Amid all the job losses, theres one category of worker that the economic disruption has been good for: nonhumans. From self-service checkout lines at the supermarket to industrial robots armed with saws and taught to carve up animal bodies in slaughter-houses, these ever-more-intelligent machines are now not just assisting workers but actually kicking them out of their jobs.
Automation isnt just affecting factory workers, either. Some law firms now use artificial intelligence software to scan and read mountains of legal documents, work that previously was performed by highly-paid human lawyers. Robots continue to have an impact on blue-collar jobs, and white-collar jobs are under attack by microprocessors, says economics professor Edward Leamer. The recession permanently wiped out 2.5 million jobs. U.S. gross domestic product has climbed back to pre-recession levels, meaning were producing as much as before, only with 6% fewer workers. To be sure, robotics are not the only job killers out there, with outsourcing (外包) stealing far more jobs than automation. Jeff Burnstein, president of the Robotics Industry Association, argues that robots actually save U.S. jobs. His logic: companies that embrace automation might use fewer workers, but thats still better than firing everyone and moving the work overseas.
Its not that robots are cheaper than humans, though often they are. Its that theyre better. In some cases the quality requirements are so exacting that even if you wanted to have a human do the job, you couldnt, Burnstein says.
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