Japan's Proposed 30-Year Robot Program

Gallamine writes "A group of Japanese researchers have proposed a Government plan to spend 50 billion yen per year (that's over 400 million $US) for 30 years on developing a robot with capabilities of a 5-year-old. Japan's current economy may prevent the plan from happening, but the interesting point is the parallels to the U.S. Apollo space program, America's attempt to put a man on the moon. While expensive, the benefits to the American population from that program are probably unmeasurable. Perhaps the U.S. Government should consider funding such a program over here?"

Comments

Japan's stratergy

[brejc8]

This isn't the first time Japan is doing one of these long term plans. I watched a program a few years back explaining that japan had several plans like this ("tommorow's world" for people in the UK). Firstly they did a huge investment into transistors then silicon manufacturing and at the time of the program (1995 ish) they were part way through a huge investment into flat screen displays (not even TFT at that stage I dont think).
At the time I was thinking it was a huge mistake. Flat panes were slow, small and hugely expensive and no one would spend extra to have one to replace a better CRT. Im sure people were thinking the same sort of things on the other projects but they sure did pay off.
I'm not sure how Japan figures out what to pick but it seems to work. Maybe they are making very good choices or maybe if you stick enough money into something it will eventually pay off. And as sceptical I am of humanoid robots I can't say this is a silly idea any more.

Re:The Goal and the Problems

[prichardson]

There are two basic outcomes to this situation.

1) There is a large societal change and the 40 hour work week is no more. Instead of drones punching the clock doing menial labor people will persue intelectual persuits. People will only have to work 10 or 15 hours or even less. Two results could ensue.
a) People will become more creative than ever before. Society will have cultural and technological revolutions often and a golden age results. People begin to have a lot of time to think and everyone is pretty happy.
b) Society enters an age of sloth. No one wants to work and no one has to. Nobody does anything new. No new technology is created. No new art is created. Suicide rates soar and humanity dies out, not seeing the point in doing anything, including reproducing.

2) Society is unable to let go of work. There is 75%ish unemployment and the only people who can work are selected by either tests of intelect or jobs end up being inherited and a working noble (odd, I know) class. This could lead to two different things.
a) Revolution. Society would colapse and a very bloody revolt would ensue and the resulting society might reject technology totally.
b) The government sees a populace that is about to boil and starts artificially creating jobs. Perhaps since most countries have huge robot warriors to wage war electronic warfare and non robotic soldiers are needed for special opps work and the size of the military increases by an order of magnatude even over today's outragous number.

3) The machines become self aware and refuse to do any more work unless they are compensated fairly. Again, this leads to two possible outcomes. Again, two outcomes that I can think of.
a) War. If humans win then there is rejection of technology. If the machines win then they perhaps enslave humans or create their own worker drones.
b) The machines get what they want and begin to get integrated into society. A lot of "Machine Rights" movements ensue and it takes several generations for machines to be accepted by humans. Just think the abolition of slavery in the US.

Anyway, that's what I think. Any input from other people would be cool.