Africa Knowledge Management Portal
Informing health decisions and actions
World Development Report 2019, the changing nature of work
Health Risk Environment
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Description
From their beginning, robots were intended to replace humans in the workplace. In fact, Karel Cˇapek, the Czech writer who invented the word robot in 1920, used the Slavic-language word for work, robota, to make it clear what these machines would be used for. Over the last century, machines have replaced workers in many tasks. On balance, however, technology has created more jobs than it has displaced. Technology has brought higher labor productivity to many sectors by reducing the demand for workers for routine tasks. And yet in doing so, it has opened doors to new sectors once imagined only in the world of science fiction