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Humans make mistakes, robots don't.

Humans can get sick, robots cannot.

People have to stay at home (in quarantine or as a precaution), robots don't.

People suffer from Covid-19 and how to fight it, robots do not.

On the contrary: Robots are always there, act around the clock, on workdays, Sundays or public holidays without problems or complaints - regardless of the corona and vaccination chaos.

In the lockdown in particular, they are proving to be solid as a rock of an economic emergency.

They are the big beneficiaries of the pandemic and its consequences.

Companies note the different absence risks of humans and robots.

Even faster and more widely than they would have done in the next few years anyway, they will replace workers with automats and machines.

In this way, they can better protect themselves against costly absenteeism of key people who meet more or less surprising and accordingly incalculable people, but not robots.

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Especially those who see the everyday pictures from Germany at the moment, how in deserted factory halls, state-of-the-art filling systems fill millions of ampoules with the liquid that everyone is hoping to be effective at breakneck speed and with the highest precision, knows that industry also has a successful future in this country.

But it will not be an industry of mass employment, but of unemployment.

Robots will march ahead not only in industry.

Automation and human-free production processes are also being given a boost in services and in trade by Covid-19, its fight and its consequences.

Digitization and electronics are increasingly taking the place of personnel.

An example of where the journey is going can be seen in everyday shopping and paying.

Cash transactions almost inevitably involved personal contact.

Goods were changed from hand to hand in the bakery, in the beverage store or in the drugstore for cash.

The smarter machines are, the better for customers

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If, however, more and more payments are made by card in order to reduce the risk of infection, the purchases can also be scanned contactlessly at self-check-out tills or paid for at petrol stations, pick-up and delivery portals by entering a PIN without getting close to anyone have to.

The same trends in personnel savings through automated digital replacement offers can be seen in information centers, ordering and delivery processes or customer service - for example for lawsuits and repairs.

What Alexa does for everyday household use is fulfilled by electronic assistance systems in professional business when it comes to inquiries and advice, bookings and orders, financing and insurance or complex problem solving in general.

They work (largely) without personnel via acclamation or digital signals.

In more and more places and for more and more activities, artificial intelligence and better-trained and thus even more powerful algorithms are replacing human thinking and doing through self-learning machine learning. First of all, this is a great development for Germany.

Because on the one hand the hardware of the robots, automats and machines has to be manufactured.

And German industry is way ahead.

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When it comes to quality and precision, efficiency and effectiveness, there are still many companies in the mechanical and plant engineering sector as well as automation, drive, measurement, control and regulation technology at the top of the world - such as Kuka, dem European market leader from Augsburg - foreign owners (at Kuka the Chinese Midea group) are becoming increasingly important.

The local industry should be able to take a huge chunk off the rapidly growing demand for robots.

Last but not least, customers and thus the population as a whole should also benefit from the advance of robots.

Because the more intelligent algorithms and the smarter machines become, the more tailor-made, more precisely fitting and all in all more customer-friendly are products manufactured, services processed and consumers served.

In the future there will be fewer and fewer good reasons not to receive precise information, the best quality and the most favorable purchase and delivery conditions.

Explanations and apologies are more and more disqualifying themselves in advance as lazy excuses.

KI: Two tough realities remain for employees

But robotization and automation are also bringing about dramatic and tough changes for the labor market.

Labor productivity will increase overall.

Specifically, this means in practice that industrial added value is created by more and more robots with fewer and fewer people (who they essentially only control).

Those who work with the robots can accordingly hope for higher wages.

However, those who are displaced and replaced by the robots initially lose their jobs and thus their income.

Of course, robotization will also create a lot of new employment opportunities.

But despite all the optimism, two hard realities remain.

First, the industry of the future will never need as much labor as it did in the past.

Technological progress has made machine mass production so incredibly cheap that it simply no longer makes microeconomic sense to use people for it, unless you ignore all of today's minimum requirements for pay and treatment of employees, which, for normative reasons, nobody even thinks of Should consider.

Second, most of the new jobs will be in the service sector.

However, this is precisely characterized by the fact that labor productivity for a large number of “serving” activities will not rise as quickly as it is in industry (for those few who are still needed there in addition to robots).

This can be seen, for example, in the case of caregivers, who in fact urgently need larger numbers in an aging society.

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There are natural limits to technical progress here.

With humane care for the elderly and those in need of care, it becomes difficult to provide everyday assistance with simple needs, personal sympathy, empathy or pastoral care by robots and machines.

Neither can labor productivity in kindergartens and primary schools be increased.

As well as?

The number of (small) children or young people to be taught per teacher could be increased.

That would be recorded in the statistics as an increase in productivity.

In reality, however, the quality of sympathy and teaching is likely to get worse and not better if, instead of fifteen, thirty or more children sit in the same day group or school class.

Despite Corona, politicians must work against division

The advance of robots will thus divide society.

Those who spice up their own workforce with more and better human capital (read: better education that leads to more exclusive knowledge and more specific skills) can keep up.

The person will earn better either together with the robots or in their preliminary stages (i.e. their construction, programming, further development and use).

Or it benefits indirectly from the positive results of robotization - i.e. higher labor productivity, which leads to higher earnings for the owners of the robots and higher incomes for those who are still employed in industry.

Rising earnings and incomes in industry also benefit those employees who provide higher-quality services for whom there is a correspondingly high willingness to pay - be it in research for innovation, in health care for special treatments, in education for attractive qualification offers, in art, Culture and sport for top performance and, with simpler personal services, for appropriate quality.

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Everyone else is falling behind.

Anyone who will be active in service sectors whose work productivity is only progressing at a slow pace, if at all, cannot expect wages to rise sharply.

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Many service providers in nursing and health care, in social facilities, day care centers and children's homes, in the police, security and emergency services then have a (new) job, work hard, maybe even earn a little more than before, but are still left behind.

Labor market and social policy should quickly take account of the divisive developments that inevitably go hand in hand with clever robots, intelligent automats and self-learning machines.

If you fail to remedy the situation because of the sheer worries about Covid-19 and how to fight it, it should take revenge faster than expected.

Society will drift apart without increased taxation of the owners of the robots and substantial tax and duty relief for lower wages.

Then, however, nobody should be surprised that polarization of behavior instead of solidarity of action is becoming the new normal of the (post-) Corona era.

Measured against the current framework, the labor market is "resilient"

"Measured against the economic and health framework, the labor market remains resilient." Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) said in Berlin.

Source: WORLD