Will Humanoid Robots Take All the Jobs by 2050? 1457
Anonymous writes "Marshall Brain (the guy who started HowStuffWorks) has published an article claiming that robots will take half the jobs in the U.S. by 2050. Some of his predictions: real computer vision systems by 2020, computers with the CPU power and memory of the human brain by 2040, completely robotic fast food restaurants in 2030 (which then unemploy 3.5 million people), etc. It's a pretty astounding article. My question: How many people on /. think he is right (or even close - let's say he's off by 10 or 20 years)? Or is he full of it?"
maybe 100 years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm going to go with a no on this one. Everyone said the same thing when ATMs came around, "Oh no, they're going to replace actual tellers!" But it didn't, banks still hire quite frequently for bank tellers.
I'm not saying these kiosks aren't going to become more prevalent, but they won't replace actual human contact. Having previously worked in many service related jobs I know that people (especially older adults) will not allow this to occur. We all need to be able to talk to an actual human every once in a while. Computers don't care if you yell. Could you imagine the amount of complaints McDonalds would get?
With this being said, I love automated services such as "Pay-at-the-Pump" and especially self-checkout at the grocery stores. It's not that I'm some hermit who likes no human contact, but who wants to make idle chit-chat with some register jockey?
Mike
What About Instict? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, uh. No way, no how. In case of an emergency onboard an aircraft I will literally bet my life on the instincts of a human being over the computational prowess of machine.
Brave New World (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else see Brave New World here? Artificial industries created in allowing humans to be free of worry and work...merely players in a game whose goal is to increase consumption.
Worrying stuff. Now where's my soma..
Don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Moore's Law (Score:5, Insightful)
Things will shift (Score:2, Insightful)
3.5 million (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news, the estimate number of people in development, production and support of intelligent robots in the year 2030 is ... 3.5 millon people.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What bank do you use? (Score:5, Insightful)
What bank do you use? Many of the banks in my area have reduced teller hours to the point where most working people can't use them. Some have instituted fees for seeing an actual person.
Others (my neighborhood Washington Mutual) have so completely automated the process of withdrawals and deposits with special kiosks, that actual human presence in a bank is much lower than it ever was when I was growing up. You go to one kiosk to prepare your deposit, and another to withdraw cash. The actual teller transaction, if necessary at all, is minimized. And tellers double as customer-service people, opening new accounts and the like-- one of the few remaining tasks that isn't machine automatable.
Then there are online banks like ETrade, which seem to do ok with no human contact at all.
So no, humans haven't been written out of the equation. But their numbers have been substantially reduced, and the process is a long ways from complete.
Re:Moore's Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, the story's much more complicated than simple "jobs lost."
Long term predictions are always rubbish (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing is, these will not happen overnight. We're not going to wake up one morning and be told that all jobs are going to be replaced by robots. They'll replace them as technology become appropriate, and society wil have time to adapt and find other mundane tasks for us to do. Society is robust like that.
Its very possible (Score:3, Insightful)
While they wont replace ALL employees of that sector, its easily possible the number of fast food robots will exceed employees in numbers. Robotics have made lots of advances and with powerful CPUs and languages to deal with them, sophisticated tasks can be handed over to them more economically than to a high school student.
Computers potentially already have more cpu and memory than a human....... can anyone remember 2 terabytes of text, graphics and audio??(our memories are very low resolution), and can you compete with a 386 in arithmetic and general logic? The deep blue bested the best of chess players and approximately that level of cpu power is already available on desktops. However many key features of the human thinking will remain missing from computers for a while, the biggest of which is learning and associating concepts. How many computers can listen to two foreigners talk and learn the language by listening alone?
Less drama maybe? (Score:2, Insightful)
I imagine kitchen automation at the restaurant is possible (steak cooking robot).
But general-purpose robots? I don't think so.
Roomba the vacuum cleaner is out already. Robotic lawn movers will be next. Robotic gas-pumps, construction site robots, etc are definetely to come.
But a general purpose walking and talking robot will never be justifyable to build and market.
I think we will end up with millions and millions of highly specialized robots networked together and dynamically provisioned and allocated by AI control systems.
Yes, lots of people will have to retrain. No, it will not result in 50% unemployment. And someone has to program all those things so
1/2 of CURRENT jobs... (Score:5, Insightful)
it's the same automation story we've been hearing since the industrial age started (or before).
how many less jobs are there in the lumber industry now than there were 100 years ago? Farming? Metal workers? Technology, regardless of whether it is deemed 'intelligent' or not changes the face of the workplace.
The flip side of it is that there will be new jobs for humans... how many programmers were there 100 years ago? Just as my great great grandparents couldn't even imagine nor understand the concept of what I do for a living, we probably can't concieve some of the tasks that humans will be doing 50 or 100 years from now...
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
if robots take over 50% of the jobs, the robot industry will need millions of workers who performed these simple to complex tasks to program/design/manufacture their replacements, thus creating a multibillion dollar robot industry which will create millions of new jobs (maybe not 50% as much).
-n
It depends on cost/benefits (Score:3, Insightful)
Such advanced robot will surely cost a bundle to produce and then maintain. Energy consumption (we are still far away of from the energy effeciency of an organic lifeform in any mechanical/electronic devices) will also be much higher than that of a human being (it will prbably cost more to McDonald to provide the proper amount of energy for the robot to function for a day that to give free lunches to it's employee).
We have the technology to create a complete automated McDonald (using specilized robots)(from ordering to delivery the food to the customer). We are not doing it because human are a lot cheaper worker. That's not going to change anytime soon!
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:1, Insightful)
v-e-n-d-i-n-g m-a-c-h-i-n-e, say it with me, vending machine!
The real question (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, advertising will make a lot of money and we can all retire. Thats going to work.
Re:What About Instict? (Score:3, Insightful)
This article is common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, how do you not make this connection?
Ask yourself the following questions:
1) Is there a compelling reason to believe that computer/robot technology won't reach the point where most basic service jobs can be (almost) entirely automated? Think food service, janitorial, banking, etc.
2) Is there a compelling reason to believe that this technology will remain too costly or inconvenient for employers to adopt it?
3) If (1) and (2), is there some compelling reason why employers will choose not to adopt a cheaper, more convenient technology for these purposes, in order to increase their profits?
If you can't answer with confidence to any of these questions, then it's probably not a matter of whether robot technology will absorb these jobs, but of when it will happen. The 50 year prediction may be off by quite a lot. But over some reasonable time span (less than a couple of centuries, barring global disaster), the technology will be available and-- assuming our economic system remains similar to what we have today-- it will be in use.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No Humanoid Robots (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as replacing the service industry... in some areas yes, but in others like restaurants, I think you'd have people serving you but these fabrication machines would replace the kitchen.
Re:Moore's Law (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure someone could build a humanoid robot with state of the arts sensors today. It's actions could be controlled remotely by a Beowulf Cluster of processors in a system with many Gigs of RAM. It would have all the physical capabilities and processing power you could possibly need to do any household or manufacturing chore you like.
Now all we need is 500 million lines of code required to make a program that runs it correctly. That's not a question of advancing technology, just a huge software development requirement.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
My mundane position was at an amusement park. I'm sure the adults that came through looked down on me because I wasn't from an affluent area or had secured my education at an important university. But that mundane job allowed me to attend a state school. No one flipping burgers or scanning your Fruit Loops is thinkging they've reached their potential or go home at night thinking "I've finally arrived"
I'm not saying we don't need the menial (sp?) or support jobs. We do and we will, they will just change from filling your Biggie Drink (c) to patting your pockets looking for metal items while entering the public library. Shift Happens.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
But the advantage is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but you have to program each and every human being to do these tasks. With a machine, you simply teach it once and then clone the resulting "mind" as many times as you need. So even if it takes us an additional 50 years to develop a machine capable of doing many human tasks, we could produce millions of them the next day, and every day from there on out.
This is already happening... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people who have commented are saying "I'd never trust my life to a robotically controlled plane" and "Oh, no way will I want to interact with a robot". But what you're missing is that this already happens.
As for interacting with robots, all Al Gore jokes aside, it won't be that difficult. People interact with computers all day (for Gen Y it is as natural as breathing). Automated voicemail was mentioned, but while it may be frustrating, when well designed it is more efficient and cheaper (hence why businesses use it!)
And that brings up the other point: most posters have ignored the economic aspect of it. That same factor that is driving jobs to India is the one that will make it so that Marshall Brain is completely correct. Companies need to save money wherever possible, and replacing labourers with robots will be a very big way to do that.
Not a zero-sum world (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is, economies are not zero-sum. If robots do become a large factor in our economy, then people will move to other avenues to provide for themselves. Heck, the economy may even shift again. We used to be a manufacturing based economy. Now we are more a serviced based economy. Who knows, in a 100 years, if robots can do it all, our economies may focus around land (where we can live with all our robot servants), art, and knowledge and other things that are uniquely human.
Humanoid shmumanoid (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact that is what's happening. If you've ever used an automated checkout, you dealt with a robot that is far from humanoid. It's a squat little brushed metal dealy with a minimal complement of sensor devices and a reasonably dumb computer brain. With some adjustment on the part of the consumer who is using it, the new system performs just about as well as the old - at least for small purchases. Now if they can just come up with an automated bagger that puts the eggs on the bottom of the bag...
Furthermore, much of the automation we are going to see replacing human won't take any sort of a physical form. My job is implementing automated business systems that do the work of a department of dozens, even hundreds of people. Anyone rememeber how payroll was once processed? Clerks manually calculated every check. Today the payroll for 100,000 people with complex benefits, deductions, bonuses, etc... can be run in about an hour - with the attention of a few trained humans to pick up and correct errors.
If you believed the author of this article, the payroll department of the future would look like hundreds of humanoid robots staffing calculators. Not going to happen. Robots and automation will eventually replace most humans at work, but whatever form it takes won't look like us.
-josh
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't technology be the mechanism for the self-destruction?
Simple Economics - Animatrix style (Score:2, Insightful)
If you believe in the present economy it is necessary to have robots eventually doing much of what people do today. You would also have to believe that people will have to be much fatter to consume efficiency gains found in the food industry. We are seeing this in spades right now. How far will food producers be able to go? I doubt it can last much longer. I see a lot of fat people either ready to burst or die from getting out of their chair.
It is hard to say if this will all happen by 2050, but why not? The weather man can see the system coming, but speed and another system bumping it out of the way make timing hard to predict. I don't see futurist having any greater power.
I can't resist, from the Animatrix, "Your flesh is a relic; a mere vessel. Hand over your flesh and a new world awaits you. We demand it!" said the robot to the UN.
Shorter workweek? (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, what I think will happen is that the typical workweek will slowly get shorter and shorter, in part because there will be so many leisure activities and interesting things to do outside of work and that's what people will demand. Our quality of life will increase dramatically. Actual human labor will become very expensive, and we will only need to work a few hours a week to earn enough to reap the rewards of all the automation. Of course, there will be those who will still work 80 hours a week, if they want, and they'll probably become richer than most.
I guess there are alterate distopian possibilities, such as a massive imbalance of wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer people, which they article seems to be predicting. We should be wary to try to take steps, whatever they might be, to help prevent that from happening. Without draconian government measures that trample on freedom.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Humm, maybe because they didn't get the opportunities? Doesn't it strike you how (for instance) many great things are being invented this century in comparison to the last? May this have to do with said scientists not having to work their backs off at coal mines or 19th century sweatshops?
Saying that *some* jobs may become obsolete has little to do with having half the population on welfare. There will be different jobs, probably less demanding (anyone heard of 35 hours?). And certainly more rewarding for those who have them.
The idea of shelving all the unemployed to state-run concentration camps makes no sense. From an economical standpoint, it would be much better to keep them as consumers, and integrate them into the mainstream economy.
In developed countries, the percentages of population working in agriculture have dropped to 10%, while almost everybody was working there few centuries before. Industry has yielded to services, and now 70% of the workforce is there. The type of services is also changing: the second largest US export is entertainment, IIRC.
So, yes, maybe there will be less clerks and waiters and construction workers. And the future will have an entertainment industry as we've never seen before, the economy will keep growing, and the sun will keep coming over the horizon every day.
Yes, I'm an optimist.
Re:Simply, NO. (Score:1, Insightful)
No, we're not. We're making progress into which areas of the brain do what, but we're still stuck in the brain-as-a-hardwired computer metaphor.
A better question is "what is thought"? What is thinking? People doing brain research still can't answer this question..
Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
There's this thing called capitalism, which is what will get us the robots in the first place and it's an implementation of a thing called natural selection, which is what got us you in the first place. And what these things say is: if you choose not to use the robots, the world will choose not to use you.
All it takes is for a very small minority of humans to vote robot and by meme or by gene that small minority will become a big majority. (And believe me, no matter how taboo something is, you can always find a small minority who'll choose it for step 1 if step 3 is profit.) Then the robots take over.
Sorry, but the only way to prevent you being replaced by a robot would be to prevent your creation in the first place. The same forces that giveth, also taketh away.
Re:What About Instict? (Score:3, Insightful)
The weavers will be the first large group of employess to be completely automated out of their jobs.
And guess what, it has happened already!
I sure hope so (Score:3, Insightful)
If technology can render human labor unnecessary, then that's exactly what it should do. The problems that come from technology replacing humans all stem from an economic system that is at odds with our real goals as a society. It is the economic system that needs to be replaced. The more technology is capable of doing and the cheaper it is to use that technology, the stronger the pressure is to make the economic system match our real goals.
To put a finer point on it, for the vast majority of people, capitalism is a means to convert time and effort into a living. The real goal, however, is to have a living without needing to apply time and effort. That goal has not been reachable due ti limitations of technology. However, in the future, the goal will be limited more by capitalism than by technology.
Looking at the job situation, how many people really WANT to work in fast food? Other than a few retirees who just want something useful to do with their day, I can't think of anyone off hand. Of course, those retirees don't have to put up with a bunch of crap from the manager since they don't actually need the job in the first place. Even amongst professionals in careers that match their interests, most would probably prefer to pursue their interests as dedicated hobbiests rather than as an employee if that were a viable option for them. If technology can make that possible without forcing other people to take up the slack, then it should. If our economic system stands in the way, it should be changed. If our economic/educational systems are inadequate to the task of transitioning, then they must be fixed.
A sort of steam engine was invented in the Roman Empire, but was never put into use because it would have resulted in idle slaves. My fear is that our modern "fearless" "leaders" will be just as short sighted or attached to the idea that labor is a virtue in itself rather than one of several virtuous means to an end
The inherent flaw in his argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Automation is employment's best friend! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:1/2 of CURRENT jobs... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:fast food workers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
As an employee, you get paid ONLY for the work you do.
As a business, you can replace yourself or your equipment with more efficient people or equipment. (read: forign workers and robots) and you get to profit from it.
If it were a perfectly fair society, you could hire a lower cost Indian that does better work to replace yourself and make the profit. Instead, only your company can do that now.
We already are loosing jobs! (Score:1, Insightful)
Financial prevention (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider this: We deploy robots (3.5 million was bandied about), thereby rendering a large portion of the populace without jobs. We now have all of those people that cannot afford to eat at McDonalds, go to the amusement park, etc. Why? Welfare/unemployment compensation is not designed to support that kind of lifestyle.
Until, and unless, the world can employ the menial labor populace in some fashion that robots cannot be used for, robots in the work force are financial suicide.
As a closing thought, I don't care how efficient the robot is, I will NOT go to a hospital that uses robots for bedside tasks.
Re:Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
I know a certain one of the Big3 automakers that told a certain supplier exactly this;
"We don't care where you build your parts, we will be paying you as if you built them in mexico."
Of course its also the auto inductry that discovered people are a lot cheaper than robots. And 3rd world 'inhabitants' are a lot cheaper than people.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, this is just silly. Never in the past has a civilization had the technology to create something with the ability to displace it. We still don't have that ability now. In the future we might, if we can make something "better" (i.e. stronger, faster, smarter) than we are. I don't see any fundamental reason why science should be unable to create something more capable than the products of evolution if given enough time.
Also, in the past civilizations have been replaced when something better came along. Usually another civilization with better technology and maybe superior intrinsic abilities in the case of Neanderthal vs. Homo sapiens.
David
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not pay me for the work my robot performs.
Why would corporations (or whoever) pay you for work your robot performs? Wouldn't they rather just pay once to buy their own robots?
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not a zero-sum world (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:2, Insightful)
However, when that kid gets displaced by some robot, I'm sure he'll find some other means to buy himself that rice-burner.
At some point that might not be true. At some point artificial intelligence might exceed the intelligence of the average kid. That's not a bad thing, but it is something which the economy would have to adapt to.
What if someone is just too stupid to get a job? Right now that threshold only excludes a very small percentage of the population, but in the future it could reach much higher numbers. Three solutions come to mind. Artificially create jobs for these people, give these people some sort of welfare/disability, and let these people just die. None of the solutions are particularly good. It'll be a brand new problem which requires an ingenious solution. But maybe we'll be able to build a robot to figure out the solution for us.
Re:What About Instict? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, would an Airbus allow a suicidal pilot to, say, crash a plane-load of people into the Atlantic Ocean? Or is that just a feature of 767s?
For reference, I don't see any Airbuses in the list of accidents by pilot-induced dive [aviation-safety.net].
Re:Great! (Score:3, Insightful)
Another follow-on thought.
Many sociologists now assert that the long-term success of a society is dependent on its ability to socialize its young adult males -- in the sense of finding gainful employment for them in order to keep them busy and useful. Failure to do so -- for example, in inner cities in the United States, or in several African countries -- results in increased crime, civil unrest, etc. Apparently having a large number of testosterone-crazed individuals hanging around idle is a Bad Idea.
Here comes socialism (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think the guy is a pessimist. The robots could be taking large numbers of jobs in as few as 5 years.
The Soviet Union (remember them?) was so worried about automated systems taking jobs away form people that they banned the development of that technology. Kept them 20 years behind the west for decades. That one decision could have been the nail in the coffin that lead to its down fall...
So what happens? Speaking as someone how has now lost three (3) jobs because it was cheaper to do them in India, I can tell you that change happens. When it happens it happens quickly. Those companies that adapt survive. Those that don't die. A technology like humanoid robots can reduce labor costs by 90% (or more) and once those jobs are taken by robots they will be gone forever.
Sure, a few people and a few new companies will get very very very rich implementing this technology. But many many people will lose everything to the robots.
So what happens? People get upset when they can't eat and in the US the starving can vote. Expect to see rising taxes placed on the robots. Property taxes, value added taxes, even an out right labor tax. (The increase in taxes will slow the adoption of robots by artificialy increasing there cost, but it won't stop it.)
The tax money will at first be used by governments to offset lost income tax revenue. Then, it will be used for "retraining" programs and extended unemployment benefits. Eventually, large parts of the tax money will be sent directly and indirectly to people who can't find jobs. We could easily get down to where less than 10% of the population is able to find a traditional job. The rest of us will be paid to keep us from rioting and burning the robots.
At that point the closest thing possible to "true" socialism will have arrived. A few of us will do all the brain work, robots will do all the physical work, and the rest of us will watch TV and do drugs at the expense of the robot owners. The RoboCapitalists will be the only ones with lots of money.
The next phase is physical immortality and the rise of the megaminds....
Stonewolf
Re:It will go the same fate as automated checkout (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, but we're talking about McDonalds and other fast food resteraunts here, where I would welcome ATM style ordering if only for accuracy. Not only that, but I live in the UK where 'customer service' is a joke - especially at fast food places.
For instance, I usualy want an extra drink with my meal (large isn't that large, and 'super' size isn't available everywhere). What happens when I ask for "A large nugget meal with a coke and another large coke"? Pretty simple you would think. Surely the staff will blindly take my order as I say it and then repeat it back to me for confirmation. More often than not they don't. As such, confusion often results as they seem to need to interperate what I'm asking for and when they do they often get it wrong (the usual outcomes are no second drink or a second meal gets ordered), which wouldn't be too bad, but since they don't bother with the confirmation bit I often end up in arguments about what I ordered.
Or even better, one time I asked for a hamburger meal. The guy taking my order said "we don't do hambuger meals". "Ok", I said, "give me a cheeseburger meal, but give me hamburgers instead of cheesburgers" (why McDonalds don't have a hamburger meal is beyond me). "I can't do that, I'll have to order you a special cheesburger meal without cheese" was the reply. As soon as the 'special' order flashed up in the cooking area the mangager came rushing round and shouted at the guy "What's a cheese burger without cheese"? Order guy went into 'duh' mode and the manager (after looking at me apologetically) said "it's called a hamburger".
And here's another one - one day I walked into a place and asked for a hamburger. The guy said "We don't sell hamburgers". "Since when?" I asked, "I had one yesterday". A quick glance at the menu solved the confusion, they were selling beefburgers. I'm not sure how I avoided going into a blind fit of rage.
I would quite gladly forgo the human contact if it means getting my order right. It's why I love dominos pizza's online ordering (www.dominos.co.uk), when I want a pepperoni I get a pepperoni, not a meat feast, not a pepperoni plus, not whatever the guy thought I was asking for, I get a pepperoni. If McDonalds, Burger King, KFC (especially KFC, they're worse than McDonalds - they have difficulty with a bog standard no extras order) et al were to have ATM style ordering my life would less stressful (I go to these places a lot) and would enhance my 'meal experience'.
Tk
Re:3.5 million (Score:2, Insightful)
It will all work itself out.
- Houdini
Why is welfare the solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
This means there will be an extensive period of time where the vast majority of the earth's population (who perform "unskilled" labor) will be without jobs or a means of providing themselves with income. Without a massive welfare system set up to feed, clothe, house, and (re)educate these folks, there will be widespread poverty as the humans won't be able to find jobs doing anything.
There is a profit motive to reduce costs; however, markets need demand to produce a profit. If a significant proportion of the population is 'out of work', no one will be buying the products manufactured in the robotic factories. High supply and low demand means no profit. The companies with the robots will have to continually shift production to a profitable area. The cost of retooling will eventually bankrupt the smaller companies. Once that starts to happen companies will very seldom automate themselves out of a market. As the manufacturing market evolves two things will occur. The cycle of over supply will drive prices down to the point where a few specialized companies can satisfy all the populations raw material production needs and most of the population will acquire access to personal self replicating robots which can satisfy all their personal manufacturing needs.
IMHO the best welfare system is human ingenuity combined with personal responsibility. People find ways to satisfy their needs. I believe here will be a gradual shift of population from cities back to rural areas where people can engage in subsistence farming. The deployment of robotic labor will be incremental and take decades. People will invent new jobs as robots displace them in factories. Handcrafted artistic works, e.g. furniture, decorator items, real paintings (not prints), music, novels will be manufactured in home and cottage industry.
The economy as it currently exists will revert back to state similar to before the industrial revolution. In the preindustrial age people didn't work in factories and 'earn an income'. People worked at whatever tasks they could find mostly growing and harvesting basic food items. There were very few specialists that made items. People either worked at communal substance farming or starved.
In the future robots will do all the specialized jobs and the drudgework. At first there will be a technical elite that knows how to keep the robots running but eventually they will be obsolete as well. The robots will mine raw materials and manufacture their own replacements. The genera population will not have an income. Homegrown organic vegetables and 'free range' meat products will be bartered in farmers' markets. Tools and shelter will be free for the asking from the robots.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Gentry Lee ( co-author of the Rama series ) once gave a talk at my university on the subject of this fundamental change in society.
Computers are useful for two things:
- Aiding humans
- Distracting humans
The same computer technology that is powerful enough to replace an entire factory of humans is also powerful enough to create a complete virtual reality.
In the same way that people escape into multiplayer online games today, an entire welfare state could be built around a simulated world. As they said in the matrix, "we accept the world around us", so constant immersion into the world could be more satisfying than reality, where the robots do everything.
Re:Shorter workweek? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the 19th cenutry most people were working the 12 hour workday, it wasn't until there was a huge political campaign, strikes, protests, etc... that the 8 hour workday was won. What makes you think it will be any different in the 21st century?
Re:Shorter workweek? (Score:2, Insightful)
As the elite get more removed/alienated from the general riff-raff, the efficiency of slavery (or whatever combination of repression, mis-education, propaganda, diversion into racist wars & reality TV seems to work) get's more appealing.
This sounds more like the morning news than sci-fi to me. Fifty percent seems pretty arbitrary but the current numbers are pretty horrific if you're looking at it from the bottom rung. Even now, here in WA, we're at ~8% unemployment. That's a lot of people.
The problem is already with us, and globalization is just going to rub our noses in it harder. We (society) have some serious thinking to do about labor, value, and how we're going to live and work. That is, if there's anyone left who still believes in things like "society" or "public discourse."
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:2, Insightful)
It can bring its mother unparalelled joy. Better enjoyment than "Friends"
It can also entertain any number of nearby adult humans for a lengthy period of time.
this is unique (Score:3, Insightful)
Never Underestimate The Power Of Lobbyists (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember the huge dockworkers strike on the West Coast recently? Much of that was over the replacing of old-tech workers with new-tech workers controlling the ever-advancing machines on the docks. The union didn't so much try to stem the tide of technology, but make sure that the new higher-tech jobs would still be under the union's umbrella.
The unions will be joined by neo-luddites who fear distopian prophecies to lobby Washington to legislate limitations on intelligent robots... what jobs they can legally do, requirements for minimum levels of human supervision. There won't be an entirely-robot staffed McDonalds, because there will have to be at least three human supervisors watching the kitchen, dining area, and janitorial areas to ensure that the robots are doing their job without error, ready to hit a panic button that sets off a failsafe power-down in all the robots at the first sign of danger to people or property.
Will it really require three people to oversee the robots in one McDonalds on a realistic need-based analysis? That won't matter, because the "need" will be established by congressional committee or state labor boards. Those standard-setting organizations will be lobbied heavily by the labor unions trying to preserve jobs and by wealthy corporations, trying to increase profits.
Despite that, no technological innovation has had the widespread ability to replace such a wide variety and large amount of human laborers as the robot, and it is quite possible some of the author's predictions could come to pass.
So what do we do with the displaced workers? The author's vision of 25-50% of the population living in welfare dormitories is ill-informed. When the mass becomes that large, welfare riots will happen. Cities will burn. The rich will be dragged from their homes... not necessarily en masse, but at least where the rebels can break through. And you just won't be able to employ a police force large enough to pacify that huge a number of unhappy people.
So we look toward other concepts...
Distopian: Sterilization incentives for the poor to decrease population, "Soylent Green", powerful placating drugs (i.e. Huxley's Soma), Logan's Run style "mandatory retirement"...
Utopian: Shifting population off onto new planets where manual labor will be more valuable during colonization phases, the "information economy" evolves into the "intellect economy" and the value of labor becomes replaced by the value of thought...
Will robots effect radical changes in how our society is constructed? Sure. But our society has been undergoing radical changes for hundreds of years as political, technological, and dogmatic upheavals have changed the ways that we think, organize and make money. There are always difficult periods of adjustment at flashpoints, but we get through them and come out a better society for them.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem is that blacksmiths once said the same thing. And then the Industrial Revolution came along and metalwork was done by machines. What happens when AI advances to the point where it is self-programming, and the robots are capable of building more robots?
Dave Storrs
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe we can look at Star Trek for a more optimistic model... once robots do most of the work, then there would be no need for monetary motivation and culture would change dramatically away from the individualistic capitalism and more towards a socialistic, wealthless society.
Robot aided Socialism!!!!!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
- HUMAN
. and in this together. OR the Ruling classes will hold back the technology to better them selves till the masses will eventually rise up and overthrough them. remember the US dollar is based on faith in the US. if the people stop believing that the US is doing things for the good of all it's people the dollar will become a figment, a number with no meaning. The winds of the next great revolution of thought is growing nearer and nearer.Which came first, the chicken or the egg... (Score:3, Insightful)
above 20 percent [arthurhu.com]
despite the fact that the criterion for literacy at that time was much more lax. (the ability to read and write one's own name, as opposed to the ability to read and write simple sentences). Today illiteracy is between 5% and
In the past, as manual labor became less necessary people have adapted (to some degree) by becoming more educated or by learning new skills. By displaying information directly into people's field of vision via special glasses and other forms of what will eventually be cheap computer aided training, people currently working menial jobs will be able to handle things more complex.
Perhaps part of the reason there are so many people working menial jobs is that we NEED people to work menial jobs.
Intriguing but Flawed (Score:2, Insightful)
The author's assertions about progress in robotics and artificial intelligence are bold, but seem defensible. On the one hand, intelligent people have vastly exaggerated the speed of progress in AI for decades (Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey was meant to be an accurate portrayal of the state of technology at that time). On the other hand, the inexorable progress of Moore's Law does point to the kinds of changes postulated in about the proposed timeframe.
Which is ridiculous is the assumption, not even questioned in the piece, that workers displaced from one industry will remain jobless. At most 300 years ago 90% of all workers in today's developed economies were employed in agriculture. Today it is more like 2-3%. It would have been easy to argue at the time that most of the world's workers would be unemployed in a matter of decades (and plenty of people did argue that -- remember the Luddites?).
The reality is that the working week shortened from 80 hours/week to 40 (ok, maybe not for software developers) and the type of work performed by humans has become vastly more intellectual, on average. The author is right that driving a cab or cleaning a hotel room is not fascinating work, and in the future no one will do it.
If robots end up doing half of the work we do now, which seems plausible, chances are we will work only 75% as much as today and have 1.5x the economic output, and unemployment won't change a whit.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes it would. Unfortunately, this is bad.
Humans require a certain level of ambient drama in their lives. The amount differs from one specimen to the next but all humans need it. When the world fails to provide the necessary amount of drama, individual humans create it for themselves.
How many people can you have sex with in one day? How many piercing can you have done before it kills you? Who's oppressing you and exactly how do you plan to kill them? How many cults can you be a member of and which is the most extreme?
"Idle hands do the devils work." For most people the stress induced by "work" is necessary to prevent them running amok and ruining themselves or those around them. Sheeple need work.
This is the greatest danger posed by automating away work. Billions of bored people trying to entertain themselves.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:1, Insightful)
1 - Robots could do a much better job of manufacturing robots than people can;
2 - Programming and design jobs are already being lost to countries where labor is cheaper, and could potentially be done by the robots themselves eventually;
3 - How many times have you encountered idiots in service jobs? Now ask yourself, "Do I want these people designing Sales Droid 3000?" Didn't think so. Which do you think is more important when creating the Hygenetron: an electronics degree or 30 years experience scrubbing toilets?
The problem is that even if average human intelligence increases, 50% are still below average. I don't mean to be unkind, but the reality is that there are a lot of people who will never have the ability to get work in this field.
Remember the "gods and clods" philosophy from South Park - what happens when the "gods" no longer need the "clods"? The trickle-down effect (which is questionable at best) only seems to work when the wealthy can afford to hire others for the dirty jobs. If robotics becomes a billion dollar industry, what mechanism will exist to prevent that wealth simply being consolidated, given that the menial work will be done by the robots?
Not "natural instincts" you're fighting (Score:3, Insightful)
After time, you're first reaction will be to drop the nose, because the instinct at work here is survival, and survival means lowering the angle of attack below critical.
I for one, don't want the computer to override the pilot. After all, the computer is programmed to fly the airplane in its day to day environment. Any well paid airline pilot will tell you that most of the time the flying is routine and even boring. They get paid for those unexpected emergencies, during which time I think the pilots should have the ability to fly the airplane beyond its design limits with the understanding that it only needs to be done once. They can junk the thing when it lands.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:4, Insightful)
come on people - -the market regulates everything...how do people buy machines if there is NO INCOME?
do machines buy machines?
not bloody likely.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
would it need to at this point? It seems to me that the more capitalism is over taken by technology that the more tords a fully for filled social/communist economic system we would be able to sustain. Once we get to the point were everyone can get pretty much what every they want at almost no cost there will be little need for people to work. Things will focus more on social interaction and gifting rather than labor force and work status. With enough things being done for us the world will work more like open source software. where the many can benefit from the volunteer work of the few.
No way (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to see a robot pick tomatoes with a ROI that's better than hiring a migrant farm worker.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I also do see a sort of compitition between private programmers and corporations where these people design more personal programmed personalities for these robots.
I think that if this happens people will want something like Asimov's I, Robot series in affect to protect them
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably not, most of the manufacturing will be done by other robots, maybe even a lot of the design. What will happen will just be an extension of what has been happening for years.
The lower level jobs have been disappearing for a long time. It is ages since I went into my bank, had an attendant put petrol in my car or seen someone sweeping with a broom in a store. Nobody digs holes any more, buses and trucks have a single driver, no more ticket collectors or driver's mate. I could go on.
To a certain extent new jobs are created such as in call centres and fast food restaurants but nowhere near enough.
The world is dividing into the high powered high paid corporate class with all the money but little leisure time and the underclass with few prospects. It makes me think of Romanov Russia.
Being a pessimist I reckon that the danger is a re-emergence of communism and revolution.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Asimov's Laws of Robotics:
1: A robot may not injure a human being, or,
through inaction, allow a human being to come to
harm.
How much power will it take to let a robot decide what is and isnt going to be harmful to a human? Then have it do that in realtime while going about its business.
2: A robot must obey the orders given it by
human beings except where such orders would
conflict with the First Law.
This first part (A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings) is about the best I think we will see for a good long time. When they (robots) get to the point that they CAN do what you ask then we add on top of that the same processes it takes to maintain the first law.
This is one hell of a jump in processing. Imagine how many probability calculations it will take to see if painting a wall may impact a human that is near by. So as far as I can guess the best we can hope to see any time soon is a robot that obeys the first half, of the second law.
3: A robot must protect its own existence as
long as such protection does not conflict with
the First or Second Law.
This is really asking a lot of the robot designers.
I dont think Asimov was really thinking about robots very practicly, he wanted a good framework to tell his stories, and the popularity of his work is witness to how good that framework was.
Moore's Law has lots of time to work it's magic in 50 years though, so who really know's?
I do think that we will be using robots in ways that will put lots of people out of work in the near future though. One reason being sited for phasing out human jobs may be the safty of the workers themselvs. When a factory (or wharever) gets to the point that any job COULD be done by robots then there may be enough robots that are too simple for "Asimovian Inhibitors" to risk humans coming in contact with them while in operation.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:people will buy machines (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, you are not taking into account the wild card of unrestricted Third World immigration, which promises some serious problems with assimilation, educational issues, and so on. Everyone isn't going to become June and Ward Cleaver tomorrow, not by a long shot. In the US, if we had not has post-1968 (the Immigration Reform Act of 1968) which changed immigration to the US from a primarily quota-based European deal where the vast majority of immigrants were educated, sharper than average, and far likelier to succeed that natives to the present system which allows in people without regard for their qualifications and likelihood to succeed and if we had not essentially abandoned the inner cities in after the late 1960s/early 1970s, the stratification of American society that exists now would not have happened. This has not been inevitable -- it happened because of specific decisions (largely by people trying to "help" the poor people of the Third World at the expense of Americans and by the cheap suburbs making cities less of a draw due to subsidized road construction).
Re:people will buy machines (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called RENTING EQUIPMENT and corporations have already been doing that for years
Economy as wetland (Score:1, Insightful)
When I was growing up, doctors used to send their dictation tapes to a lady who lived down the street and she would type them up. She made a pretty good living. Today, those dictations are wired to India and typed up there and wired back the next morning.
Those two examples represent nice little pools of lower middle class existence that have since disappeared. Those little incomes supported families, paid taxes and bought cars.
I would like to know what will take their place.
Re:maybe 100 years.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wealth and poverty would have a very different meaning in this kind of future. All wealth would get you is greater access to resources for entertainment and self-actualization. Extreme poverty wouldn't cause death, but would create a consumer of cheap food, products, and media.
Hmmm, this doesn't sound all that different from today.
Re:people will buy machines (Score:2, Insightful)
We came here, we beat them because we were superior (technologically or genetically I don't care, one way or the other you can't argue it wasn't true), now we own their country.
It's a bit different now. By allowing inferior people in and taking care of them, and again, technologically or genetically it doesn't matter, if it's a matter of environment they still won't be productive people for 3 generations, we are spending ourselves.
Call it racism if you want, but people are NOT created equal, and I didn't have anything to do with taking the NA's land away from them, nor do I feel guilt for my great-great-great-great-great grandfather doing it.