An article in The Economist argues that aging is closely related to robots. The article points out that even though it will take a long time for technological change, the demand for robots in an aging society is growing rapidly. Japan, for example, has installed crane-like robots in 8% of nursing homes to help with nursing care; Sony's ** robot dog aibo sold 110,000 units. Gill Pratt, an expert in robotics, estimates that within six years, one-third robotics companies will be building service robots.
A joint study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University shows that between 1993 and 2014, the countries that invested the most in robots were the countries with the fastest aging populations. Another study from Germany found that if population growth fell by 1 percent, the density of robots would increase by 2 percent. The article says that ageing is creating its own demand for automation in two ways, the lack of a market workforce and its need for care and companionship.
In recent years, China's fertility level has continued to be sluggish, the aging of the population has deepened, and the population has shown a trend of shrinking the youth group and expanding the elderly group. With the increasing prominence of population aging, there are more and more discussions on its negative impact on social production activities. In Singapore, South Korea and other countries, population aging and industrial intelligence "symbiotic growth". In the face of the pressure of an aging population, these countries have adopted manufacturing transformation and upgrading policies to improve the per capita output level, so as to maintain the status of manufacturing powerhouses. If the aging of the population has a role in promoting the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, then the problem of insufficient production capacity caused by labor shortage will be effectively alleviated.
So can aging promote the application of robots? The author believes that on the one hand, aging can lead to a decrease in the labor force and force industrial upgrading. The aging of the population changes the relationship between labor supply and demand, improves the labor force, and the proportion of enterprise employee expenses will be further increased in the future, so it will prompt enterprises to use more automated equipment production lines and industrial robots, thereby improving the production efficiency of enterprises. On the other hand, the aging of the population is causing the labor market to be "weak supply and strong demand", so that workers' jobs have become relatively abundant, and machine production has encroached on and damaged the interests of workers, such as reducing workers' wages and squeezing out workers' employment, and the worse the employment environment of workers, the more intense the contradiction between man and machine.
In addition, the decrease in the number of children in the family means that investment in education is concentrated, which is conducive to the accumulation of human capital and the cultivation of talents who have mastered the professional skills of industrial robot research and development, manufacturing and operation, thereby helping to promote the use of industrial robots.
So, can aging promote the use of robots? What do you think?