Will there be more free time in the future? Quite possibly, according to an EU-funded study that states AI could slash time currently spent on domestic chores<\/p>\n
Almost 40 % less time on unpaid domestic work \u2013 this is what British and Japanese experts say we can look forward to in 10 years, according to a study supported by the EU-funded FAMSIZEMATTERS and GenTime projects. The study, whose findings have been published in the open-access journal \u2018PLOS ONE\u2019, gives us an idea of how much labour AI could save us at home. It also shows how predictions are socially contingent, highlighting the importance of taking this aspect into account in future forecasts.<\/p>\n
Researchers from the United Kingdom and Japan asked 65 AI experts to estimate how automatable housework and childcare tasks are. Focusing on 17 tasks, the experts predict that 39 % of the time we currently spend on such tasks could be automated within the next 10 years. \u201cIf it is true that robots are taking our jobs, then it appears that they are also capable of taking out the trash for us,\u201d the study authors wrote.<\/p>\n
The most automatable task identified by the experts was grocery shopping, 59 % of which will most likely be performed by AI, followed by service use (52 %) and other shopping (50 %). Other tasks we might be doing much less of within a decade are household cleaning, dishwashing and cooking, around 46 % of which the experts deemed automatable. AI \u201ccould free up additional hours from people\u2019s lives for paid work and leisure, especially for women,\u201d reports the study.<\/p>\n
The least automatable task of the 17 analysed was physical childcare, at close to 21 %. Care work was generally predicted to be more difficult to automate, with an average estimate of 28 % within 10 years. Interestingly, the reasons most experts cited for this difficulty were not technical in nature. Instead, they spoke about how socially acceptable it was to delegate childcare to machines, how it affected a child\u2019s development and its privacy implications. They also noted that it is household budgets that determine the kinds of technologies that are developed and marketed, since most manual tasks are automatable. The \u201creal bottleneck,\u201d according to one expert, is the \u201ccost of that automation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study partly funded by FAMSIZEMATTERS (Family size matters: How low fertility affects the (re)production of social inequalities) and GenTime (Temporal structures of gender inequalities in Asian and Western welfare regimes) also found that the experts\u2019 outlook was affected by their gender. Male experts in Japan were less optimistic about the prospects of domestic automation than their British counterparts, justifying their pessimism by citing a low demand for domestic automation considering its high cost. The researchers\u2019 attributed this to Japan\u2019s stark gender disparities. \u201cIt would not be uncommon for Japanese men in expert positions to have almost no personal experience of major domestic work tasks, which they delegate instead to their wives,\u201d the authors explained, going on to state that only 52 % of Japanese men aged 20-59 reported doing some domestic work, compared to 88 % in the United Kingdom. \u201cIn contrast, Japanese women in expert positions have likely had to struggle significantly to balance work and family to reach such positions; as a result, they may see greater demand for domestic automation technologies even at a high cost.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Will there be more free time in the future? Quite possibly, according to an EU-funded study that states AI could slash time currently spent on domestic chores Almost 40 % less time on unpaid domestic work \u2013 this is what British and Japanese experts say we can look forward to in 10 years, according to\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_scj_primary_category_id":57,"_scj_featured":false,"_scj_featured_from":"","_scj_featured_until":"","_scj_featured_order":0,"_scj_visibility_class":"current","_scj_layout_family":"standard","_scj_article_style":"","_scj_display_overrides":[],"_scj_intro_image_id":18752,"_scj_intro_alt":"How susceptible is household work to automation?","_scj_intro_caption":"","_scj_intro_class":"","_scj_intro_float":"","_scj_full_image_id":18752,"_scj_full_alt":"How susceptible is household work to automation?","_scj_full_caption":"","_scj_full_class":"","_scj_full_float":"","_scj_media_type":"","_scj_media_provider":"","_scj_media_external_id":"","_scj_media_url":"","_scj_media_poster_id":0,"_scj_media_width":0,"_scj_media_height":0,"_scj_media_aspect_ratio":"","_scj_media_description":"","_scj_gallery_items":[],"_scj_related_post_ids":[],"_scj_additional_authors":[],"scj_layout_family":"standard","scj_media_provider":"","scj_media_url":"","scj_full_caption":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-robotics"],"yoast_head":"\n