How Will We Adapt to Robots?
It’s no longer science fiction to think that sometime in the next two decades, we may come home to a nice clean house or apartment, dinner cooked, laundry fresh. We’ll wake up and have our breakfast prepared, tea or coffee piping hot and ready. A robot will do it all. Maybe even letting the dog our at 5AM to do its morning business? The robots are indeed coming. How will we adapt?
I recently did some research on how people felt about more robots in their daily lives. I did similar research three years ago for a robotics company looking at the consumer market. Just three years ago, people were surprisingly open to accepting a robot in their home. They had some issues. This time what surprised me was the concern for privacy. That hadn’t been there before. Consumers main concern a few years ago was reliability and speed. Today? They want to be sure they’re not being surveilled by the robot company. Especially if the robot came from a current tech Giant like Amazon or Meta (Facebook.) I’ve seen this with apps research. It was a first for robots.
Industrial robots have been growing in use for decades and that market is expected to reach USD$52.85 Billion by 2026 from the current USD$24.35 Billion, or a CAGR of 13.8% over the next few years. That’s according to Mordor Intelligence. Some say higher, some lower. So somewhere in the middle.
The consumer robotics market is still quite small, although its forecast to reach USD$4.5 Billion around 2026. Most of the consumer robots today are very simple and do one or two tasks. Interestingly, the anticipated biggest growth market is expected to be in the Asia Pacific with Japan leading the way.
How societies will adapt to robots has a lot to do with culture. Asian cultures have been much more adaptive than Western ones when it comes to how we see robots place in daily lives. Asian cultures have long been very service oriented. And robots in the consumer entertainment world are portrayed very differently between the west and the east. In Western culture robots are often portrayed as militaristic, like the Terminator series of movies. Whereas in Asian cultures, humans and robots tend to work together more and robots are often seen as saving people.
In the business world, robots in Asian cultures are often promoted as helping humans. In Western culture, they’re going to take everyones job away and wreak economic havoc. In both Asian and Western industrial sectors however, robots are becoming highly valued as manufacturing seeks greater efficiencies. In this sector, when humans and robots come together it’s called cobots. The World Economic Forum, perhaps unsurprisingly, sees this as an inevitable future. Is it inevitable?
To a large degree, it is inevitable. Largely due to shrinking populations. In Japan, the government is already providing robots to seniors. Mostly for mental health. There aren’t any robots to cook and do housework, but they can provide a degree of companionship and help seniors avoid becoming too lonely.
Western cultures will soon face the same dilemma. As Artificial Intelligence continues to improve and becomes ever more embedded in robots of all types, robots will become more useful.
We are however, a very, very long way from highly conversational AI driven robots in our homes that can do household chores, cook for us and look after our pets. Speed is another factor. Robots are rather slow still. While they are improving and their dexterity is as well, they still lag. They’re also a bit pricey too.
But adapting to having robots in our lives means a cultural change. Especially in Western cultures who view them more negatively than Asian cultures. It will be harder for robot brands in Western markets and that means some very clever and creative marketing. Changing consumer behaviours is never very easy.
We are also going through a shift in how consumers think about privacy and self-autonomy. By the time robots are ready for a significant role on society, this issue may be resolved through consumers talking with their wallets and government regulations.
Accepting them into our homes will also mean accepting another appliance and being assured of quality, warranties and maintenance of another appliance. Eventually, we may evolve a robot culture much like we have car cultures. Neighbourhood races for your robots anyone? Who’s robot can BBQ better than the other folks next door?
When the time comes, Western cultures will likely learn from Asian cultures and then adapt to their culture. Cultures always adapt technologies to fit into their own way of existing and serving the culture. Designs and use purposes and the elements surrounding them time to evolve. Pop songs today feature lyrics that talk of social media and smartphones, texting and sharing. That didn’t exist 20 years ago. Perhaps the robots will sing about us in the future? Lullaby for baby by the Sigmatix 4000 HouseBot.
