The rapid development of modern technology has facilitated a quickening of the speed of change and development. However, this year a lot more has been witnessed than just a shift in technological trends and developing technologies; the outbreak of COVID-19 has made IT workers aware that their job will not be the same in the future contactless world. As a result, an IT professional in 2022-2023 will be in a continual state of education (Dana et al., 2022). These trends include computing power, artificial intelligence, smarter devices, datafication, and others. The technology trends that are evident today vary from one to another. For instance, some trends are more beneficial in terms of the advantages offered to society. It is important to note that all the trends are significant to society, but some have fewer impacts on the community.
I think Robotic process automation (RPA) is one trend that offers less benefit to society. This trend involves the automation of jobs, for example, data interpretation, emailing, and even processing transactions. If RPA is optimized, statistics have proven that an average of more than 230 million workers are at risk of losing their jobs. This trend can sometimes cause unemployment in different sectors (Syed et al., 2020). Despite the argument that RPA creates new jobs, many employees will still lose their jobs. In addition, higher skills are required to secure the jobs offered by the trend. Another less beneficial trend is cloud computing; this trend is mainly essential to the company using it and not society. Additionally, edge computing has more benefits compared to cloud computing.
Several ethical considerations have to be made when robotics are implemented. The first consideration is unemployment; the impact of robots learning everything and replacing humans as the source of labor should be evaluated. It is argued that robots are essential in doing work that humans do not enjoy. However, the question of joblessness is yet to get a satisfying solution (Mendling et al., 2018). Another ethical consideration is inequality between artificial agents and humans. The revenue distribution, the sector enjoying the benefits, and an economy based on a fair labor structure must be analyzed before implementation.
The third ethic relating to the RPA technology trend is humanity. Today’s robots are getting better and better at mimicking human speech. They employ relatively elementary technology often deployed on the web to grab people’s attention (Syed et al., 2020). Several questions arise; for example, what societal implications could arise if humans and machines are capable of human-like dialogue and interaction? Is it possible to teach a robot to influence human behavior? Is it possible for humans and robots to cooperate effectively? Is it possible to improve office morale with socially adept robots?
In addition, the ability of the robots to have their rights is considered. Robots’ communication is on a superficial level; however, the chances of them changing to feeling humans should be considered. The RPA technology should evaluate the issue of the robots being more of humans and thus causing them to have human requirements like treatment. More questions arise concerning how society is expected to associate with the feeling robots in case this point is attained. The last ethic consideration relating to RPA is the chances of an artificial error. Incredible as robots are, and despite their potential for perfection, they are not always error-free (Mendling et al., 2018). Artificial intelligence may turn out to be less than human intelligence. Robots are prone to error when confronted with unfamiliar settings. The gravity of a robot’s error depends on the nature of the task it is assigned. Therefore, it is essential to know who takes the blame when the robots make mistakes, the extent to which a robot can recover from the error, and measures to prevent the recurrence of the error.
References
Dana, L. P., Salamzadeh, A., Mortazavi, S., Hadizadeh, M., & Zolfaghari, M. (2022). Strategic futures studies and entrepreneurial resiliency: a focus on digital technology trends and emerging markets.Tec Empresarial, 16(1), 87-100. Web.
Syed, R., Suriadi, S., Adams, M., Bandara, W., Leemans, S. J., Ouyang, C…. & Reijers, H. A. (2020). Robotic process automation: contemporary themes and challenges.Computers in Industry, 115, 103162. Web.
Mendling, J., Decker, G., Hull, R., Reijers, H. A., & Weber, I. (2018). How do machine learning, robotic process automation, and blockchains affect the human factor in business process management? Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 43(1), 19. Web.