Should the human race be worried about a potential robot invasion in the labour force?
A new report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year forecasts that robots will take over 5.1 million jobs around the world in the next five years.
To put this figure into perspective, the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute think tank placed the number of manufacturing jobs lost in the United States from the years 2001 to 2013 due to Chinese outsourcing at 2.4 million.
Comparing these figures, robots can potentially steal twice the number of jobs from humans in half a decade, compared to what China did to the United States in a span of 12 years.
The WEF has even branded this potential robot invasion as the "Fourth Industrial Revolution." This robot takeover, if it happens, will be as monumental as the invention of machine tools during the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries, the introduction of mass production in factories, and the technological-industrial revolution during the 1990s.
According to a report from The Business Insider, this idea of a Fourth Industrial Revolution came about after the WEF surveyed 366 companies, which employ a total of 13 million workers from across the world's 13 largest economies.
These companies project that the new robots that will take over human jobs will have "enhanced senses, dexterity, and intelligence [that] can be more practical than human labour in manufacturing, as well as "artificial intelligence" and the capability to actually learn.
Companies also expect "advances in manufacturing technology, particularly a boom in 3D printing.
Because of all of these projected technological leaps, it can be expected that the demand for actual human labour will significantly decrease in the next few years.
The WEF also predicts a "perfect storm of technological trends" in the near future, given the increasing use of mobile Internet, big data and cloud computing.
