Inclusive robotics: economic performance and employment

Abstract

In the current context, jurists are obliged to understand the phenomenon of digitalisation. To do so, they must first understand, define and delimit it, and then explain and analyse it in order to propose fair and equitable solutions. This global concept encompasses multiple realities, each with its own characteristics and specific impact, in particular in the field of work as a source of personal and social identity. Public and private institutions, as well as international, European and national ones such as the OECD, ILO, WEF, EU, among others, have been doing regular studies, reports and analyses of the situation for some time. With regard to Robotics, they have gone beyond the specific scope of the industrial sector to try to identify the impact of technologies that replicate human-like cognitive processes in machines, seen from a triple perspective: ethical, legal and socio-economic. Thus, emphasis is placed on their effects on the configuration and definition of work; on the different models or types of work, profoundly altered today by automation or digitalisation; and on the conditions in which workers provide their services. From this triple perspective, admitting that robots and Artificial Intelligence systems are one of the great truly disruptive inventions of the digital environment and that they are here to stay, this study focuses on Inclusive robotics, thus contributing to an understanding of the current technological change by reflecting on some of the issues it raises for the law.