With the rise in popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) – especially with the recent launch of the ChatGPT bot – there are concerns among employees in the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa region with regard to robots and automation systems used by companies, according to the latest research from Kaspersky.
Seventy six percent of those surveyed in South Africa are afraid of losing their job to a robot and 18% reported they had heard of cybersecurity incidents with robots or automated systems in their company. At the same time, many employees see the positive aspects that robotisation brings to them.
Most often the respondents from South Africa noted the benefits of automation to employees’ health: 59% said that robots free employees from doing physically demanding or dangerous work. Sixty two percent stated that robots increased the efficiency of production processes and brought economic benefits to the organisation. Twenty eight percent believed robotisation opened opportunities for employees to retrain for more interesting and higher paid positions. And 48% said it reduced the likelihood of accidents due to the human factor.
“Back in 2017 at the Black Hat conference, researchers Billy Rios and Jonathan Butts demonstrated how to hack an automatic car wash and what threat this poses to humans,” says Brandon Muller, technical expert at Kaspersky. “They studied a PDQ LaserWash automatic car wash system which can be connected to the Internet, and found a way to hijack it. They even showed that it’s possible to slam the bay door into a car which could endanger not only the vehicle, but also the driver.
“While some individuals and organisations are wary of automatisation and refrain from using it, others adapt their processes to get the most benefits from the newest technologies,” Muller says. “As further business digitisation is inevitable, companies around the world need to explore how to make automated solutions more secure and efficient for business needs.”