Dehumanization and unemployment Digitization may have many benefits and help a lot in the working environment now and made a lot of tasks way easier, but according to others it rises some concerns and red flags too. There are conflicts going on between experts that keep rising as digitization goes steps further into many companies and different fields. One of the most important issues and concerns is Dehumanization and Unemployment. Employment is an important factor in ones’ life and without it life is almost impossible. Through jobs we can do everything, either fulfill our desires or family needs but the important one is on the personal level as we eventually attain confidence, self-respect & social status which makes us feel that we have a role and contribution in society. It not only fetches money for better living but also provides everyday learning and the learning doesn’t stop at particular age but continues at work also. Job is something where we continuously gain skills, discover ourselves, our potential and our limit of taking up more responsibilities and it makes us a responsible citizen. This important part of life some experts debate that it’s strongly threatened by digitization that is finding its way to almost all industries and fields nowadays and they are horrified that even as technology evolve more that human employment and work could be harshly damaged. One aspect which led to a great deal of debates and discussions in the last years was the potential impact of digitization on employment. In any organization or company most of the work used to be carried out by humans from different majors and expertise, but lately and as technology evolves many of those jobs were replaced by digital systems or robotic systems where the human became useless and the robot is the one doing the job. In some cases now robots are not only capable of supporting human tasks, but also they can gradually replace a lot more human tasks and therefore also many jobs will be lost. There are two contradicting prospectives here in this discussion on the effects of digitization: one side finds digitization to be very helpful and that it leads to economic growth, employment growth as new jobs are created and an acceptable distribution of wealth; the other point of view states that, digitization leads to fewer jobs as most of the jobs are taken by machines or robot systems and therefore declining prosperity. Not only unemployment was the point of debate, but also other concerns were announced. Digitization can provide great support and improvement at many working and production fields such as health care, the police, business organizations, entertainment, and army. But it can also undermine human dignity if it wasn’t applied under certain frame conditions. Here we are talking about a huge risk of objectifying and instrumentalizing people or in other words (Dehumanization). The health care department and sector seems to be concerned and anxious about the fast changes happening in the field and the high demand happening now for the implementation of robotics. The crucial fear seems to be because of the way the robotics are deployed. Coeckelberg (2010) argues that those care robots should only be there for the routine care tasks. Tasks where no emotional, intimate, personal involvement is needed. Also as quoted by (Sharkey 2014) “If robots are deployed to replace the caregiver, there is a risk that care is dehumanized”. When robots take over care involved tasks such as lifting and feeding, the care receiver can feel like an object. The ethical complaint about ‘objectification’ ties in with the idea that robots cannot provide care. The underlying argument is that robots are devices that can’t replicate empathic capacities and reciprocity of human care relationships. Human contact is usually found to be essential for providing good care. The patient’s quality of life should therefore be the guiding principle for robotics in healthcare (Van Wynsberghe 2015). That was an example of why some people see digitization as a threat. Now it’s clear that there’s a huge conflict happening between the supporters and opposers of digitization. But to also clarify and maybe get some solutions to those concerns we can state the following: - Robots and machines can never be as smart and creative as human brain. So, its really hard for machines to take over human jobs as always humans are going to be the base of any project or company. Machines aren’t innovative and can never build an enterprise, and many jobs will always need human beings to make decisions or show sympathy or be wise in dealing with money and setting plans for an enterprise. The jobs lost to digitization can cause a shift in the whole working environment so other working opportunities would be created, but sadly still some people would lose their jobs. - Regarding dehumanization, with everyday evolution of technology and robots, all the fields that need more care related services can be done with robotic systems that are programmed in a certain polite way to comfort the receiver of the service and also there could be humans assisting so this way we will have job opportunities for people and at the same time increase work efficiency with the digitization system set. The impact of digitization on employment and dehumanization is still a field of debate, but this was just a glimpse of what’s going on between the two teams of opinions inside the field right now. Maybe soon we can reach a point where we have employment rates at a stable point while also implementing the digitization system and get it to be controlled by humans when needed for care services, to get the maximum benefits of everything and be a win-win situation.
