Robots Automation and Jobs #robot #globalism

A new automated, flying ambulance completed its first solo flight, offering a potential solution for challenging search and rescue missions. livescience.com

Once survival is assured, there are three things human beings need to be happy: a sense of being

A self-driving car by Google

competent at something, be it a job or a vocation; enough freedom to feel autonomous; and a community to belong to. Many of us have used our jobs for one or two of these needs, all three if we’re lucky. Then we go home to suburbs or apartments where we don’t know our neighbors.

But what will happen when the robots arrive? American politicians promise to bring back manufacturing jobs, but automation is as much to blame as globalization for the loss. Now robots, in the form of self-driving vehicles, threaten to destroy one of our largest occupations: driving. Especially high school educated men rely on driving for employment, and commercial vehicles are likely to be the first to go robotic.

But many white collar jobs are endangered too. Law is one such profession where algorithms and analytics are replacing well-paid professionals.

What will we all do with ourselves? Governments can, perhaps, tax those lucky enough to generate the GDP so the rest of us don’t starve, but what about competence, autonomy, and community? Are we being freed or destroyed?

Filed under: Neat Science News Tagged: driverless cars vehicles, futurism, lost blue collar jobs, lost manufacturing jobs, lost white collar jobs, robots, robots replace people humans, self-driving cars vehicles