The economy is going through a so-called “labor shortage” and the companies are now finding ways to entirely eradicate the need for labor. They are aiming to get machines to do the work of human labor. This has been good news for robotics companies.
David Zapico, the CEO of robotics company Ametek Inc., told Bloomberg News that his company is “firing on all cylinders” because, according to him, “people want to remove labor.”
This opinion is not just limited to him. Executives at Hormel Foods Corp and Domino’s Pizza also told Bloomberg that they’re investing in automation so they can cut down the labor costs and respond to a “tight labor supply,” as one Hormel vice president put it.
However, this leaves the issue of what will happen to human labor?
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Daron Acemoglu, if this keeps escalating and companies replace human labor entirely, “labor demand will grow slowly, inequality will increase, and the prospects for many low-education workers will not be very good.”
The founder of a company that is literally named Brain Corp even told Nichols that its “fleet” of autonomous robots has done the “equivalent to 6.8 million hours of human work.”
“We are thrilled to celebrate reaching 100 billion square feet of coverage with our fleet which represents the square footage of the entire commercial space in the United States,” the CEO, Eugene Izhikevich, told ZDNet.