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Don't Let A Robot Take Your Job Without Compensation

How many of us have jobs that cannot be done by robots currently? Five years from now? Ten? Is it inevitable that humans will be left without resources when replaced by robots?

IHome health care workers, food service workers, retail salespeople and custodians will account for nearly 1 million of the 2.4 million new, low-skill jobs expected to be added in the U.S. by 2017, according to a USA TODAY analysis of jobs data from Economic Modeling Specialists Intl. and CareerBuilder.

But advances in technology mean such workers may be replaced by robots like HERB, the "Home-Exploring Robot Butler" under development at Carnegie-Mellon. HERB is learning to retrieve and deliver objects, prepare simple meals and empty a grocery bag.

"These 'safe havens' for low-skill workers may not be there in the decades to come," says Carl Benedikt Frey, one of the authors of The Future of Employment, a 2013 University of Oxford study estimating the scope of automation. "A lot of low-skill workers will need to acquire creative and social skills to stay competitive in the labor market in the future."

Here's an idea proposed by (among others) author John Twelve Hawks in his excellent new novel Spark:

The Freedom to Work Act was one of several bills passed in Congress after the Day of Rage. The new law said that companies were free to fire any employee, but a worker replaced by a nubot that "appears or pretends to be human" had to be compensated.
(Read more about Replaced Worker Benefits)

Spark as just published a few weeks ago; I highly recommend it.

From USAToday.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/29/2014)

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