Can teleoperation increase the productivity?

A major concern in the economy literature is adressed by the term of “productivity paradox”. It means, that the productivity hasn't increased with the advent of robotics at the workplace and in the worst case it will become lower with the introduction of robotics. From an economic perspective the productivity is a very important measurements, it has to do with how much the company has to spend to produce a product.

A possible technology which will result into powerful robots is teleoperation. Teleoperation is opposite from classical Artificial Intelligence because the idea is that a human operator is needed. The only new thing about teleoperation is, that the human operator can be located everywhere. From a productivity standpoint it's possible to guess what will happen with the productivity. It will remain the same.

That means, if 10 human workers are replaced by 10 robots and for each robot one human operator is needed in the loop the overall costs are the same. Or a bit higher, because the robotics hardware produces additional costs. So it's a zero sum game, isn't it? It's true that the productivity itself remains unchanged. A human controlled robot will have the same or a slower speed than a normal human. And the promise of robots to replace the human wasn't fulfilled.

So why exactly should a company give the technology a chance? I don't know. Perhaps the idea is, that teleoperation has non-measurable effects or another reason is, that the companies likes to robotics on the workplace but didn't want to wait until human level AI is available, so they are doing a step in between and using human operators in the loop. In the case of autonomous cars, the advantages of teleoperation are easier to grasp. Most today's cars are operating less than 5% of the hours per day. The average car is parking all the time, and no sharing takes place. With teleoperated cars, the situation can change drastically. This would allow – in theory – to let a single car drive 24/7 and less cars are needed overall. The pairing between cars, human operators and customers can be managed more flexible than with existing cars.`

household robot

A different application for a teleoperated robot is a household robot for the elderly. The idea is, that the robot is controlled by family members. That means, the task isn't solved by an AI, but a human is needed.

The underlying assumption is the same like for self-driving cars. The idea is, that only human level AI can replace human workers. It's not possible to remove a human from the loop or increase the productivity. The only thing what technology can provide is to increase the distance between the request for work and the human operator who provides the work. That means, a robot for the elderly is different from a normal machine. It has more in commong with an advanced telephone which also needs somebody on the other side.