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David Byers

ByDavid Byers, David Byers

Opinion

I can’t wait for those robots

A report released this month by PwC predicted that 40 per cent of American jobs would be replaced by automation by the early 2030s.

April 12, 2017 12:08
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2 min read

When a foreign construction worker called Sam arrives in Britain in around 18 months, some of his fellow builders may not be happy. Sam won’t wolf-whistle at passing women. Neither will he take long lunch-breaks or demand constant refills of tea.

But it isn’t Sam’s meticulous politeness — or his overseas nationality — that will bother his colleagues. It’s the fact that he’s a robot. And he will have stolen their jobs.

Sam’s full name is Semi-Automated Mason. He comes from New York and he is capable of laying up to 3,000 bricks every day compared with the human average of 500. A robotic expert at JLL, the property consultancy, told me recently that robo-brickies like Sam (or the appropriately-named Australian version, Hadrian) will soon be commonplace on British building sites.

Sam is a little late to the party. We’ve already seen robot surgeons (they carried out their first full operation in Montreal in 2010), robot milking farmers (there are hundreds in the UK already), and even a mini-Terminator (made in Israel, it climbs stairs, goes round corners and fires a pistol).