Research from Graetz and Michaels using data from the International Federation of Robotics found that the use of robots within manufacturing raised the annual growth of productivity and GDP by 0.36 and 0.37 percentage points between 1993 and 2007, which represents 10% of total GDP growth in the countries studied and 16% of productivity growth. To put that in context, the report says that the “robotics have of late increased productivity by about 0.35% annually — or by about the same amount as did the steam engine, a classic example of a GPT, during the years 1850 to 1910”. The clear answer we should take from this is that automation and robotics is good for productivity growth and can help the UK economy grow, so we would be silly not to take advantage of automation in our industries.

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