9 · Ethics of automation & jobs
New technology always brings the bigger question: not just can we automate this, but should we, and how do we do it fairly? Automation — machines doing work on their own — makes this real, and as the people who'll build the next robots, these questions become yours.
A few worth thinking through honestly (none has one easy answer — that's the point):
- Jobs change. Automation can remove some jobs (often the dull, dirty, dangerous ones from Intro to Robotics) while creating new ones — someone has to design, build, train, test, and repair these systems, and someone has to make the data they learn from. The fair questions: how do we help people whose jobs change, and make sure the new opportunities are open to everyone?
- Fairness from data. Because robots' AI learns from examples, it can work better for some people than others — the bias-from-missing-examples problem, now with real-world consequences (a voice system that won't understand certain accents, a vision system that misses certain people). Good engineers ask early: who's in the training data, who got left out, who could be harmed?
- Who's responsible? When a machine acts on its own, a person is still accountable for how it was built, trained, and allowed to act. "The AI did it" is never an excuse — humans chose the data, set the rules, and decided what it could do alone.
- Should we, at all? Some things are possible to automate but not wise to. Asking "should we?" alongside "can we?" is the mark of a thoughtful engineer, not just a clever one.
You're not alone in wrestling with this. Whole education programs exist to grow exactly this kind of thoughtful builder: MIT RAISE's mission is to "empower everyone to use AI responsibly," and its Day of AI program teaches AI literacy and ethics to millions of students worldwide (MIT RAISE, n.d.). Code.org's AI curriculum, likewise, "emphasizes ethical considerations alongside technical understanding," aiming for students who are "thoughtful creators," not just users (Code.org, n.d.).
The future of robotics isn't only smarter machines. It's wiser people choosing to build the right things, the right way, for the right reasons — and that future includes you.
Think about it. Pick one concern above (jobs, fairness, responsibility, or "should we?"). Explain it in your own words and name one thing an engineer could actually do to handle it responsibly.
Sources
MIT RAISE. (n.d.). Day of AI — using AI responsibly; global AI literacy. https://raise.mit.edu/ Code.org. (n.d.). How AI works (ethics alongside technical understanding). https://code.org/ai