DailyDirt: Robot Servants Taking All Our Jobs!
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Robots that can perform simple physical tasks don't look all the impressive currently, but as the software controlling them gets better and better, we can expect robots to be able to do more jobs that previously required a human being. Self-driving cars may just be the beginning of a much larger shift towards robots doing all kinds of odd jobs. Robot are already starting to do more house chores like cleaning/vacuuming... and someday they might be able to wash and fold our laundry.- Amazon has recently hosted its first "Amazon Picking Challenge" to award prizes for developing robots that can replace humans in warehouses to identify, pick up and package items to ship. Amazon already has some Kiva Systems robots working alongside humans in its warehouses, but the kinds of tasks these "picking robots" can do might spur much more versatile automation for tedious labor (and possibly putting thousands of people out of work). [url]
- What are the odds of your job being automated in 20 years? A simple bit of software will tell you. How accurate are these estimated numbers? Don't ask that question, puny human! [url]
- Routine cognitive workers might face automation sooner than they expect, and physical tasks might become more easily automated, too. Will the world enjoy more leisure with our robot slaves doing all the work -- or will we have a society of ultra-rich and ultra-poor? [url]
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Filed Under: ai, amazon picking challenge, artificial intelligence, automation, autonomous robots, cognitive computing
Companies: amazon, kiva systems
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jobs
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The first automation task should be for CEO robot.
This is the promise of capitalism... Such an abundance of means of production that humans only need to work a little bit. Of course the distribution problem was never really addressed in any capitalist theory. Marx did have a notion for the end game of capitalism... The advent of serious robots and a renewable/sustainable energy source(s) could/should usher in a glorious new world order in which poverty and ignorance and war are absurd relics of the barbaric past.
More likely a dystopian post-apocalyptic hell. Then they'll invent a time machine to go back and fix where we went wrong. The terminator will augment Hinckley and not miss. Trickle down will not have happened and clean energy begins thirty years sooner. Climate change is averted in the nick of time. Dystopian hell from ecological/societal collapse avoided. Way to go, robots!
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There's a Robotic bartender now on a cruise ship. If you start pricing yourself out of the market, the Jobs will either leave the country or get replaced by Robots.
Many people attack Apple for getting a lot of their products made in China. What them made here in the U.S. Well there's a number of issues with that, but the long lines of people assembling say a iPhone would NEVER remotely be that way if done in the U.S. Labor is cheap in China. Who says they don't deserve jobs also anyway? Besides if it was done in the U.S. It would just be a long line of Robots doing the work. Robots made in China!!!
I'm looking forward to self driving cars!!! Old people make poor drivers. They drive slow, like to step on the gas instead of the brake and plow through a bunch of people, etc. I'd like to be able to easily get around in my old age and if I lost my licence, who cares as my Car would be doing all the driving and I'd still have all the freedom in the future I have now to get from place to place.
It won't be to many more years before new Fast Food restaurants are built and have a number of Robots in them doing all the Cooking and bagging and you taking your own order. What few people are left are stocking the supplies and keeping the place clean. Most all of the stuff is already standardized. A monkey could almost do the work. It's a ZERO skill job. Not a job to raise a family on. Sure not anywhere worth $15 a hour. This coming from someone who worked at a couple different jack in the boxes. One while in High School, and another out of State while I was going to school. I was making a whole $3.90 a hour. Working full time and going to school full time. Very little free time and having a roommate. Not much free money for other things. Parents not giving me anything. Not a dime from the Government. All my school loans are paid off in full years ago by me and no one else.
Why Detroit is in the mess it's in, Greedy UNIONS!!! No matter what, it was never enough. When you have people sitting around for days on in because you can't lay them off and they're making $70 a hour with Benefits, you can't stay in business. They all flee or go out of business and the tax base collapses. Places that had nice houses are nothing but fields now.
That's a industry with a whole lot of Robots because once Labor costs more then a Machine, you'll get replaced by a machine. Those machines get better and better and can do more and more every year. All the while prices goes down, or you get more for the same price. You start doing the math and after a year or 2, it's all gravy as it's paid for it's self. With Obamacare, fewer workers and part time workers are more important then ever before. You see this NOW. People that had full time jobs now work 2-3 part time jobs. So while it looks like we have Job growth, we really don't. People are worse off now then ever before. People are on more Government programs then ever before.
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