Service robots will be worth $23 billion by 2022

Job automation is happening more quickly today than ever before, thanks to robots and artificial intelligence. Many analysts and companies are trying to gauge the impact automation will have on employment and the economy going forward, but there are no clear answers. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that a third of UK jobs could be automated by 2030.

Jonathan Wilkins, marketing director of EU Automation, has a different perspective. Thanks to the human labor currently needed to run, monitor and maintain robots, Wilkins believes "automation will eliminate very few job roles in next 10 years." Instead, employers have to "redefine" work as they seek employees with new skillsets. These employees can be difficult to find, though, and it is a big reason many governments today are emphasizing investment in education.

Ready or not, service robots are coming. One recent estimate has the market hitting $23 billion by 2022 with an annual CAGR of 15 percent between 2016 and 2022. China will continue to be an important component of this market well into the future. The country's commercial service robot market is expected to grow to about $5.5 billion by 2021, up from $2.2 billion in 2016.

Unfortunately, the inevitability of automation doesnot lessen the strife related to it. A man in Mountain View, California was recently arrested for allegedly knocking over a Knightscope K5 security robot in a parking lot. Automation is not the robot's fault, though. Let's try not to shoot the messenger, especially if it is going to be doing all our work in a few years.