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Business Daily: The Robots Are Coming

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The Robots Are Coming

24/11/2015 GMT

BBC World Service - Business Daily, The Robots Are Coming

Do robots put our jobs at risk? Is the answer a government-funded basic income for all?

Are robots and automation guiding us towards a jobless future? And if so, is the answer a government-funded universal basic income for all?

We are sleepwalking into a jobless future where robots take away the need to work. That is the warning from author Martin Ford in his book Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. The solution, he suggests, is for governments to hand out a basic income to all. In fact, trials are already taking place in some countries. We speak to Evelyn Forget, economist at Canada's University of Manitoba, who produced a recent report on the findings of a basic income trial conducted in Canada in the 1970s. But the idea of a universal basic income is controversial. We hear from a critic, Pascal Emmanuel Gobry, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington, and  Philippe Van Parijs, professor of economic and social ethics at Belgium's Université Catholique de Louvain.

(Photo: Men dressed as robots Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

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