A robotic arm works on the production line at Volvo's factory in Ridgeville, S.C. But other essential jobs, including major portions of final assembly, are still left to people. A robotic arm works on the production line at Volvo's factory in Ridgeville, S.C. But other essential jobs, including major portions of final assembly, are still left to people. Robots have revolutionized auto manufacturing, making plants safer and products more reliable -- and reducing the number of people involved in the process.

The World Bank has a reassuring message for those fearful of being made obsolete by automation. The robot age is nothing to be worried about. Just like all previous waves of technological advance, the fourth industrial revolution will create rather than destroy jobs, so fears of mass unemployment are largely unfounded. Nor should we be concerned that the arrival of the new machine age is going to widen the gap between rich and poor, because the idea that the world is becoming a less equal place is more perception than reality. Automation, according to the bank's World Development Report, is an opportunity not a threat.

Technology adoption looks very different across different industries. For example, while companies in every industry are considering introducing some use of wearable electronics in the next 5 years, in the health and healthcare industry over 70% of companies have such plans. In the infrastructure industry, less than a quarter of companies plan to do so. The subsequent consequences for workers are very different. How then can industries – and their workers – prepare?

At the top of Mount Olympus, Hephaestus – the Greek god of fire and a blacksmith – built a palace for his fellow deities. Inside, he crafted robotic golden statues to serve them. Greek mythology tells us that a fascination with the robotic is as old as western civilization. In the intervening centuries, so advanced have AI, robotics and digital technologies become that sometimes it's easy to think we're being overtaken by innovation. Yet to hide in fear of a jobless apocalypse and a grim vision of rule by robots is to focus on only one side of a complex argument. Flip this negativity on its head and we see that, far from dominating life, technology could be used to help define and complement the human in all of us.

It does not have to be. The report demonstrates that these technologies can have a positive or a negative impact on human rights. Regarding these rights, we focus on issues relating to the right to respect private life, human dignity, ownership, safety and liability, freedom of expression and the prohibition of discrimination as wellas access to justice and the right to a fair trial. The Rathenau Instituut conducted this research on the invitation of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Our research shows that the human rights framework forms a practical starting point for policy makers tasked with regulating robotics, artificial intelligence or similar technologies.

Most people's expectations of robots are driven by fantasy. These marvelous machines, optimists hope, will follow Moore's law, doubling in quality every 18 months, and lead to a Jetsonian utopia. Or, as pessimists fear, humanoid bots will reproduce, increase their intelligence, and wipe out humanity. This article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. Contact wiredlabs@wired.com to report an issue.

It seems that the robot designers are concentrating on things that are not priorities for potential consumers. Robots for the home will only be purchased when they can perform dull tasks properly without supervision. If I had the money to buy a robot to do the vacuum-cleaning, I wouldn't want to have to pay a cleaner to do the dusting as well; I'd want the robot to do it. Similarly a lawn-mowing robot would also need to be able to dig flower beds and remove weeds without damaging the plants I want to grow. The level of'hand-eye' coordination required for these simple tasks is beyond the capabilities of current robots and until that problem is solved no-one will be interested in whether they appear to have any empathy with humans, how they communicate or what they look like.

What is driving the'robot age' and how can businesses leverage the capabilities being produced? Artificial intelligence is one of the 21st century's dominant fields of innovation. So it's no surprise that cutting-edge robots and other advanced smart machines fall under the rapidly expanding Internet of Things, which is projected to reach 25 billion devices by 2020. Every day we're reading headlines on machines getting'smarter' and robotics transforming a variety of industries, but what's driving this'robot age' and how can businesses successfully integrate and leverage this advanced automation? It's clear that artificial intelligence (AI) is a new industrial revolution, one that's driving the rise of robotics. But AI won't just be an industry – it will be part of every industry.

Co-author Tom Davenport of the new book "Only Humans Need Apply" speaks on knowledge workers

So people seem to be worried that in the near future robots outperform them in jobs and make them homeless. However, this is a pretty short sighted way of thinking about it. To an extent they are right, the people with the less skilled menial jobs will be outperformed by robots because their jobs are easy to perform. But we're concerned with the less skilled jobs because they're the people currently worried about the issue. So when robots do eventually take over the production side of the economy goods are likely going to drop in price, and drop rapidly. No longer will an Apple Mac cost 2000 ... the means of production will make them dirt cheap to produce and with people not in work, people wouldn't be able to afford a 2000 laptop, so the prices will drop.