Reaction to Assignment

My main confusion going into this assignment was what exactly qualifies something as a robot? I mean we already have machines in factories doing jobs humans could do. So, for the sake of being consistent I'm going to say the robots in this question are more human-like than machine-like. By that I mean even though it isn't necessary to add a face to it, they did.

This robot, Baxter, is a prime example. Almost every source we used mentioned it (him?). They said he cost 22,000 dollars and will last for three years. This means he will work everyday (without complaints!) for about half of minimum wage. It is very easy to see how this could lead to problems with unskilled people maintaining their jobs. Baxter seems very simple to train. If he can move things off of a conveyor belt more efficiently than a human then big business bosses are going to be all for it! That being said, this will also open up new jobs. These jobs will be for highly intelligent people though. These robots will need maintenance & as the robot industry grows it'll employ more people. I know that the 60 minutes video said that Apple and other huge companies don't employ that many people but I feel with the robot industry it would be different. You can have a robot package iPhones but a robot can't think of designs for new robots.

A point the Wired article made was that adding robots  could in turn bring industries back from China. This really stood out to me because it was something I wouldn't have thought of on my own but it makes a ton of sense. If production will cost the same in America as it does in China, why pay for all that shipping? What I'm not sure about though is how it would effect US jobs. At first these factories might need humans for supervision or guiding the bots. But I feel like the only jobs that would open up are for construction of the factories, though once they're built those jobs a gone.

In the end I was not able to answer the original question we started out with. When we were told to think of five more questions mine were based around the robots themselves more than if they could actually take over jobs. I found out how expensive they were and what tasks they could do through my questions. In order to answer the question at the start of this assignment I feel a great deal more of research would be necessary. You would need to look at other countries, other things that effect jobs, what jobs making/having robots will create.