According to recent Kaspersky research, employees in the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa region (META) trust robots in performing ordinary tasks in logistics, transportation, and cleaning.
However, they were less willing to trust robots with life critical functions, such as performing surgeries, flying airplanes without pilots, managing dangerous manufacturing or pharmaceutical production.
One of the reasons for the lack of trust to robots is the belief that robots are prone to cyberattacks: this point of view is supported by three out of four employees surveyed in South Africa (73%).
Employees see robots fit to perform some duties, but unfit for others. For instance, in South Africa 86% of those surveyed trust robots to do cleaning, 83% trust them in delivering parcels and orders.
At the same time, fewer than half of employees would trust robots in such tasks as managing dangerous manufacturing (43%), and only 24% of local respondents trust robots to perform a surgery.
These concerns can be explained by the fact that 70% of all employees point out it’s unclear who bears responsibility if robots fail in their duties due to an equipment malfunction or a cyberattack. And 50% of employees believe that if robots malfunction, they can cause physical threat to humans.
“Today robotics are used together with industrial control systems and other information technology to handle production processes, replacing manual labour and improving efficiency, speed, quality and performance,” comments Emad Haffar, head of technical experts at Kaspersky.
“Our research shows a split in employees’ opinion on the duties that robots are fit to carry out. While employees in general are ready for robots to perform unskilled duties, such as cleaning and order delivery, the majority are not ready to trust robots with critical functions which, if done wrong, could cause financial damage or be a physical threat to humans.
“From January to September 2022 malicious objects were blocked on 38% of ICS computers in the Middle East, Turkiye, Africa region that were protected by Kaspersky solutions, according to Kaspersky ICS CERT statistics. We predict that the number of attacks on robots in different industries may increase due to the continuing digitisation.”