IDC forecasts global spending on robotics and related services to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% from more than US$71 billion in 2015 to US$135.4 billion in 2019. The new spending guide measures purchases of robotic systems, system hardware, software, robotics-related services, and after-market robotics hardware on a regional level across thirteen key industries and fifty-two use cases.

Not surprisingly, worldwide robotics spending is dominated by the discrete and process manufacturing industries, which represented 33.2% and 30.2% of total spending in 2015, respectively. Resource, healthcare, and the transportation industries are the next three largest commercial industries in terms of overall robotics spending. Process manufacturing and healthcare are two of the fastest growing industries, with worldwide spending in each forecast to nearly double by 2019.

Well sir, detrimental political philosophies put into practice can have real and dramatic consequences. To suggest otherwise is to play the ostrich. Have fun in collectivist paradise.

It is not about collectivist or individualist. It is about idealistic view on reality. Idealistic view sometimes is very attractive and providing easy "solutions" and personalized blame. Such view also rejects nature and society laws and reality - providing instead good looking mirages. Austrian guys are one of the good example of idealists who always state that we need "free market", "honest small business" and "individualism" and this will lead to prosperity. Something like abstract 2 meter size spherical apple risen without any apple tree in absolute vacuum without any possible illness. Sounds attractive but if you think - it is joke, and of course this people are paid, same as religion proponents to keep things exactly as they are - offering instead of real solutions abstract fantasies.

Well, it certainly isn't up to chance, either. We have (or once had) the power as a self-governed populace to enact policies to enhance and empower the individual to spur self-actualization and find self worth through work of their preference (i.e., entrepreneurial small business formation encouraged by incentivized creativity and innovation).

You mean that in childhood you believed in Santa and now his place is taken by "power as a self-governed populace" tales? :-)

Thing that you wrote is idealistic and wrong view, unfortunately. Fully ignoring fundamental things.

It is same as blaming tribe leaders for famine if it was three drought years. It is always best to get off idealistic glasses and look at materialistic reality around you.

@babypanda

Propaganda always work :-) Just no need to show big picture :-)

U.S. factory payrolls have grown for four straight years, with gains totaling about 650,000 jobs. That's a small fraction of the 6 million lost in the previous decade, but it still marks the biggest and longest stretch of manufacturing increases in a quarter century.

If you do not account for population increase and how many adjustment good jobs had been lost, it can even look optimistic. Also no need to describe in article that sometimes transferred lots of jobs that had absolute no economics effects (except manager bonuses). Today it is also same, many of this companies got tax reductions for adding jobs (of course tax reductions are big :-) )

Seems to me that in the U.S., the work force has moved from once being agrarians to skilled industrialists and now finally to low-paying service-oriented workers.

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/6770/the-servant-economy-where-americas-elite-is-sending-the-middle-class-/p1

We have gone from the land of the opportunistic free to the land of the enslaved and beholden.

This is that energy almighty can do :-) Nothing to do with gods and devils.

I'm pretty sure most women would take Brad Pitt over Bill Gates....your argument fails.

You mean that woman originated from gods directly, instead of monkeys?

I'm pretty sure most women would take Brad Pitt over Bill Gates....your argument fails.

I'm pretty sure that the market value of "cute and popular" beat "smart" a while quite a ago.

@brianl "it'll be more important to be cute and popular than smart"... are you talking about robots or humans?

I don't care what the geeks say, I ain't getting in no airplane flown by a fucking iPad and I don't want my kidney transplant done by Robby the fucking robot.

May be it is the future some drug addicted idiot had in his mind :-)

I don't know who these guys are.... maybe junkies?

http://www.fastcompany.com/3046332/the-new-rules-of-work/what-work-will-look-like-in-2025

WHAT WORK WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2025

Anderson says some believe leaps in innovation will "flip the world from an era of scarcity to a time of abundance, predicting unlimited energy, food, clean water, and increasing human-life extension," she says. Machines could carry out tasks while programmed intelligence could act as our "digital agents" in the creation and sharing of products and knowledge. Hello, Jetsons.

Brynjolfsson also thinks that technology has the potential for "shared prosperity," giving us richer lives with more leisure time and freedom to do the types of work we like to do. But that’s going to require collaboration and a unified effort among developers, workers, governments, and other stakeholders.

Well, robots working for free is a great thing for humanity as a whole. It is just some generations inbetween that will suffer while the system changes.

Im in two minds. Definitely some jobs will disappear with robots AI ect but this process is nothing new. Jobs have always been made obsolete through technology but then newer high IQ tasks often replace them. I agree we may already be in a situation where The West is really doing nothing, just consuming products and moving data around in some form or another. But I also believe in new jobs, even if robots take over a ton of people will need to maintain, design, sell, build robots....or at least the robots that make the robots. ;)

The other side is the reality is the West has stopped being the factory of the world and so bets are off on what the West looks like once this reality becomes more obvious. We already have a lot of long term unemployed as it is....

Plus isn't this the future that was dreamed about? A future of leisure and ease where task were done around us by robots? I mean as long as robots do all the work that frees us to do something we want. The question is how well and by what means will wealth and products created by automation be distributed in such a brave new world?