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What does that have to do with anything?

There are far more predictions that failed entirely.

Just because someone predicts something that aligns with your preferences, doesn't mean it will happen.

We no longer have the Concorde, no one has gone to the Moon in almost half a century, and the only thing that has improved a lot over that time frame is: information processing.

End of story.

I thought such robots had been in use for years.

Like the one that went on sale in Japan in 2013 , possibly descended from the one in the labs in 2010

Or the Agrobot Strawberry Harvester in 2012. Their current Series E is advertised as doing all the stuff TFA says is hard and just being developed.

A complete programmable GPU core for the latest 3D API extensions can fit inside the space of a single logic gate of a 6502 or Z80 microprocessor. GPU cores are SIMD processors. They have one controller for 64+ data streams and process shader programs in lock step known warps. There are SoC's with wireless connectivity, but they are at least the size of the largest connector and require a power supply.

They can etch lenses the size of salt crystals , so being able to air-drop a swarm of camera dust isn't far off.

https://singularityhub.com/201... When the robot grids the meat on a per order basis and assembles it all? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

On the other hand the Baby Boomer generation will probably love it

Methinks you got that backwards.

It's pretty firmly established that older folks value their privacy much more than younger ones. It wasn't the Boomer generation that created Facebook and Instanarcissist: the entire "social media" movement of trading your privacy for a wee bit of convenience was created by the millennial generation. You can always find individual exceptions, but it's not the older generations I see walking around constantly snapping selfies and uploading everything they do to social media. It's not the Boomer generation saying "Privacy no longer a social norm".

There's a generation gap indeed: Online privacy? For young people, that's old-school

For four years, nearly 200 high school students in Dallas voluntarily allowed every text, email, and IM to be monitored. That these youth would sign off on such an invasion of privacy, especially in light of the content that was discovered within their communication, shows how much the next generation has changed their views on privacy.

Millenials have fewer job prospects in general and are less wealthy than their parents were at the same age. This is true by a variety of different metrics. See e.g. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/01/13/millennials-falling-behind-boomer-parents/96530338/. In the last few years, something, it isn't clear what, has been drastically reducing the resources available to young people. This is combining with cost disease http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ in a way that is leaving many people in the young age bracket with far less effective purchasing power than their parents would have had for many things. It isn't completely the case; some goods such as computers and cell phones are far cheaper (and often weren't even available to their parents) but that's a relatively small fraction of their total goods. Some other trends are clear positive, such as the reduction in poverty in the US, and the overall trends throughout the world are mainly positive. See e.g. https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/. But the US specific young people are clearly going through a bad time in general.

[A driverless car] is not [spatially] aware.

That's completely false:

We can program driverless cars to avoid the dumbest things human drivers do. Once programmed, they won't forget or be diverted. They won't fiddle with the radio or their smartphone. And they won't drive drunk—because they can't get drunk. They'll beat us in attention, vision, and spatial awareness every time.

London’s Surveillance Fails – Only 1 Crime Solved per 1000 Cameras
By Aaron Saenz, Sep 01, 2009

London has a million of these cameras. They don't seem to be working.

The UK has 4 million CCTV cameras. Some of them even work.

Some people don't mind being watched. Apparently London criminals are among those. According to several major UK news outlets, an internal Metropolitan Police report was released last week that admitted less than 1 crime was solved per year for every 1000 CCTV cameras in London. This comes as a major blow to the UK police who spent £500 million between 1996 and 2006 installing 4 million cameras nationwide, with 1 million in London alone. Despite claims that each citizen might be seen on 300 cameras a day, perhaps half of all CCTV camera footage is unsuitable to convict criminals in court. The British public is crying foul, the police force is scrambling to access the problem, and everyone is watching to see what the world's most recorded country is going to do next.

Whether you like or not, digital observation is only going to get more prevalent in the future. We have faster, cheaper, and more plentiful recording devices everywhere and attached to everything. You're already recorded many times a day by private cameras, and that's only going to get more invasive when implants, facial recognition software, and 3D scanning get going. What's happening in London, both the wide spread public use of CCTV and the complications from it, is a precursor to what the rest of the world can expect.

The failure of Britain's massive surveillance system highlights a truth of public monitoring: more isn't always better. Cameras are not always at the correct angle or resolution to provide meaningful identification. And everyone seems to know that. There has been little evidence of CCTV serving as a deterrent to crime in London. A man was beaten in front of a pub in full view of a camera. His assailants were convicted based on eye witness testimony because the recording wasn't clear enough to identify them. In fact, besides parking lots, few locations seem to have lower crime rates thanks to the cameras dotted around the city.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the current British system is that it is passive. Few circuits are monitored by a living person, so crimes committed in front of cameras aren't noticed until long after they occur. Switching to an active system would greatly improve the efficacy of the observation. As we've mentioned before, there is a wide range of surveillance systems that can recognize actions and intents, including Europe's own Humabio. An active computer monitor would be able to alert police as a crime was taking place. In some cases, computers would even be able to detect individuals who's faces, gaits, or posture indicated hostile intent. Crimes could actually be prevented from happening.

Alternatively, connections to CCTV cameras could be available via wireless interface. Police officers could use smart phones to monitor footage in real time. Heck, depending on their preference for privacy, the UK could allow anyone to log on to cameras in this fashion. Sort of a nationwide neighborhood watch. It's scary, but entirely possible with current technology.

In fact, a lot of things are scary but possible with current technology. Cameras are getting smaller, cheaper, and more versatile. Security checks are leaning towards non-invasive brain scans, and facial recognition linked to photo IDs. As Britain's willingness to go under the lens shows, the concept of privacy is evolving with technology. I'm sure many are worried that we may soon face a world where any step you take outside your home could be monitored.

Actually, the funny thing is, this has already happened. Speeding tickets are already dolled out by cameras, ATMs record you, key words spoken on cell phones may trigger federal surveillance, and priva

and its unlikely we ever will.

Ah, those sweeping generalizations coming from speculative thinking! They're nice! I did a lot of speculation myself, and read even more of those, during my 4 years majoring in Philosophy. It was fun, particularly because my teachers provided us with top Philosophers who reached diametrically opposed conclusions about basically everything, all of which perfectly argued for. Even better, it turned me into a skeptic about Philosophy's ability to reach actual answers about anything.

On the other hand, it also provided me the one insight on Philosophy's actual usefulness I hold dear: that Philosophers are excellent inquirers, pointing the problems of whatever is assumed by everyone around them. But that's only valid when they start from the state of art on whatever they're questioning. If they they start from anything else, it's useless. As Plato used to say in his day, for one to enter the Academy one must know math. Nowadays, even more so than back then, and not only math but everything that came from math.

That is not at all clear, and in fact, the probability leans quite strongly against it being possible, ever.

Except it doesn't. The OpenWorm project is 20% of the way towards fully emulating the 302-neuron Caenorhabditis elegans, with some already quite interesting results.

"But Moore's law.."

No, no "buts". We try. Over and over and over and over again. If in several centuries, after having built a perfect emulation down to the quantum particles' level we still fail, then well, there's something else to that, and then it'll be time to find what that is. If however we succeed, all arguments to the contrary will always have been moot.

By all means, keep questioning. But do so from an actually knowledgeable position. Armchair guessing is too 1400's for current circumstances.

They're working on it.

But this process of replacing one occupation with another has always been slow. Society needs time to adjust to a change in required skill sets. In truth, few farmers really retrain as manufacturers and few manufacturers go on to become computer engineers. It is much more likely to be the next generation that trains into the new skill set modern society requires. The farmers’ children go on to be manufacturers and the manufacturers' children become computer scientists. But at some point, the rate of change may happen quicker than children take to grow up. At some point, the manufacturer has to retrain as a computer engineer or confront a life with no livelihood.

If the past is a predictor (anarchists, communists, fascists and other violent revolutionaries who have nothing to lose), then we're in for a rough time.

Suck it, QA :)

• Power density
• Charge time

It seems evident that nano technology would be able to make major inroads in the power density area, and quite possibly the charge time as well. I'm still waiting for someone to figure out an economical batacitor (Philip Jose Farmer) which appears to still be in the research phase.

The Pope holds a great deal of moral authority. Scientists not so much.

Good thing, too. Your comment prompts me to remind readers the fact that China's repressive and amoral government is almost completely dominated by scientists and engineers: http://singularityhub.com/2011...

As W.F. Buckley quipped, "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."

You've gone way beyond the true purpose of education in your draconian proposals. The true task of the educator is to help everyone get to an A+ level. Quoting Sebastian Thrun: "Grades are the failure of the education system."

http://singularityhub.com/2012...

Glasses with NUI:
Meta AR Haptic feedback:
ring Or one of the "glove" concepts

Depends what you mean by "from scratch".

http://singularityhub.com/2010...

To me, that qualifies as "from scratch", justified in the same manner that I justify people saying they made a pizza "from scratch" using store-bought tomatoes and mozzarella.

If only. The whole concept hinges on there being mental tasks that only a human brain can perform.

Except that even the lower rungs of those are now being automated. Things like the task of sorting through the reams of paperwork that is the building block of a lawsuit. Normally a task of a near army of paralegals. These days you can get a computer to do it.

http://singularityhub.com/2011...

The really big problem with that trend is that eventually there will be no low-level jobs as a way of entry into a field. Then what?

If only. The whole concept hinges on there being mental tasks that only a human brain can perform.

Except that even the lower rungs of those are now being automated. Things like the task of sorting through the reams of paperwork that is the building block of a lawsuit. Normally a task of a near army of paralegals. These days you can get a computer to do it.

http://singularityhub.com/2011...

actually most political leaders in china have strong science backgrounds.
http://singularityhub.com/2011...

In the US, we tend to elect lawyers and then businessmen, but hopefully that will change.

I doubt they have an iphone 6+, and they probably have a candybar nokia, but cheap androids are only getting cheaper and will be in more hands as they do, especially when you have whatever idealist kids going around handing them out.

There's probably still a lot of the candybar phones still around, but it was the Huawei IDEOS 8150 that took on the laptop-killer role in sub Saharan Africa all the way back in 2011. They were a quiet revolution in that part of the world, with locally-developed apps for everything from agriculture to healthcare, from disaster response to business and more. This stand-alone WiFi library would be ideal for those areas.

http://singularityhub.com/2011...

I will be the most badass octogenarian ever! Take THAT! Punks. Now get off my lawn. http://singularityhub.com/2009...

PS. On (3), I don't think it's any accident that the government of the People's Republic of China is made up of engineers to a large extent, or that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and many Iranian politicians are engineers, or that many members of the Muslim Brotherhood (including Ayman al-Zawahiri) are medical doctors.

STEM fields give intelligent people a way of working in the world that will not fundamentally challenge their philosophy or beliefs.

You sure about that: http://singularityhub.com/2012...
The only thing preventing alot more automation is not lack of technology but rather the cost of that technology.
As technology gets cheaper and/or labor gets more expensive you'll definitely see a shift.
Go to a place where labor is cheap and digging holes is still done by 20 guys and you see very few pieces of heavy machinery.
Go to a place where labor is expensive and you see 1 guy running a single piece of heavy machinery.

http://singularityhub.com/2010...

Commercial solar panels are available at 18.5% efficiency, if we replaced all the highways in the lower 48 states with solar panels of the same surface area then we'd get about 14 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. That's roughly three times what the US uses each year, and about equal to what the world consumes each year. The cost? Brusaw is aiming for each road 12' by 12' panel to cost around $10,000 and for the average lifespan of the panel to be about 20 years. There is roughly 29,000 square miles (~800 billion square feet) of road surface to cover. We need roughly 5.6 billion panels to cover that area. That's a price tag of $56 trillion! Brusaw points out, however, that at current retail electricity prices the road would pay for itself in about 22 years. Quicker if we used panels with greater efficiency.

He also says that asphalt roads aren't that much cheaper. He supposes that an asphalt road costs about $16 per square foot and lasts for 7 years. If the solar panel road lasts for 20 years, it would be about the same cost per year.

He's not quite right about that. First, $16 per square foot is about right for highway strength asphalt roads. Your average residential roadway is much closer to $2-3 per square foot , however. Also, many roads (highways or otherwise) aren't replaced every 7 years, but rather every 10 to 20. In any case, even if we accept Brusaw's numbers ($16 per square foot, 7 years versus $10,000 for 144 square feet every 20 years) the solar cell road is still about 50% more expensive ($3.47 per square foot -year versus $2.29 per square foot-year). Now, if petroleum prices continue to rise then maybe asphalt roads will be as expensive as $10k solar panelsâ¦but right now that's simply not the case.

First off, you presume Romeo and Juliet is a great novel, it is not.

Yeah, i'd say it's write around the corner.

http://singularityhub.com/2012...

You also asume writing is and indicator of great human intellect, it is not. You should know that since you site Stephen King.*

"I don't want a computer driving my car, because I enjoy driving my car. I like to keep it in third gear and hear the engine roar for a bit when I'm driving on the highway before I put in fourth. I just don't think I would get the same pleasure if a computer was driving my car."
me too, but it won't matter. They will be far safer and mandatory.

*ZING!

This. Wikipedia has a Comparison of consumer brain–computer interfaces that covers devices from Emotiv, Neurosky and others.

Searching for Emotiv, Neurosky or "BCI" (brain-computer interface) plus keywords like "disabled" or "ALS" or "locked" produces a couple of results on improving communication with limited physical control, e.g. this and this. I'm sure there are plenty of others.

Another approach is software like Dasher, which turns gestures from various sources (including eye tracking) into text. There appears to have been some work to integrate Dasher and BCI.

I thought south Korea had installed autonomous killing sentry robots in the demilitarized zone. http://singularityhub.com/2010... . Samsung made I believe.

You can be both excited and realistic about the assumption of a future in space. There are many space-related technologies that hold promise, the least realistic being the "warp drive". That's not to say that the public doesn't have unrealistic expectations about the future of space travel or a tortured relationship with government funding of NASA, but it seems like the situation has improved greatly over the last few years, and that $/kg will go down. Reaching a "future in space" scenario (for most people) would require that Earthly challenges are tackled first anyway.

You can be both excited and realistic about the assumption of a future in space. There are many space-related technologies that hold promise, the least realistic being the "warp drive". That's not to say that the public doesn't have unrealistic expectations about the future of space travel or a tortured relationship with government funding of NASA, but it seems like the situation has improved greatly over the last few years, and that $/kg will go down. Reaching a "future in space" scenario (for most people) would require that Earthly challenges are tackled first anyway.

With 22 wells nearby, the chances of their water not being contaminated are very low.. Thus industry lifetime Failure rate for these wells runs 30% to 50%!

The industry really needs to step up to the plate and improve their drilling tech and methods. Hopefully more and more juries around the country will impose these costs on the oil and gas industry. Either clean up or get out!!

Personally, we really don't need this fossil fuel tech, when Renewable energy sources are very capable of fulfilling ALL our energy needs . We know fossil fuels are finite.. they're going to run out, sooner or later.. Let's jump into the future and skip over these nasty fault prone energy sources. It boarders to the point of insanity, that the general public hasn't figured this out..

http://singularityhub.com/2014/03/30/patients-cranium-replaced-with-custom-3d-printed-implant/
"Patient’s Cranium Replaced With Custom 3D Printed Implant"

Can software fully replace a fast-food worker?
This robot makes up to 340 burgers/hour.

Can a robot really do a janitor's job?
iRobot has a robotic mop as well as a vacuum.

You may want to check your tracking then, because there are very real hydrogen cars running around in California and quite a few fueling stations.

That is not vapor, any more than the tiny handful of all-electric cars actually sold is.

To prove your point, could you please name me a single make and model of car that I can walk down to the local dealer and purchase today? I've actually tried googling it and can't seem to find an answer. This article says that hydrogen cars will be on the road in 2015. However they also say that the cars will not be sold, they will be leased (because of the high cost).

You're saying that they're not vapor, but I can't find a shred of evidence to support your claim.

The use of hydrogen is inevitable, as the engineering challenges there are much easier to get over than the mythical better battery.

Telsa has just driven across the country in 72 hours. If your statement were true, why aren't we seeing similar headlines about all the hydrogen cars on the road today? It might be because there's only 10 hydrogen fueling stations in the US. The evidence says that they're solving the battery engineering challenges faster than the hydrogen ones.

Several (but naturally not all) proteins in peanuts are responsible for the allergies. If thorough testing was done to ensure that the plant produced had the desired trait and only the desired trait from the peanut, that would be one thing. However, testing seems to be sparse and GM varieties have a way of escaping.

As for diverging, I mean they can stick arbitrary genes into the plant that could never get there by normal breeding in a single generation. For example, a fish gene (just try to cross a salmon with wheat in a single generation!).

In fact, there is evidence that GM techniques do sometimes lead to unstable expression not only of the added gene but other genes in the plant.

Didn't you see the news the other day that Oculus Rift got $75M from a VC firm to bring it to market? They are going to want that money back plus a hefty return, Real Soon Now.

The current result of automated labor is spiritual malaise... Because that's an inexorable product of it having brought radical inequality and joblessness since our culture bases one's personal value upon one's wealth.

We do have algae in our beverages, China did undertake a massive population control regime, and I'm not sure what you'd called TV dinners if not "machine-created meals". Granted, they aren't personalized and prepared on the spot as he might perhaps have envisioned, but I'm more than willing to grant him a correct prediction there because we've heard of robotic burger joints lately.

As for the colony on the moon, that is easily within our capability, but the political will is not there. And that's merely a matter of the caprice of our lawmakers. Besides, Mars One is well underway, and we are eyeballing asteroid mining. Give it only a few more eyeblinks in the grand timeline of things and it's quite likely that we'll be there.

I'm willing to grant him a margin of error the same as I'm willing to grant a margin of error to all calculations, observations and predictions.

It's a bit asinine anyway as Asimov never claimed to have clairvoyance anyway. These "predictions" were just whimsical entertainment in the first goddamn place, so I have no idea why people are intensely interested in the rightness or wrongness of it all.

"There are hundreds of pulsars. If one of them eats an asteroid and changes its spin rate, you can use the others to figure out how it's changed, and recalibrate. It's fine as long as they don't all glitch at once - and they're hundreds of light-years apart, so there's nothing that could make that happen."

Good point! Maybe the Chinese led by engineers will work that out, as opposed to the USA led by lawyers?
http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/17/eight-out-of-chinas-top-nine-government-officials-are-scientists/

Amazing to think I was able to watch the Chinese Chang'e-3 lunar landing live through China TV!
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/12/14/055230/change-3-lunar-rover-landing-slated-for-1340-utc-saturday

Although a lot of that technology was engineered by US Americans decades ago...

CCTV is now talking about how US manned space flight to the moon ended in 1972... And how NASA is 1/2 of one percent of the US budget... Although now they are talking about private space exploration in the USA...

Just to add to my point, the inability of US governments to put up fairly basic websites after spending so much money shows something deeply dysfunctional about the US political process.

China has just landed Chang'e on the moon! One big difference. The US government is run by lawyers. China's government is run by engineers:
http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/17/eight-out-of-chinas-top-nine-government-officials-are-scientists/

Pros and cons from both approaches... We really need a healthy mix of all types in government...

So in the end ... Demanding $15/hour for burger flipping is a good way to get $0/hour.

TFA says that a study with test subjects would cost $1 mio per person, so I don't see how you can get the procedure to cost $6 mio. According to this article, the device is already on sale in Europe for $100,000, though it may just be for the system itself, not the install.

But how else will I do my Blues Brothers parking job perfect every time?
http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/12/stanfords-robot-car-slides-into-parking-spot-like-a-badass-video/

And you want me to try that manually? Do you want me to hit 2 cars and then flip over?

You are probably right about DNA, the tests are probably too slow, and expensive to run right now. (falling fast http://singularityhub.com/2011/03/05/costs-of-dna-sequencing-falling-fast-look-at-these-graphs/) But other biometrics, Voice it's not inconceivable that you could record the password and play it back. Even generate the words of your choice with enough recording, maybe not now (I don't know) but it doesn't seem impossible (with low cost equipment). Retna scan well Ok maybe you need to shine a lazer into your eye (again I don't really know). But if it became common place would you really want to using the same eye to log into your porn site as your bank?

Bet you didn't know that when you reduce child mortality rates, population growth rates actually go down, not up.

It's more like the "Wikipedia books" by Books LLC or VDM Publishing, or perhaps the more creative approach of Philip M. Parker. You generate a lot of stuff that nobody's interested in, but every now and then, you create something people actually buy. If the costs are low enough, it's even profitable.

Interesting fairly balanced, even skeptical article on the topic here:

http://singularityhub.com/2013/05/15/moshe-vardi-robots-could-put-humans-out-of-work-by-2045/

If there is anyone alive in just a few short years we will all face the reality of being forced to take an rfid chip under our skin or starving. http://singularityhub.com/2009/07/02/will-your-id-soon-be-a-microchip-under-your-skin/#13689951363121&106374::resize_frame%7C0-0/

  This world just keeps getting better.. Stay tuned.

You mean like this one?

I've also seen articles on various other similar robots, including for noodles and pizza.

Good thing you can just print it at Staples for pittance

Zen Robotics is doing this now with C&D (Construction and Demolition) Debris. http://www.zenrobotics.com/ , http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/16/robots-take-over-recycling-video/

There is work being done by a bunch of people in the EU, mainly due to the great legislation regarding waste reduction. There's a great little book I picked up a bit ago outlining some of the processes in automated waste recovery (Comprehensive Information Chain for Automated Disassembly of Obsolete Technical Appliances ) . I had gone into grad school to work on this area, and it turns out it's been going on for the past 30 years or more.

The biggest issue is cost, where it's still cheaper for manual labor than to automate the system. If you're interested in some papers I have a whole boatload regarding automation in electronic waste.