Managers may make room for Robots

In light of recent developments in Artificial Intelligence and the news this month that a Volkswagen worker had been killed by a robot, Expert Market have conducted a survey with top level managers to see if they would replace their human staff with machines, and where they would draw the line with their new synthetic workforce.

The research, conducted by expertmarket, suggests that most people are quite comfortable with the idea of working alongside robots, and an overwhelming majority would actually prefer to replace themselves with a robot in order to have more free time.

Respondents agreed that some creative jobs could not be performed by robots, such as PR, Marketing and Design, whereas Office Manager, Finance and IT were all deemed appropriate for synthetic workers.

The results showed that 70 per cent of managers asked would consider using a robot on their team and would assign them with less favourable tasks such as admin, answering the phone, emailing and report writing.

Some of the main benefits of having a robot staff member included not taking sick days, doing things to a consistent standard, and not having to worry that they would leave for another job.

In addition, 68 per cent said quite a lot of their own work could be done by a robot, and almost half of managers that were surveyed would not feel bad about hiring a robot over a human.

The only concerns the managers listed were that robots would have no creativity and no emotional attachment to their work.