A study carried out by the University of Oxford analyzed that in the next decade, 40% of household chores could be completely replaced by using robots and artificial intelligence. The task most likely to disappear would be shopping for food, while caring for children and the elderly are the ones that will be least affected by the technological revolution.
Despite these changes, the paper’s writers noted that the arrival of automation in the home environment will come with its own problems, especially “a widespread attack on privacy.” The question raised in this study, conducted by both the famous British university and Japan’s Ochanomizu University, is that “if the robots they will take our work away, will they at least take out the garbage too?”
Although the text is intended for a decade from now, some of the points it speaks are already beginning to be seen today. “For household cleaning tasks, vacuum cleaners robot are the artifact most produced and sold worldwide.
One of the most interesting data is the look that people have on the prospect of automation of the future. Perhaps the most striking was the gender difference in this situation, since, according to the study, the majority of UK men viewed this possibility optimistically against women, a trend that occurs in reverse in Japan, where it is the female interviewees who see this future as something possible against their male counterparts.
Flying cars and robots of the future
Although the prospectus of this study may seem interesting and even encouraging, many specialists ask for reassurance on the subject, especially since analyzes of the future are always flimsy at best and science fiction at worst.
“The promise of self-driving cars on the streets to replace taxis has been around for decades, but even now we can’t make self-driving cars able to navigate environments similar to the ones we inhabit.”said the Oxford professor and one of the authors of the study, Ekaterina Hertog.
On the other hand, Kate Devlin, PhD in Artificial Intelligence at King’s College, indicated that “It is difficult and expensive to perform a robot that can do various general activities, but more plausible than a bunch of little systems that assist people and not replace them”.