dailytechnologynews:Now You Can Rent a Robot Worker—for Less Than Paying a Human ift.t
dailytechnologynews:Now You Can Rent a Robot Worker—for Less Than Paying a Human https://ift.tt/3rrGzmy Knight, Will, “Now You Can Rent a Robot Worker—for Less Than Paying a Human”, Wired magazine, January 18, 2022.“Jose Figueroa, who manages Polar’s production line, says the robot, which is leased from a company called Formic, costs the equivalent of $8 per hour, compared with a minimum wage of $15 per hour for a human employee. Deploying the robot allowed a human worker to do different work, increasing output, Figueroa says.”This is a great idea, it will help level the playing field for smaller companies to compete since they won’t have to pay the upfront costs of purchasing the robots.For those who are concerned about the robots taking jobs, please note the study the article cites that using robots increases jobs although, the jobs do change:“It’s unclear—even to economists—what impact the growing use of robots will have on the supply of jobs. Research from Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo, economists at MIT and Boston University, respectively, suggests that the adoption of robots from 1990 to 2020 resulted in fewer jobs and lower wages overall.But one study of robot adoption in Japanese nursing homes, from January 2021, found that the technology helped create more jobs by allowing for more flexibility in working practices. And another study, from 2019, also found that robot adoption among Canadian businesses had often affected managers more than workers by changing business processes.”The full article is well worth reading. -- source link
#robotics#will knight