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By the end of the next decade, robots will take up at least 39% of the time devoted to household work and taking care of people according to a study published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS ONE. Of this, at least 27% would see automation within five years.
After consulting 65 artificial intelligence (AI) experts, UK and Japan researchers found that buying groceries will be the most automated in the next 10 years, slashing nearly 60 per cent of the time currently spent on the task. Caring for children and senior citizens will be the least automated.
Researchers from the University of Oxford and Ochanomizu University observed that humans are most dependent on AI for unpaid domestic work, with the use of robot vacuum cleaners becoming the most popular in the world. Presently, adults spend the equivalent of 43 per cent of all their work and study time on regular housework. 29 AI experts from the UK and 36 AI experts from Japan were part of the research to predict the future of ‘domestic robots’.
The research found that the male UK experts had a more optimistic outlook to domestic automation than their female counterparts, which was the opposite case in Japan.
While the least automatable task was found to be physical childcare (21 per cent), care work had an average estimate of 28 percent in ten years, while housework is considered more easily automatable (44 percent).
This difference is due to ‘routine’ or technical work being more adaptable to automation than ‘non-routine’ work, especially one that involves social interaction. Chores which involve problem solving skills and communication are more difficult to be automated, according to the experts.
