Robot Economy: Ready or Not, Here It Comes
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Automation is not a new phenomenon, and questions about its effects have long accompanied its advances. More than a half-century ago, US President Lyndon B. Johnson established a national commission to examine the impact of technology on the economy, declaring that automation "can be the ally of our prosperity if we will just look ahead". In this paper, our premise is that we are at a technological inflection point in which robots are developing the capacity to do the cognitive as well as the physical work of some fractions of the labor force, and thus becoming able to replace workers in many activities. An increase in automation and autonomy capacity brings the question of robots directly participating in some economic activities as autonomous agents. In this paper, a technological framework describing a robot economy is outlined and the challenges it might represent in the current socio-economic scenario are discussed.
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