Robots will be carrying out most chores within next decade: study

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

Robots will be carrying out more than a third of our household chores within the next decade, according to new research.

An average 39 percent of time currently spent on unpaid domestic work could be automated by 2030, say scientists.

Grocery shopping will lead the way in the AI (artificial intelligence) revolution.

Brits aged 15 to 64 spend about 43 percent of all their work and study time on cooking cleaning and other jobs round the home such as looking after children or elderly relatives.

In the UK, working-age men spend around half as much time as working-age women do on them.

Lead author Professor Ekaterina Hertog, of Oxford University, said: "Our study with technology experts in the UK and Japan finds that in 10 years' time domestic automation could reduce the amount of time spent on current housework and care work tasks by 39%."

Her team asked 29 male and female AI experts from the UK and 36 from Japan to estimate how automatable 17 housework and care work tasks might be over the next decade.

Calculations varied significantly with the easiest shopping (59 percent).

Then came other shopping, using services, cleaning and dishwashing. They were followed by ironing, laundry, teaching a child and gardening. The hardest was physical childcare (21 percent).

The findings published in PLOS ONE could have significant economic and social implications.

Hertog said: "It could free up additional hours from people’s lives for paid work and leisure, especially for women.

"It could in principle reduce the demand for domestic and care workers in ageing societies like the UK and especially Japan and conversely diminish opportunities for migrant workers from other lower-income countries.

"However, policy makers should be mindful of the fact that the potentials appear significantly stronger in housework than in care work, especially adult care.

"Areas where experts saw the greatest potential for further time savings were shopping, service use, and cleaning related tasks."

The UK specialists believed automation might replace more domestic labour (42 percent) than Japanese counterparts (36 percent).

Hertog said this may be because technology is associated more with labour replacement here.

UK male experts tended to be more optimistic about domestic automation compared to females.

Previous studies have shown men tend to be more optimistic about technology than women in general

But this was reversed for Japanese experts, with female experts being slightly more optimistic. Gender disparity in household tasks may play a role.