Eoin Treacy's view

Perhaps the most important point is not so much what the robot can achieve today but how much better it is than recent iterations. The pace of innovation is as important as the end result in many respects. The leaps being made in robotics are being enabled by the pace of innovation in artificial intelligence, computing power, optics, batteries and hardware. Could we then think about robots as the physical manifestation of the pace of technological innovation?

The flipside of this is being seen in the run up to the Dutch election where protests against automation at Rotterdam’s port have filtered into the political debate. The disaffection many people feel at the march of technology and globalisation has been exacerbated by the fiscal constraints imposed in the aftermath of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. That is leading to reactionary policies and movements gaining ground. It remains my belief that if the EU is to obviate the existential threat nationalistic populism represents it will need to develop a jobs strategy which will in all likelihood need to be accompanied by fiscal stimulus.