The polling was conducted earlier this year by the Pew Research Center in Greece, Japan, Canada, Argentina, Poland, Brazil, South Africa, Italy and Hungary. Pew also compared the responses in those countries to polling done in the United States in 2015 that asked about automation.

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In general, the poll found that majorities in most countries were in agreement that robots would soon do humans' work, with only limited differences in their views of how this would effect society despite some countries being advanced economically and others still developing.

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In all of the countries surveyed, more than two-thirds were found to believe that automation meant that robots would take over work done by humans within a half-century. In Greece, 52 percent said this would definitely happen, while 39 percent said this would probably happen.

Respondents were also asked about how automation would affect their countries. In each case, a large majority said it would make it difficult for ordinary people to find jobs, while a majority in most countries said jobs lost to automation would not be replaced by “new, better paying jobs.”

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There were only three countries in which a majority thought automation would make the countries' economies more efficient — Japan (74 percent), Poland (52 percent) and Hungary (52 percent). In every country surveyed, a significant majority believed automation would worsen the existing inequality between the rich and the poor.

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Despite these concerns, the general sense is that automation is inevitable. It is already happening in many countries, as Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com employs just four people at one facility where 200,000 boxes are packed every day, with the rest done by robots. Pew’s report noted manufacturing robots could cost as little as $4 an hour to operate, compared with an average hourly cost of $36 for a human worker in the United States.

So how should workers prepare for this future? With the exception of the United States in 2015, a majority in each country said the government had a responsibility to help workers acquire the right skills to adapt. Many surveyed also said schools, employers and the individuals themselves have a responsibility to prepare for the changes — though Japan was an outlier, with respondents clearly viewing the government as obliged to assume more of the responsibility.