According to a study by researchers from Oxford University in England and Ochanomizu University in Japan, 39 percent of housework will be done by robots in 10 years.
Researchers at two universities asked 65 artificial intelligence (AI) experts for their views on how the power of automation in-home businesses will be shaped in 10 years.
AI experts, 29 from the UK and 36 from Japan, participated in the research.
In the study published in the journal PLOS One, experts predicted that the business that will be most affected by automation will be grocery shopping.
The care of young and old people is the job that will be least affected by artificial intelligence technologies.
Time spent on shopping will decrease by 60%
The researchers concluded that British male specialists were keener on automation in housework than their female counterparts, and the opposite was true in Japan.
But the tasks that experts think automation can do vary.
“Only 28 percent of care work is thought to be automated, including tasks such as teaching and caring for children,” said Dr. Lulu Shi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford.
On the other hand, experts think that technology will reduce the time spent on grocery shopping by 60 percent.
In 1966, the TV show Tomorrow’s World described a home robot that could cook dinner, walk the dog, babysit, shop, make cocktails, and do many other tasks.
According to the report, if the creators of this robot were paid £1 million, this technology could have been with us in 1976.
Working in the field of artificial intelligence and society at Oxford University and also one of the authors of the research, Assoc. Dr. Ekaterina Hertog gives an example of her dream of a self-driving car:
“The promise of self-driving cars to take to the streets and replace taxis existed decades ago. We couldn’t get the robots to work well, though. Or these self-driving cars navigating the unpredictable circles of our streets. Our houses are similar to these.”
One of the participants of the study, Dr. from the department of artificial intelligence and society at King’s College in London. Kate Devlin suggests that technology is more likely to help people than to replace them:
“Making a generic robot that does many jobs is difficult and expensive. Instead, it’s easier and more convenient to create assistive technologies that help us rather than take our place.”
Research suggests that home automation can waste time spent on chores.
In the UK, about half of working-age men do as much housework as working-age women. In Japan, men do one-fifth less housework.
prof. Hertog argues that the disproportionate burden of housework on women hurts women’s earnings, savings, and retirement.
That’s why the researchers say increased automation could lead to greater gender equality.