

What about the ethics? While industrialised construction and the increasing use of automation and robotics to build our communities of the future, is a more efficient, cost effective, faster, safer and practical move forward, what about the ethics of a displaced workforce?
Where will the site labour of yesterday and today fit into the automated construction world of tomorrow?
In a paper presented at the MIT Technology’s Review EmTech Next Conference, the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Pramod Khargonekar, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the State University of New York, Meera Sampath, address this issue.
Entitled Socially Responsible Automation – A Framework for Shaping the Future, they identified four levels of progress towards automation:
A 2017 study by Gartner Research predicted that while 1.8 million jobs would be lost worldwide by 2020 due to automation, 2.3 million new jobs would be created. As history has taught us, any new processes or transformations result in temporary job losses, followed by a readjustment as new opportunities emerge, and researchers believe that automation, particularly when combined with the human skills required to drive new technology, will be no different.
The key is upskilling and job enrichment. As machines increasingly take over low-level, mundane and heavy-lift tasks, humans will be required to hone their skills even further, developing new, smarter ways of working.
While it might mean that robots take over some of the traditional ‘crafts’ we have seen in construction, such as carpentry, bricklaying and electrical wiring, skills in programming, coding, detailing, customising and optimising will come to the fore.
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