Report: Crab-Cutting Robot Could Save Canadian Jobs

An automated crab-cutting robot could save jobs in Canada, after the crabs were previously sent to be dismembered abroad, according to a report.

The new machine, which was developed by the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation, simply cuts the crab in half, removes its legs, and drops them into a container below, but could reportedly create new jobs for Canadian workers.

“The machine was designed to be a part of a robotic system that would extract the meat from the crab’s shells, a process which is often done overseas,” reported CBC. “Its designers are also hoping it will solve a few workforce problems in fish plants caused by changing demographics in rural Newfoundland.”

“The meat extraction used to be done by hand in Newfoundland and Labrador plants, but the labour became too expensive. The sections are now being sent overseas for meat extraction, where the labour is considerably cheaper,” they continued. “Bringing that step back to Newfoundland plants would allow plant operators to make more money and get more value from the resource.”

Bob Verge, managing director of the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation, added that “Younger people are not being attracted to the industry” anymore.

“A large part of the labour force in our processing sector now comes from the baby boomer generation. We can’t replace those baby boomers with an equal number of younger people,” he claimed. “Instead of sending our crab out as sections with meat in its shell, we can get a higher price if we sold the meat instead… If you talk to operators of fish plants today, everybody needs more people.”

In May, Google China Founder Kai-Fu Lee predicted artificial intelligence “will probably replace 50 percent of human jobs,” while in June, former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov claimed we need to start recognizing the inevitability of machines taking human jobs.

“We have to start recognizing inevitability of machines taking over more and more tasks that we used to do in the past. It’s called progress,” Kasparov declared in an interview with the BBC. “Machines replace farm animals, and almost all forms of manual labor, and now machines are about to take over more menial parts of cognition. Big deal. So it’s happening and we should not be alarmed about it, we should just take it as a fact, and look into the future trying to understand ‘how can we adjust?’.”

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.