Kathy Gibson reports from Jordan – Automation helps people to perform their tasks in a quicker and easier way and has been a key part of human endeavour for millennia.
For example, ancient civilisations automated the delivery of water by building aqueducts, mechanised the grinding of grain with the aid of a water wheel and much, much more.
Emad Haffar, head of technical experts at Kaspersky, points out that today we are automating more complex tasks with the aid of robots.
“These devices are quickly pervading every aspect of our lives – from drones to vacuum cleaners to delivery bots,” he says.
They are also rapidly taking over the performance of repetitive, time-consuming or tedious tasks in the workplace – and the jury is out on how human workers believe this trend will affect them.
According to Kaspersky research, employees in South Africa believe that the better robots become at different tasks, the fewer jobs will remain for humans. The majority of local employees surveyed (74%) believe that robots should be more widely used across different industries, however, many fear robot hacking.
The study aimed to learn the opinion of employees of manufacturing companies and other large organisations around the world about the consequences of automation and increased use of robots. The goal was to see what employees think about the security of robots and automated systems in their companies. The survey included respondents from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, Egypt, and South Africa.
Employees reported an increase in robotisation level in their companies over the last two years. Thirty three percent of employees from South Africa said their organisations already use robots, 39% of local organisations plan to use them in the near future
The research showed that people expect job losses because of robotisation. The better robots become at different tasks, the fewer jobs will remain for humans.
The majority of employees surveyed in South Africa (92%) believe robots will eventually replace humans in their industry. As robots are advancing in all market sectors, humans need to receive new knowledge and skills not to lose their job to robots. And they are ready to do so: among those who think that their jobs could be replaced by robots, the majority (75%) are willing to learn new skills or improve their existing skills and expertise.
At the same time, many employees remain optimistic in view of robots taking away jobs. They think robot adoption will make humans’ roles safer and more intellect-demanding, along with increasing the efficiency of production. Forty eight percent believe that enough new jobs will be created to counter the loss of jobs to robots. More jobs will emerge for programmers, data scientists, and engineers – these people will drive robot adoption in the years to come.
Another important finding was that cybersecurity risks increase because of robotisation.
The majority of local respondents (89%) believe that robots can get hacked, and 53% know of such incidents in their company or other local companies. Respondents are split in their assessment of how protected robots are: almost half of employees surveyed in South Africa (42%) believe that not enough cybersecurity measures are in place to protect the robots in different industries.
Haffer says robotics and machine learning (ML) will continue to grow and will penetrate more segments over time, performing more tasks.
“What matters to us is the security aspects of this expansion,” he says. “The more technology is adopted, the more interesting it becomes to threat actors – and it will be targeted.
“And, when we talk about robotics and algorithms, the effects could be catastrophic.”
Going forward, as robots become more pervasive, human workers will be dedicated to doing very specific tasks and services.
“At the same time, the line separating humans form machines will become thinner and thinner, and more jobs will be at least machine-assisted,” Haffar says.
“Organisations need to train employees about how to deal with these systems and how to operate them safely.”