robots, jobs and power in the next decade

What is it about?

Collaboration between human workers and robots is on the rise. Will robotics, which is characterized by converging technologies, rapid progress and a progressive reduction in costs, be incorporated into our societies under the current market model? Will it create a new technological, social and political divide? Will it transform power relations between individuals, groups, communities and states in the same way as crucial military technology? Will it change our everyday social interactions by forming part of our daily lives in the same way it has changed industry where industrial robotics is already mature and fully established?

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Why is it important?

Robotics, in particular, is now a mature technology that has expanded widely in industry in the last two decades, and grown exponentially in the service sector. Three main areas of debate have arisen around robotics: the now classic debate dating back to Aristotle on the emergence of an automaton that could be a new human being, a notion which has been redefined by Moravec or Kurzweil; the debate on the impact of robotics on employment in the industrial and service sector and the complex relationship between technology and employment; and finally, the changes in human-machine interactions brought about by advanced robotics. In this book, we present the reader with a different approach: we inquire into the effects of technology on power from a very specific perspective that arose from a shared experience in recent years relating to the obstacles to accessing new technologies. Could we, in an almost immediate future, find ourselves face to face with a new divide; a new barrier between the included and the excluded arising from the socio-technological model in which advanced robotics is integrated? Will we see a new robotics divide, which will redefine and expand the impact of the already widely studied digital divide?

Perspectives