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Will Humanoid Robots Take All the Jobs by 2050?
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?"
I will make this prediction: by 2008, every meal in every fast food restaurant will be ordered from a kiosk like this, or from a similar system embedded in each table.
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
"Who will be the first large group of employees to be completely automated out of their jobs by robots? Chances are that it will be pilots."
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.
there will be robots.
Please, no more mod points. I only abuse them.
Watch the Animatrix: The Second Renaissance part 1 and 2.
The arrival of humanoid robots should be a cause for celebration. With the robots doing most of the work, it should be possible for everyone to go on perpetual vacation. Instead, robots will displace millions of employees, leaving them unable to find work and therefore destitute. I believe that it is time to start rethinking our economy and understanding how we will allow people to live their lives in a robotic nation.
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..
I thought all our fast food workers already were robots.
-n
This article is absolutely rediculous. How do you make a connection between a kiosk where you can order food at McDonalds and robots taking over every job in the United States? First of all, I don't think a fast food resteraunt could be completely automated. Machines are good at things like accounting, but when it comes to human interaction there is a lot of room for improvement.
Autonomous humanoid robots will take disruption to a whole new level. Once fully-autonomous, general-purpose humanoid robots are as easy to buy as an automobile, most people in the economy will not be able to make the labor = money trade anymore. They will have no way to earn money, and that means they end up homeless and on welfare.
This is horseshit. First of all it is impossible, if most people in the economy were on welfare they would be no economy. Where would these companies get money to build and maintain the robots? I don't disagree that there will probably be a lot of automated systems in the near future, but this article is just stupid.
Visualize the world of wine
The problem with most of these predictions is that there are claims of robots taking over service jobs, which I find highly doubtful. People don't like interacting with robots-- that's why automated call answering systems piss people off so much when they call their favorite stores or businesses. I can see robotic technology taking over some other hard labor jobs once the intelligence is there, and perhaps assisting in some of the engineering areas, but not in the numbers he's talking about, and not as soon.
KappaStone
Pretty much all this analysis assumes that Moore's Law will keep going indefinitely. As soon as that runs out of steam, computer technology will advance far more slowly, and any advances that seemed to be just ten years off will be shunted off to the far future.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
is to make forward-looking predictions which are
justified with little more than hand-waiving
arguments, and the other to look at past
history and see what type of hand-waiving
arguments of days gone by have actually come
to fruition.
The author touches on the issue, but IMO is
comparing apples to oranges in this quote:
Rather than talk about airplanes, let's talk
about robotics since that's the subject of the
article. Off the top of my head, the
industries in which robots have dominated
more than any other are in chip fabs and
automobile assembly lines, and this has been
the case for over a decade. Are we seeing
the type of doomsday scenario for the
workforce that this article implies?
And then think of all the jobs that will go to maintaining the robots, creating them, programming them.. etc.. Jobs will shift as they have in the past. Jobs will be lost and jobs in other sectors will be created.
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The question is will the robots be imported from India ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
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.
But, when I take Elroy and Judy to school, I'll want to do so in a round flying car. Come see me about the flying car, then we'll talk robots.
/.. I'm hard at work sticking it to Cogswell!!!
No, Mr. Spacely, I'm not posting to
I agree with the article. We are going to see more and this type of automation. The type that the article describes.
But I don't think lt Data will be around any time soon. the AI development is very slow, to the point that all predictions about clever machines retracted.
Something he doesn't seem to be figuring in here is that there are significant number of professions where:
a) people would be uncomfortable in interacting with machine services (i.e. a robotic dentist or gynecologist), or
b) there are protectections by labor union and/or political interests and therefore unlikely to convert to full automation - even in the interest of increased efficiency (a good example would be the United Auto Workers).
"Nothing is so important that you cannot make fun of it." -Clarke
By 2060, half of THOSE jobs will be outsourced to robots in India!
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
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.
Yes, we will eventually see a lot of the jobs that are currently performed by humans performed by robots. Yes, vision systems will increase the number of jobs they can do. Also, we'll eventually see a cure for all forms of cancer, private space travel, and practical nuclear fusion.
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.
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?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Any economist will tell you that this guy has no clue what he's talking about. Maybe robots will be around and maybe not. The fact is that there is an infinate amount of work to be done, not some limited supply that is portioned out. This is basic, basic, economics you'll discover in any book on the subject.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Yes there will be more and more self-order-and-pay kiosks. /. crowd will be all right ;-)
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
Ok lets look at a number of problems
When can we expect good computer vision? There are lots of progresses in the field. New statistical techniques. Faster algorithms for supervised learning. But still. I guess if you had asked 30 years ago when perceptrons were quite fashionable how long it would take to have real good computer vision you would have gotten the same estimate of 20 years. Doing some work in computer vision I must say that to my knowledge we are still very far from building anything thats real. We are rather at the stage where we discover 2 new problems for each problem solved. Problems are for example: Attention, efficient learning, efficient inference, symbol grounding, categorization. So I guess it will take many more years. Or forever.
What about self repair ? One of the really cool things about humans is that they mostly repair themselves. Our bodys endure constant abuse. Our bodies constantly repair the damage at least over approximately 100 years. A large number of robots would demand constant repairing.
Are robots really cheap? Lets face it people are there. We already have a very high rate of jobless people. Given the right taxation systems these people should be a lot less cheaper than any robot could ever be.
Dont get all of this wrong. Computer Vision and Robotics will improve. But it will improve the same way that tools improved throughout the history of mankind. They slowly get better and more useful. While we find novel ways of using them. And spend our time doing more interesting stuff. Like reading slashdot.
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yeah, I'll buy this... they could automate 1/2 of what we do now.
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...
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
Even if we have all the nice technology to create a humanoid robot that have the same physical capability as a human, they factor that will dictacte if they will replace humans will always be a cost/benefit ration which need to be lower that the human worker.
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!
I, for one, welcome our new robot masters. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted online personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground titanium mines.
But seriously, any work that can be done better by a machine should be done by a machine and not a man, otherwise the man becomes a machine.
One of the biggest problems in the future will most likely be finding creative and fulfilling jobs for the masses. That is until the machines take over and kill us all.
Such systems would have to be built to inherently limit the ammount of actual human interaction. But if that could be done, and each robot could be kept at a cost of, say a modern luxury automobile, then even with replacements, maintenence and repairs, then it wouldn't be inconceivable for one "manager" to be the only human at a popular urban resturant.
The problem would be that said resturant would act like a giant vending machine, with a hole for money, and a hole food appears in, and you have to find a (busy) manager if something goes wrong. This is definetly fine for McDonalds-style food distribution, but not a place you'd take business clients, relatives, or dates to. It's a niche, though a popular one.
On the subject of McDonalds, I've tried the new automated ordering kiosks. They work well. They do not reduce the need for human labor, they increase it slightly - someone still has to make the food, put it together on a tray, and even find the correct customer to give it to, then exchange money. Then there has to be another employee ready to help people with the kiosk itself. The kiosk is merely a tool to keep lines shorter, and people happier. It works rather well that way, and since labor is cheap, it ends up efficient for McDonalds even though it requires more people on average to run it. But that's just my observation.
Ryan Fenton
Is why anyone would care what a dot com god like this guy preticts about anything.
Yeah, advertising will make a lot of money and we can all retire. Thats going to work.
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.
Why would we bother to make them humanoid. You'd just have a machine that constructed the appropriate item. Whether it was a fast food shop or a watch shop, you're item would be built on demand in a machine, like a 3d ink jet printer.
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.
A very well attended symposium was held at Stanford in 1999 that covered this very topic (in even more optimistic depth, in the case of the majority of the speakers). Entitled, Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity By 2100?, the symposium was organized by Doug Hofstadter and was themed around two books that expoused very similar views and were written independently of each other around that time: Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines and Hans Moravec's Robot.
Kurzweil has actually been preaching about this for quite a while now, and the details of Marshall Brain's article are eerily reminiscent of both of the above mentioned books.
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.
"By 1955, people will be flying at supersonic speeds in sleek aircraft and traveling coast to coast in just a few hours."
Well actually for normal people that didn't happen until the 70s - Concorde. And after
October they won't be able to do it anymore ironically because of economic reasons so frankly
he couldn't have picked a worse analogy.
We hear this Futurama crud all the time from people with starry eyed techno-vision , yeah
they may come tru e, they may not but I can promise you one thing - any technology that makes
half a country jobless (without any replacement jobs to give them) will face social unrest the like of which has never been seen
and will make the actions of the Luddites look like a scuffle in a playground in comparison. If
technology companies want to persue the profit motive to its logical conclusion then thats up to them , but
they must accept the fact that it may lead to a breakdown of society and hence to their own companys total collapse.
Yeah, no kidding. Robots are always boozing, carousing, gambling, and saying things like "bite my shiny metal ass". Who needs that kind of grief?
In fact, a lot of the process in learning how to fly involves fighting human instinct. When you're learning about stalls for example, as soon as you take the airplane to a stall it starts dropping, and your first instinct is to pull back on the yoke to get it to go back up. Of course, your instructor will have by then pounded into your head to actually drop the nose in order to gain back speed and get out of the stall, but the first few times your response time is always slow because you have to think against your natural instinct.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
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.
libertarianswag.com
What??? I can't get an IT job because they are all going to India?
Oh well, I guess I'll just go flip burgers.
WHAT!!??? Robots have taken THOSE jobs!?
DAMNIT!!!
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
How can anyone talk about robots taking over the economy without mentioning Hans Moravec? After all, he's only been doing work in robotic vision and navigaton for the past thirty years or so, and has been on record predicting human-equivalent intelligent machines by 2050 since the mid-1980's.
He's even got a start-up company that wants to manufacture control heads - basketball-sized sensor+computer units that could be used to run forklifts in warehouses.
My personal prediction is that within ten years, we'll see the first automated tractor-trailer truck. It'll have a Moravec-like brain that will run the truck for the 95% of the time the truck is rolling cross-country, and a satellite link for a driver to help direct it for the last 5%.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
The author's premise is that an economy is a zero-sum game. If a robot takes a job, that means a human must lose a job.It's the same idea that many liberal politicians have. If one man gets rich, it's because another man has become poor.
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.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Ok, why the hell does automation have to present itself in the form of a humanoid robot? The best shape for a robot that vaccums the floor, is - well - the shape of a vacuum cleaner. The only reason to create humanoid robots if for the sake of backward compatibility with existing tools. In the time frames we are talking about it's probably more economical to think about redesinging the entire system, with automation in mind, rather than just plopping a humanoid robot behind a cash register.
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
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
... and a Quarter Pounder meal....
.. and a McFlurry please.
Um, I'd like a Big Mac and a coke.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion....
Ok
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
That's very nice
Time to die. Oh, and would you like fries with that? *evil smile*
What he wants is to get people to think NOW about this before it happens. The government needs to have a plan to transition from our current mostly capitalist system to a more, well, socialistic one. Why? With machines able to do all the work, you won't be able to sell labor any more. Instead government will be able to give people about whatever they want. As was said in the article, it could mean permanent vacation for everyone with everyone getting at least the basics of survival if not a bit more and will live somewhat comfortably. However the problem is that we are not aiming that way right now. When the robots do all the work, we will have tens of millions of angry and repressed people who will have nothing to do but breed like rabbit, commit crimes and start riots. It will be ugly when that happens too because not all the robots or money in the world will stop several billion people from revolting in anger if they are left to suffer while the rich live off of the robots doing what was once their jobs. Several billion you say? Well obviously this isn't just going to be a problem in the US. This will start to happen worldwide as well and places like China and India had better enjoy our jobs they are getting from us while they can because they will be next if and when robots arrive.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
For economics to work production needs to become more and more efficient. The economy needs to produce more for less. (This also means that there needs to be more consumption) In many industries efficiency gains are coming from delinking production by human input and replacing it with automation, be it robots or something else. Further, to compete with foreign slave labour in a country without slaves, means you need to come up with something slave like to compete, i.e. robots.
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.
On a related note, it appears there isn't enough work for everyone any more. The idea, that every healthy adult in the society should have a job, needs to change radically, because we obviously don't need everyone working in order to run this society and feed ourselves. What we could do is split up the work so that everyone could work, say, four hours a day and have plenty of spare time. This would be a natural progression, considering the working hours are already a lot shorter than they were in the early industrial times. Sadly, however, we're stuck in the notion that everyone has to work full days, even if there's no real need.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
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.
The cars weren't crap because of the workers. The cars were crap because of the people in charge. The guy who practically invented quality control (Deming) went to Detroit first, to the heads of American car companies. They laughed at him. So he went to Japan (where's he's a hero.)
The average worker on the line didn't have anything to do with that decision. If management had decided to implement quality control they would have gone along with it. The CEOs of the big three automakers were asleep at the switch. It was their screw up that cost the US all those jobs. Deming practically begged them to implement quality control, he was an American, and he wanted American companies to use it. It's one of the big ironies of the whole thing that the resurgence of Japanese manufacturing is largely due to an American. And most Americans have never even heard of him.
Not so live from the time warped news room:
... An anonymous "Curch of technology" terrorest has elimnated half the jobs of rock wielding nail pounders by inventing the hammer. Experts predict that this will spell the end of the world. Spokesman for the ROWNPAW (ROck Wielding Nail Pounders Association of the World) had this to say: "The ROWNPAW will not stand for this Coperate greed coming out of the Curch of technology, We plan to strike to prevent adoptation of this job killing device. Its unfair, and this 'hammer' has no regard for ROWNPAW workers who work their butt off to earn their keep" The church of Technology has denied being greedy and one church spokesman had this to say: " Its just seemed like a good idea... thats all".
... Germany lost 75% percent of its manuscript workforce today as inventor Johann Gutenberg unvailed his massive project to print bibles using moveable text. An Industry leader of the MIGOG (Manuscript Industry Group Of the Germany) issued a statement: "These printing presses are merely tools of copyright pirates. All these people want to do is illeagally print Bibles and sell them on the black market. We plan to subpenea the Reformation for the names off all offenders." The industry leader also made mention of the pending patent lawsuit from a Chinese group with a substancial patent portfolio, supposedly including a patent for a movable type machine. Nastrodamas has issued a cryptic statement presumeably that implies that the end of the world is near.
This just in, Breaking news from BCE 7000
Breaking news from CE (AD) 1455
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
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.
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
I won't quibble over details (like number of years or if computers can ever be "smart" like humans") but the fundamental flaw in his argument is that while he acknowledges technology will continue to mutate and change, he assumes industry and jobs will remain stagnant through 2050. So as robots take over menial jobs nothing is created to take their place. It's like someone saying in the year 1950 "if textiles and commodity manufacturing moves to Mexico and China, then by the year 2000 50% of Americans will be unemployed." Sure, if no other industries are created to replace him. But changes in industry dynamics cause jobs to migrate from one industry to another, not vanish.
Wron on the unemployment factor. Automation is only implemented where it INCREASES output/dollar, AKA PRODUCTIVITY. Higher productivity is GOOD for the economy on the whole, it has a huge ripple effect. That money that would normally go to 'register jockeys' or tellers has gone to technicians for the automated systems and reduced costs for the store/bank. Reduced costs mean reduced prices, and that means more money in the economy for stuff people want, like better cars or computers. This is how it REALLY works, folks; Automation is our FRIEND.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Certainly this model has been used in a lot of science-fiction stories -- everyone gets a minimum stipend and lives on the productivity of the machines and a few humans. I've always wondered about the overall economic feasibility of such a system, and how we get from here to there. Here's a sample of questions -- many good stories have been written trying to answer some of them.
robots are attacking the elderly and stealing their medicine! Once they have you in their iron grip there is no escape. Let's focus on the problem at hand people, not some crazy speculation about what the robots might do next.
But... if we must speculate I have to say that our current scorched earth strategy is brilliant. Hopefully by reducing the # of jobs available and moving them around to the remotest reaches of the planet the robots will lose interest and will stick to stealing old people's medicine.
We must also immediately pass legislation that makes it illegal to use the elderly as bait for the robots. Even clones of the elderly.
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.
-------------------------
As easy as herding cats!
The two biggest assumptions that the author made are that Robot will be cheaper and more efficient than human being, thus replacing human labour.
This is not necessarily true.
We all know that robot/computer is good at doing long and repetetive and tedious calculation and work. This made robot excellent in assembly line where each robot only perform a specific function at a time.
But take cleaning as an example. Granted a cleaning robot can mop the floor 24/7. But now suppose somebody stick a gum on the floor. Can the robot clean it up? NO! Now we have to install a scraper, and visual recognition to identify "gum on the floor". Extra Money! Now suppose somebody left an empty cardboard boxes on the floor. Can the robot clean it up? NO! Now we have to install robotic arms. And program it to identify boxes, and pick up and flatten the boxes, and walk to the dumpster and dump the boxes. EXTRA MONEY!!
That's not forget these cleaning bot need maintance too. These highly skilled trained maintance/repair technicians don't come cheap.
Now you ask yourself. Should I get a cleaning bot, or just hire some guys working at minimum wages ??
The advantage of a robot is that it can be programmed to do a specific task extremely well.
The advantage of a human is that he/she can be trained to do infinite number of half-assed jobs.
Reminds me of a book Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. It's a story about an America where machines control everything, and engineers and managers who design the machines are at the top of society. Most people either have to join the army or the Wreaks N' Wrecks (menial labor for little pay). Everybody's standards of living are high because the machines produce everthing they need, but everybody is miserable because they don't feel they have a purpose.
Interesting read. Slight spoilage below.
What must Vonneguts first readers have made of Player Piano? The story gives off the dank chill of 1984 and Brave New World, but it is less earnest, almost zany, and it wields its message playfully in comparison. The hero is Paul Proteus, an engineer in an America of the future where computers run everything and do everything, making people almost afterthoughts. Paul seems to be on his way up the ladder of success in this techno-utopia -- a perfect wife, a fast-track position at the Ilium Works and a shot at a major promotion -- but he is plagued with doubts about what modern life has become. Through a strange series of events (for some form of Big Brother is, indeed, watching), Paul joins a revolutionary organization called the Ghost Shirts and even becomes its leader. The Ghost Shirts are inspired by the past, when people mattered more than machines, but their revolution collapses with brutal irony. Paul and his companions surrender when they discover their followers have become obsessed with making new machines from the wreckage of the machines they have just smashed.
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.
First off, this is not new. These predictions have been made many times over the last 40 years. Anyone who understands Moore's law can do it. I have seen the same predictions, with the same dates (plus or minus 5 years) several times since the late '70s.
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
Nothing can replace a really great waiter/waitress that you have interaction with.
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
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
You say:
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.
'The wars of tomorrow will be fought by tiny robots on the tops of very high mountains. Your job will be to build and maintain these robots.'
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
>[...]
>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?
Seniors don't make idle chit-chat with register jockeys because they're old/lonely. They do it because, when they were our age, it was part of doing business. One would know the name of one's grocer, butcher, etc., and have a working relationship with 'em. "Howdy, Granddad-of-Tackhead, got a fresh side of beef in yesterday, here's your four filet mignon - one for you, the missus, and the two kids, cut 2" thick the way you like it. The one on the top's actualy 2 1/4" thick, heh-heh!", "Thanks, Frank-the-Grocer, that new sausage spice blend you made up last week was great too. I'll take a dozen links."
Our generation sees things differently. The register jockey is fundamentally no different than a robot - and that's how he sees his job too. Process your purchase, get you out the door ASAP. "Ungh. Welgumtoburgomatic, canitakyerorderplz?" "DoubleBurgosaurus, sideofrize", "Yawantfrizewidat?" "Yeah, wun sideofrize". "OK, herezyachange", "Thx".
Different time, different culture.
My Grandmother still won't hang up on telemarketers, because she was brought up to believe that hanging up on someone - even someone who she knows is trying to defraud her - is impolite.
This scares me. I mean it's going to happen. Look at how all the year-2000 predictions came true. All the girls love my flying car (it's an old classic model) and I've got a great under-sea view of the lagoon from the living room of my home in the Coral Valley underwater bio-sphere. I really like my job doing moon tours - I mean it could be worse. At least I don't work at a rayon-undergarment recycling center. Yep, I hope things stay just the way they are now.
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
in that the thing taking our jobs will also be able to take any new jobs.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Insofar as I can tell, the author of the article is unaware of this. Some interesting economic facts:
The principle implied here is a fundamental principle of economic growth: productivity increase, followed by temporary unemployment, followed by re-employment and the general enrichment of the economy. This is the sole reason we make $30k/yr in this country (on average) rather than the $500/yr that was typical until the 18th century.
What's shocking to me is that the author of the article apparently doesn't have the slightest notion how capitalism works or how economic growth occurs. This despite the fact that he lives in a capitalist country and is apparently well-educated. Sometimes it amazes me that this country works as well as it does.
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.
Start a happiness pandemic
When I was a child, I saw a billobard with a big red pushbutton on it. The text said, what will you do when this button replaces your job. The answer was obvious. Get a job either designing buttons, or fix the broken ones. I've been in hands on repair and R&D since then. Where I currently work (R&D) there are lots of reliability testing to be done on the new processes and equipment prior to turning it over to manufacturing. After that, there is lots of hands on repairs and maitnance that still needs done. Lets face it, robots are great for the mundane stuff. Get a box of stuff from an automated hopper and load it on a process tool and such, but they don't have a chance when the tood error's out because it's cooling system sprang a leak and tripped the GFI. They still need someone to clean up the spill, find and fix the leak, recover from the error (disposition the half baked stuff) and get the process restarted. It's a great job, always busy, and not in danger of being eliminated soon. The pay isn't bad either. They don't hire dropout flunkies to take care of multi million dollar sets of automated equipment. The one's in danger of losing a job are the uneducated who traditionaly carried stuff around a factory or did part inspections. Those mundane jobs are going away.
The truth shall set you free!
Anyway, where have I heard this before? Oh, yeah, I remember: when computers where introduced for the first time!
:))...but the menial job of counting out money (or welding the exact same weld on a large production run, or calculating starcharts) is done by computer and robot.
And what happened? Job displacement, not replacement. Instead of the dumb adding of numbers or performing repetitive tasks, we humans migrate to jobs which involve thinking.
Someone mentioned ATM's in this thread; well, it's taken a lot longer than people thought, but now in europe you're seeing a large shift. Money is withdrawn and deposited at machines, but services are still done (and will be done) by people (try complaining to a machine that the bank made an error
But on the other hand we get more people working in services, or in artistic professions and the like...there's just a shift where people who can't (and I'm convinced that that should be read: 'won't') adapt are stuck.
Then again, we've seen shifts like this in the past: agriculture to industy, industry to 'office work' (clerk, human number cruncher etc) and now office work to services/arts. Me, I'd say that that's a good thing; sometime in the future we will all be free to do as we like, with everything provided by robot work...it's truly inevitable.
The interesting part is going to be the transition period, where we need fewer and fewer people to actually do something (near the end we'll just need a couple of good thinkers)...will status and necesity be enough motivation for them? Or is that the part where such an automated system can and will break down?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
- 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."The upgrade of thought is continuous"
But also, consider that in 1870, virtually noone had a college degree and illiteracy rates were ,
.5% depending on the source cited and the definition of literacy used.
above 20 percent
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.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
1.The author cites the change in aerospace technology as evidence of the rapid changes that can and do take place over a very short period of time. The rapid advances between the flight of the Wright Bros and the first B-52 was largely spurred on by R&D done during the second world war and the cold war. There in so such comparable imperative for robot development. 2. Painting interesting pictures of what the future might be taking Moore's Law a few years out hass been done before and better by Ray Kurzweil. http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html 3. Robotic advances will not occur in vacuum. Other technogies will take huge leaps foreward as well, such as biotech, nanotech, quantum computing, alternative power. The dynamics of global economy will be very different from what we have now, in the same way that the gloabal economy of to today is radically different from previous eras. 4. The forty hour work week will be replaced by the forty hour fun week. 5. An other interesting question about 2050: What of Linux? ;)
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.
Peer Pressure
You're fighting a learned or intuited behavior in that case.
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.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
I've heard a lot of people saying that worktime will shrink, everyone will be happy, etc everytime a high-tech breakthrough appears. That's not the case. Look into the past. People had to work hard to produce food to feed themselves. Now what? Little percentage of the population (modern farmers) produce more than all people of the Earth can consume yet we still have to work hard to buy that food. Little has changed, only medical conditions... we will punch keys/fix and monitor robots/clear rooms/whatever the same 12 hours/day as farmers of the past did.
but it's been completely human-run for the last two years. The touch screens are still on but they have no signal coming in; they just flicker and give you a headache as you deliver your order verbally. It's kind of sad.
That Arby's has never done too well, though, so I'm not sure its reversion to traditional methods is reflective of the technology. (Roast beef sandwiches, in yuppie California? Not exactly a recipe for success!)
Well, first of all, this guy is echoing ideas first voiced by people like kurzweil. You may want to take a look to the original if you want to have a clearer idea of what he is talking about. And now please keep in mind this are the conservative estimations. They think that, according to Moore's Law we must be able to have enough computer power to equal to the MAXIMUN ESTIMATED computer power of the human brain. But we all talking of a very conservative stimation here, and we may be for a surprise in the sort future. Let's take a look at how this estimations of the human brain computer power are performed:
- Average number of Neurons in the human brain (excluding the cerebellum): 20.000.0000.0000
- Average number of connections per neuron: 1.000
Each neuron can perform about 200 calculations per second, per connexion.
So, we have 20.000.0000.0000 X 1.000 X 200 = 4.000 TeraOps
Now, 4.000 TeraOps is about 100 times faster than the Earth-Simulator, the faster computer system in existence, and according to Moore's law, is going to take a while before we have a Data Center-wide cluster that powerful, not to mention a desktop system light enough so we could propel it around with two mechanical legs.
This is the logic after those "no AI before 2020# arguments we hear now so often. But us I said, this is the conservative estimation, and the conservative estimation is not the most likely scenario at all. Well, let me tell you something, and I know what I'm talking about, we will have a few nice surprises in the next few month. Let me give you a hint, there is a obvious flaw in that logic:
- Number of transistors in transistors in the AMD "Hammer" processor: 100.0000.0000
Each transistor can perform at 2.000.000.000 calculations per second.
So, we have 100.0000.0000 X 2.000.0000.0000 = 200.000 TeraOps
Acording to that logic, we may need a 200.000 TeraOps computer to emulate a AMD "Hammer" processor, what is oviuly untrue: 2Ghz Hammer can perform at only 4 TeraOps, and we just need, say, 2 1.8 Ghz Atlons to get to that speed.
The "peak" performance needed to contemplate all the possible states of the system is enormous, yes, but that is not realeted to the true capacity of the system. Not every single transistor in the system flops every cicle, that's not a realistic assumption, just a few of them do. Consecuently, the amount of information and operations you need to perform in order to emulate is orders of magnitude below the conservative estimation of the peak number of states you need to emulate. Now extrapolate to the H Brain. Is it more efficient than the hammer? No doubt. How much efficient is it? 10 Times? 100 times? 1000 times ? 10.000 times?
Even if the human brain happens to be 100.000 times more efficient than your tipical Pentium/Atlon, you'll need only a 2.000 nodes computer cluster to outperform it. And that is something we have at hand right now. The rest is just software.
In Baltimore, right now, McDonalds is paying a 'signing bonus' to get people to work there, yet unemployment in the city is higher than most. People would rather collect welfare than work certain jobs it seems, so the net effect of this is zilch. There are more of these jobs than people willing to fill them now, when they're cut 50% it won't make any difference.
We WILL have or maybe EVEN DO HAVE hardware capable of turning the needed numbers, the problem lies in software, WE ARE NO-WHERE CLOSE to understanding even the basics of the human brains storage method....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
To all Slashdotters who live in the SF Bay Area, this can already be seen, and has been seen by probably thousands of people by now. It's been a failure!
At the Arby's fast food restaurant in San Jose, on Stevens Creek Blvd. (just west of Valley Fair), you can see the remains of a prototype automated ordering system. This must have been a prototype, because I've never seen it (or even heard of it) at any other Arby's.
It runs on IBM CGA displays, in pure text mode (80x25, colored). It uses touchscreens. It looks to have been installed around 1985 or so (I remember seeing a copyright notice somewhere that said that).
The idea was that you would touch items that you wanted to order. It worked fairly well. There's lots of combinations of various screens to press, but not so many that it would be confusing. At the end of your order, you could see the total amount of money you had to pay.
Then, the human interaction comes in. The touchscreen displays are on a countertop, angled towards the customer, but over the countertop are conventional fast-food ordering cash registers. After getting to the final screen, you just kind of awkwardly stood around, and a clerk would come over and eventually take your money. Then you get an order number and wait for your food, as always.
It seems strange to have this hybrid system. If a person is going to end up confirming your order and taking your money anyway, the computer doesn't save much time at all, or really make it any easier. Some people were confused by the computers. Getting a custom order, such as getting lettuce and tomato put on a Big Montana (which disappointingly comes bare by default), was impossible using just the computer systems. Many people simply ignored the computers and gave their orders directly to the clerk! They didn't mind this at all, and in fact preferred it over having to go through the computer.
The system is somewhat in ruins now. After 18 years, many of the screens have worn out, and in fact are turned off. Sometimes they flash odd colors. The last I remember the system fully working was over a year ago. Needless to say, all order taking at this Arby's has been returned to being done in the old fashioned way!
So attempts to automate fast food are nothing new... maybe someone older than me can post about the "Automat" systems of the 1960's?
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
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.
"Verbing weirds language." -- Calvin
If the image in people's minds is an android like tin man with a spatula in its hand, this would be pretty sophisticated. An automated hamburger preparing device tailored to that purpose would be a simple proposition to implement using 1976 controls. The barriers would be cultural
It would be refreshing to not have to watch some pimply kid try to figure out what coins to take out of the drawer to make 48 cents (after the register computed $5.00 - $4.52.
If ignorance is bliss why is everyone so damn pissed off all the time?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.