ICRA 2022 Julie Shah - Human-Machine Partnerships and Work of the Future

More robots joined the U.S. workforce last year than ever before. What does this mean for workers? How do we build better jobs alongside intelligent machines? Our aim is to realize a future in which dramatic advances in automation and computation can go hand in hand with improved opportunities and economic security for workers. When engineers develop a new software tool or piece of equipment, we make decisions that have downstream consequences for workers. In manufacturing, for example, how much skill it requires to program a machine might affect the types of workers that can interact with the technology – and the wages they can demand. In this talk, I discuss what decision points are key for workers in a product development process, and how engineering research can incorporate worker context and worker consequences into the technology development process.