Will robots replace human labor?

In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems to develop robots for its logistics chains. Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, announced in May last year that the company would employ 10,000 robots at the end of 2014, much more than the 1,400 robots at that time.

Lately, Rethink Robotics created the one-armed robot Sawyer based on its analysis of 150 factory tasks. The 3.3-foot tall robot, which sells for $29,000, has a super-flexible limb that can complete intricate tasks without tiring. The creator said they are aiming at the electronics assembly industry, most of which is in Asia.

Labor costs can be high. In China, since 2001, worker's wages have been growing at an annual rate of 12 percent, according to Bloomberg. Moreover, many coastal factories have to face the worsening shortage of workers.

In 2013, China became the world's largest market for industrial robots.

Statistics from International Federation of Robotics showed that China bought 56,000 out of the 227,000 industrial robots, the world's total in 2014, up 53 percent compared with in 2013.

Coastal provinces like Zhejiang and Guangdong are planning to replace human labor with robots.

In March, Guangdong province announced a three-year subsidiary plan for the 2,000 biggest manufacturers to purchase robots. According to the plan, Guangzhou, the capital city, will have 80 percent of its factories automated by 2020.

Hon Hai Group, the producer of iPhones, which has about 1 million employees in the mainland, announced in March the plan to use thousands of robots to replace its human labor force. CEO Terry Guo said that within three years, 70 percent of Hon Hai's assembly lines would be automated.

Domestic home appliances giant Midea also said in March that it will lay off 6,000 workers out of a total of 30,000 in 2015 and install automated assembly lines instead. In 2018, it will ax another 4,000 workers.

China has the world's biggest labor resources, but is now also the world's largest market for industrial labor. Meanwhile, there are still many low income workers.

"They are not contradictory. Instead, we need to change our opinion about robots," says Zhu Shiqiang, director of Robotics Research Center of Zhejiang University.

"Industrial robots are not dispensable tools. In many fields like the auto and electronic industries, they are indispensable," he says.

"If factories don't use robots, they cannot compete with other producers in quality, efficiency and cost," he points out.

In many industries, robots have not been widely used or used at all, so it is a matter of time when more factories in China will be automated. But scientists are generally confident that humans will keep up with robots.

"Unless human beings use it in a wrong way, like we did with nuclear technology, the advancement of science and technology has never led to regression of human development," Zhu says.

Wang Shuo, a researcher at the Institute of Automation with the China Academy of Sciences, says as a scientific worker, he believes that robots are equipment that will serve people, and help people to improve their living standards and avoid danger or threats.

To investigate the situation in the abandoned Fukushima nuclear power plant that was damaged severely in an earthquake in 2011, Tokyo Electric Power Company said recently that it would send another robot to do the job that had not been finished by the previous one, which fell down and had exhausted its power.

For manufacturing industries, using robots is an inevitable trend when they have developed to a certain stage.

Whether or not there will be more newly-created jobs for human beings or not, for robotic researchers and builders, and also for most robot users, "we need robots to replace the tedium and drudgery of routine work, to enable us to make best use of our most quintessentially human skills: creativity and social intelligence," Osborne says.

"Put another way, machines allow us to become fully human," he says.

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