Automation

Opinion : Automation

I would like to focus on automation and give my opinion about how automation is or not dangerous for today’s economy. I will firstly go over the advantages and disadvantages of automation and then I will conclude by saying what we could do against extreme automation.

It is often claimed that automation is a huge part of our future. Indeed, new technologies are nowadays completely included in our daily life: we can find them in our household, at school, at work or even in the street.

I personally believe that those new technologies, especially new technologies that create automation, can be useful for lots of businesses. Indeed, it can boost productivity by manufacturing more products each day for example. Therefore, automation can help industries raising their profits and then the economy can become more flourishing in some ways.

I’m also convinced that automation can be helpful in many sectors such as in the hospital service. My mother worked as a nurse for about 20 years and she has now a lot of health problems because of her previous job. In fact, being a nurse is a very difficult and exhausting work because you sometimes have to carry people that weigh more than you in order to wash them or to change their plasters. That’s actually why I tend to think that automation could be useful in some sectors. In my example, if automation helps nurses to carry people and therefore reduces the risk for those nurses having health problems because their patients are too heavy, it can maybe help hospitals to provide better service to their patients because their employees work in better conditions.

        But it is also perfectly clear for me that automation can be dangerous for  employment. Automation and robots are, in many ways, more efficient than humans. Therefore, industries could be more likely to replace people by machines and robots in order to increase their productivity and their efficiency. We are already living in a world and in a country where unemployment is a huge problem, but I really think that automation could lead to a worse situation.

        Furthermore, automation could be not as efficient as we think it is. By saying this, I mean that there are always risks that the machines used by the industries get out of service due for example to some electrical problems in the building. For that reason, automation could reduce the business’ productivity, what maybe wouldn’t have happened if people had done the same work.

        In a nutshell, automation has its advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, I have the feeling that we should find a balance between using machines and employing people in order not to increase the unemployment rate. If there is a balance between both parts, it should lead to any problems for the employees.

Yet, it is true that some kind of automation are kind of extreme and could lead to unemployment. As a consequence, I think that we should enforce the law in order to restrict the automation of jobs in order to increase employees’ social security.

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