected individuals rather considerably, in the sense of making it more likely for them to be able to attain a social prominence in the increasingly globalized and technology dependent world.

There are, however, a few negative aspects, in regards to how the Robotics-related technologies affect individuals, as well. The main of them are:

• Those people who happened to be overly dependent on robotics, are known for their reduced capacity to adequately react to the externally applied ‘unexpected’ stimuli (Bostrom 2009). Probably the main reason for this is that one’s reliance on the technologies of automatization/AI has a negative effect of the concerned person’s analytical abilities. The application of a commonsense logic tells why it is being the case – without being able to face the challenges of life in the ‘full-power’ mode (as the consequence of his or her affiliation with robotics), the individual in question would be less likely to understand what accounts for the dialectical relationship between causes and effects.
• The incorporation of Robotics into the public sphere will inevitably result in undermining the value of ‘human resources’, which in turn will have a negative effect on one’s ability to find and to secure an adequately-paid job – especially if there is the strong factor of repetitiveness to the latter. It is understood, of course, that this will lead to the dramatically increased rate of unemployment in the ‘robotized’ societies/communities – something, from which just about any representative of the middle-class could hardly benefit (Alcott 1985).

The benefits and limitations of robotics for organisations

As far as organizations are being concerned, the major benefits of Robotics can be defined as follows:

• The deployment of the Robotics-related technologies allow companies to increase the quality of the manufactured end-products. The rationale behind this suggestion is that, unlike what it happened to be the case with humans; robots are being capable of performing repetitive/mechanistic tasks in the essentially invariant manner. As Spencer noted, “They (robots) do the same task the same way, over and over — they are consistent workers. The last product out of the workcell on a given shift will have the same quality as the first one” (2000, p. 23). The increased quality of products will in turn allow the concerned manufacturer to become even more functionally competitive.
• Robotics increases the redundancy of the affiliated organization’s invariant operational sequences, which in turn makes this organization less prone to the operational failures (Roberts 1990). To illustrate the validity of this suggestion, one can refer to the functioning of nuclear-power plants. One of the reasons why these plants are considered nothing short of ‘failure-proof’, is that there is a high degree of robotization to how they operate.
• Robotics help organizations to remain functionally efficient. In its turn, this can be explained by the fact that the technologies in question establish the “possibility of using the technological equipment in three shifts and 365 days a year” (Petrina 2008, p. 75). In this respect, it will be appropriate to mention the fact that, as compared to the organization’s ‘manned’ operational sequences, the fully automated ones take much less time to be executed.

There are only two major limitations to the deployment of the Robotics-technologies within an organization:

• The concerned course of actions presupposes that, as the organization’s functioning continues to grow increasingly associated with the concept of Robotics, its ability to serve on behalf of the affiliated community, will be growing progressively weakened. The reason for this is that, as practice indicates, the most immediate consequence of the deployment of Robotics by organizations, are the massive layoffs of employees (Goldberg, Highfill & McAsey 1998).
• The implementation of a particular robotization-policy, on the part of an organization, is always very costly. What also adds to the problem, in this respect, is that, due to the exponential progress in the field of IT, the Robotics-related technologies never cease remaining in the state of a rapid development (Sharkey 2008) – something that sheds doubt upon the appropriateness of deploying a long-term approach to calculating what will account the objective benefits of the would-be implemented robotization-policy.

The benefits and limitations of robotics for governments

Just as it happened to be the case with organizations, governments are also being in the position to benefit from putting the Robotics-related technologies into practical use. In this respect, the most important benefits can be outlined as follows:

• Robotization will significantly increase the speed with which a particular governmental branch processes the inflow information (Cusack 1994). Given the fact that the measure of the government’s effectiveness has often been discussed in conjunction with how prompt the concerned governmental officials react to the associated challenges, this particular benefit should not be underestimated. The reason for this is that, by becoming ever more operationally responsive (with the help of Robotics), the government will be able to keep up with the pace of technological progress, which now defines the essence of the surrounding social reality.
• Robotics will make it possible for the government to eliminate the factor of biasness/corruption, out of how it proceeds with making executive decisions (Webb 2001). The rationale behind this suggestion is quite apparent – the very conceptual paradigm of Robotics is based upon the assumption that, while choosing in favor of one executive decision over the other, robots (endowed with AI) will always remain impartial. What it means is that the adoption of Robotics, on the government’s part, will naturally result in increasing the extent of its legitimacy.
• The implementation of the Robotics-related technologies, will help the government to address the issue of growing much too structurally complex. The most obvious benefit of this is that, in the aftermath of having become ‘robotized’, the government will be in the much better position, while trying to ensure that the would-be enacted rules/regulations are discursively consistent with the realities of a modern living (Cusack 1994).

Among the affiliated disadvantages/limitations, one can name the following:

• After having implemented a particular Robotics-technology, the government will automatically sustain a certain blow to the measure of its systemic integrity. The reason for this is that the process of coming up with the executive decisions, on the government’s part, would become more susceptible to the possibility for the robotized system’s slight malfunction, to alter the very course of its operational activities. In other words – the more ‘robotized’ a specific aspect of the government’s functioning is, the more it would be affected by the disruption in one of the applied invariant sequences (Petrina 2008).
• There is a chance that, after having incorporated Robotics, the government will grow increasingly incapable of ensuring the ethical soundness of its decisions, passed down for implementation. The partial answer, as to why it appears to be the case, has been provided earlier – the very fact that robots are by definition impartial, incapacitates them, in the sense of preventing their AI from taking into account the emotional/ethical aspects of the would-be favored decisions (Webb 2001).
• The adoption of Robotics, may well make the government less popular with ordinary citizens. The reason for this is that it is in people’s nature to experience a deep-seated anxiety, in regards to what they perceive contributes to the possibility for the hierarchically structured system (such as the government) to malfunction. In this respect, the increased automatization of the government’s activities would certainly be perceived as a threat to the governmental officials’ presumed ability to ‘serve the people’ (Bostrom 2009).

Personal reflections

There can be only a few doubts, as to the fact that Robotics will play an important role in what I believe should account for my future, as the society’s productive member. Yet, even though the above-stated can be well defined speculative, this is far from being the case, as the very laws of history predetermine the linear-upward direction of the ongoing progress in the field of Robotics (Quinn 2013). The following, are the elaborations on what I think represents the significance of Robotics for my future:

• As a result of being thoroughly familiar with what account for the life-enhancing opportunities, provided by Robotics, I will become less of a ‘time-wasteful’ person. The line of reasoning behind this suggestion, is quite apparent – by taking advantage of the would-be available Robotics-technologies, I will be able to save time on taking care of the routine housekeeping tasks, such as the mentioned earlier manual preparation of meals.
• Robotics should help me on the way of acquiring more and more of the career-related professional skills, without having to apply much of an effort. The legitimacy of this statement can be illustrated, in regards to the fact that in the near future, people will be able to enhance their physical existence by becoming increasingly cyborg-like (Smart 2011). For example, it is thoroughly reasonable, on my part, to expect that in the future, I will be able to learn foreign languages almost instantaneously, by the mean of inserting a micro-chip with the recorded information of relevance into the slot, directly ‘hooked on’ to my brain.
• Due to the fact that the notion of robotization is now being commonly discussed, in relation to the recent breakthroughs in the field of nano-Robotics, I expect that in the future, I will be in the position to enjoy a number of the previously unheard life-enhancing technologies. For example, I should be able to buy a car that will never need to be washed – the technology of nano-Robotics will make it possible to design a ‘dirt-proof’ car-paint. Taking advantage of the same technology, on my part, should also enable me to take effective care of a variety of health-issues, experienced by people through their middle/advanced years (Nishikawa & Yaegashi 2008).
• The introduction of Robotics into the public sphere, should increase the degree of the governmental institutions’ reflective responsiveness. I believe that this will have a close and personal effect on my life in the future. The reason for this is that, after having decided in favor of utilizing the technologies of Robotics, the government would be able to make sure that the proposed tax-collection policies, on its part, are thoroughly justified. Considering myself a potential taxpayer, I cannot help welcoming this particular scenario.

Nevertheless, there are a few reasons for me to think that my future will be negatively affected by the advance of Robotics, as well. The main of them can be formulated as follows: The technologies of robotization provide yet additional momentum to the widening of a gap between the country’s rich and poor. This simply could not be otherwise, given the perceptual subtleties of what the notion of the ‘free-market’ economy stands for. Because it is namely the generation of profit, which accounts for the actual purpose of the free-market economy’s functioning, there can be only a few doubts that Robotics will be eventually used by the nation’s rich and powerful, as yet the additional instrument for strengthening their grip on the society. Being thoroughly unaffiliated with this type of people, I fail to see how I may possibly benefit from the above-mentioned development. If anything, it will simply increase the measure of my vulnerability to the governmentally imposed types of oppression. Therefore, I am far from being considered an uncritical advocate of Robotics.

Recommendations to individuals

The set of main recommendations, as to how individuals may go about preparing themselves for the advance of Robotics, is as follows:

• People should be seeking to attain new professional skills. The rationale behind this suggestion is not too hard to grasp. The more professional skills a particular individual happened to possess; the easier it will be for him or her to retain its job in the future, which by the virtue of its affiliation with the notion of ‘robotization’, will be concerned with rendering yet another notion of ‘manual labor’ hopelessly outdated (Quinn 2013). This, of course, presupposes that, as of today, one can never go wrong deciding to invest in self-education – something that may help the concerned individual to ensure its physical survival in the ‘robotized’ world of the future.
• In order to remain emotionally comfortable with the would-be realities of robotization, individuals should be willing to broaden their intellectual horizons. This suggestion is based upon the thoroughly legitimate assumption that there will be a number of the ethically unconventional implications to the practical utilization of Robotics in the future, which some people may find ‘morally wicked’ (Sharkey 2008). For example, it may well be the case that, upon having heard of the possibility to turn a man into a cyborg (would-be induced by the advance of Robotics), some overly religious individuals will experience the sensation of an emotional distress – something that could hardly prove beneficial to their overall well-being. The same, however, would not prove to be the case with the intellectually advanced (atheist) individuals, fully aware of how the objectively existing laws of nature affect the surrounding social/natural reality, and influence people’s attitudes towards it.
• Individuals should familiarize themselves with the foremost principles of how AI operates. The reason for this is that, while possessing even a basic awareness, in this respect, one would be much more likely to address problematic issues within the highly robotized work/organizational environment, discursively associated with the ways of the future (Bostrom 2009). This again would require one to apply a considerable effort into gaining insights, as what were the initial preconditions that predetermined the emergence of Robotics, in the first place.
• While growing ever more comfortable with the idea of Robotics, people should also learn not to think of it, as such that will eventually spare them from having to address the most basic life-challenges altogether. The validity of this statement can be illustrated, in regards to the well-known fact that, even today (when Robotics only begins to be integrated into people’s lives), many of the technology-dependent urbanities (commonly referred to as yuppies) often prove themselves utterly helpless, when trying to survive physically, without being assisted by various high-tech gadgets, endowed with the rudimentary AI (Hammond 1986). This, of course, implies that people should learn how to withstand the temptation to relegate their basic social functions to robots – something that may well initiate the process of existential degradation, on the affiliated individuals’ part.

Recommendations to organizations

The following, is the proposed set of recommendations, as to how organizations may continue to benefit from being closely linked to the concept of Robotics:

• Organizations should be able to utilize Robotics, within the context of how the concerned managers go about designing the would-be applicable employment-policies. This suggestion is fully consistent with the fact that, as of today, the extent of a particular job-applicant’s professional adequacy, is often being referred to, as such that reflects this applicant’s ability to score high, while IQ-tested (Quinn 2013). This is especially being the case when the employment of the IT-skilled workers is being concerned. Given the algorithmic subtleties of how this type of testing is being conducted, computers/robots should prove more than capable of being in effective charge of the process, throughout its entirety.
• Organizations may well resort to Robotics, when it comes to ensuring the uninterrupted consistency of the manufacturing/servicing processes at stake. The reason for this is that, as Maturi pointed out, “As form factors get smaller and smaller, people just can’t physically do the things robots can do” (2012, p. 29). In its turn, this will enable these organizations to improve the quality of the delivered end-products, regardless of what happened to be their nature. As the ultimate consequence, this will result in making it possible for the concerned organizations to claim a qualitatively new level of productivity/competitiveness. Nevertheless, as it was implied earlier, organizations must exercise caution, while tempted to invest in the long-term projects of robotization.
• Organizations should be able to utilize Robotics, as the instrument of lowering their susceptibility to the externally induced fluctuations of the market. For example, one of the main motivations for Western multinational corporations (MNCs) to proceed with relocating their production lines to the Third and Second World countries, is that the cost of labor there is amazingly cheap, which in turn can be explained these countries’ semi-colonial (in relation to the West) status (Dinesh 1989). However, there is no guarantee that the situation, in this respect, will not undergo a drastic transformation within the matter of very short period of time – something that can be easily illustrated by the rising geopolitical power of Russia/China, on one hand, and the declining power of the U.S., on the other. If this happens, the mentioned MNCs will be instantly deprived of their current advantage of being able to deploy the low-cost operational strategies, while dealing with competition. Had these companies proceeded with the robotization of their home-based production lines (instead of relocating them abroad), the earlier mentioned risk would not be applicable, in the first place. It is still not too late for MNCs to alter their policy, in this respect.
• The implementation of Robotics, on the part of just about any organization, will help it to reduce the severity of the associated operational risks. This simply could not be otherwise, because, as it was mentioned earlier, robotization contributes to maintaining the integrity of the organization’s invariantly sequenced activities (Petrina 2008). This particular benefit of Robotics appears especially evident nowadays, when more and more organizations are being forced to function in the ‘high-uncertainty’ competitive environment.

Recommendations to governments

The number of the practical implications of Robotics for governments is rather extensive, as well. The main of these implications are as follows:

• Robotics will come as a great asset, within the context of how a particular government strives to anticipate threats to the country’s national security. The validity of this statement can be shown, in regards to the fact that the effectiveness of secret-service agencies positively relates to what happened to be the speed, with which they process information. Yet, as it was implied earlier, it is specifically the fact that the implementation of Robotics results in ‘speeding up’ just about all the operational processes within an organization, which accounts for one of its foremost beneficial effects (Maturi 2012). Therefore, it is fully explainable why governments grow increasingly ‘robotics-friendly’ – something that can be easily exemplified with the reference being made to the governmentally induced practice of having surveillance video-cameras installed in the strategically important parts of just about every large city.
• Investing in Robotics will empower governments, in the geopolitical sense of this word. It is now being estimated that, as of 2020, at least 40% of the U.S. military force will be fully robotized (Adams 2012). The reason for this is apparent – it is not only that the Robotics-based military equipment is much more effective, when compared to the conventional one, but also that by ‘robotizing’ its wars, the government would be able to significantly reduce the level of social tensions within the society. Therefore, there is nothing too odd about the fact that, as of today, it is namely the governmental institutions that invest in the development of Robotics the most. This state of affairs will continue to remain the case in the future.
• Governments will be able to utilize Robotics, as the instrument of addressing the problem of over-bureaucratization. One of the reasons why governments are often being criticized for their ineffectiveness, is that there is too much of unnecessary complexity (over-bureaucratization) to how they operate. The implementation of Robotics will come more than helpful, in this respect, as it will make possible the replacement of the costly (but often useless) bureaucrats with the virtually costless, but operationally effective robots (Maturi 2012).

Conclusion

There is a good reason to think that what has been argued, throughout the paper’s sub-sequential parts, is fully consistent with the initially provided thesis. The contextual subtleties of the provided answers leave on a few doubts that it indeed happened to be the case. Apparently, there is indeed a good rationale in assuming that, as time goes on, the technology of Robotics will continue to have an ever-greater effect of the surrounding social reality. In its turn, this implies that people/organizations/governments would be much better off recognizing the inevitability of ‘robotization’ and growing emotionally comfortable with the concept in question.

References

Adams, T 2012, ‘Future warfare and the decline of human decisionmaking’, Parameters, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 1-15.

Alcott A 1985, ‘Robots, RIFs, and rights’, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 197-203.

Bajcsy, R 2014, ‘Robots Are Coming’, Communications of the ACM, vol. 57, no. 5, pp. 42-43.

Bostrom, N 2009, ‘The future of humanity’, Geopolitics, History and International Relations, vol.1, no. 2, pp. 41-78.

Brooks R 1991, ‘New approaches to robotics’, Science, vol. 253, no. 5025, pp. 1227-1232.

Cusack, M 1994, ‘Automation and robotics: the interdependence of design and construction systems’, The Industrial Robot, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 10-13.

Dinesh, M 1989, ‘Promotion of “modern” technology: a new tool for neo-colonialism’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 24, no. 32, pp. 1815-1818.

Goldberg K, Highfill, J & McAsey, M 1998, ‘Technology choice: the output and employment tradeoff’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 27-46.

Hammond, J 1986, ‘Yuppies’, Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 487-501.

Maturi, R 2012, ‘Robotics: changing manufacturing processes – and facilities’, Area Development Site and Facility Planning, vol. 47, no. 7, pp. 28-30.

Nishikawa, A & Yaegashi, S 2008, ‘Multi-fueled approach to DNA nano-robotics’, Natural Computing, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 371-383.

Petrina, A 2008, ‘Robotics: present and future’, Scientific and Technical Information Processing, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 73-79.

Probst, E 2014, ‘CNC shop employees benefit from robotic automation’, Modern Machine Shop, vol. 86, no. 11, pp. 94-102.

Quinn, J 2013, ‘Theorizing, learning and nature: post-human possibilities and problems’, Gender & Education, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 738-753.

Roberts, K 1990, ‘Some characteristics of one type of high reliability organization’, Organization Science, vol. 1, no. 2, pp.160-177.

Sharkey, N 2008, ‘The ethical frontiers of robotics’, Science, vol. 322, no. 5909, pp. 1800-1801.

Smart, A 2011, ‘The Humanism of Postmodernist anthropology and the Post Structuralist challenges of Posthumanism’, Anthropologica, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 332-334.

Spencer, R 2000, ‘A primer on robotics: the benefits of flexible automation’, Robotics World, vol. 18, no. 6, pp. 22-24.

Webb B 2001, ‘Can robots make good models of biological behavior?’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 1033-1050.