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Robot Sales Are Exploding
Roland Piquepaille writes "The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) just released its 2003 World Robotics survey. The original press release by UNECE has 15 pages in PDF format, while the full report represents 380 pages. Here are the three essential findings: robot orders in first half of 2003 were up by 26% to the highest level ever recorded; worldwide growth in the period 2003-2006 will reach an average annual rate of 7.4%; and household robots are starting to take off. "It is projected that sales of all types of domestic robots (vacuum cleaning, lawn-mowing, window cleaning and other types) in the period 2003-2006 can reach some 638,000 units."
This overview contains more details including a chart showing the growth of domestic robots for the period 2003-2006."
-Robots can work 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week.
-Robots dont form unions.
-Robots give you privacy. If it finds your pr0n collection you dont have to be embarrassed.
-Wages unvariably go up, cost of robots unvariably go down.
-Robots dont do any more mistakes even after a 1000 hour work"day".
-Robots are easy to upgrade.
-No-one is going to disapprove your use of robots.
Of course people don't tend to realize that robotics is in use all around them, all the time. A robot is "A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance", or alternately, "a mechanism that can move automatically".
Besides the mechanical aspect necessary for something to be robotic, there is the usual criteria for a useful electronic circuit. It must sense, decide, and act. Even a door-opening device at your local supermarket can do this; it senses that something has entered sensor range, it decides whether the signal is strong enough to warrant opening the door (partly based on its sense of what its function switch is set to) and then decides whether or not to open it. The act stage in this case causes motion, which is what makes it a robot.
While we often hope to see robots become more useful around the house, I believe that it is in major industrial scenarios that they will take off first. This is not a shocking prediction given that this is where they currently enjoy their greatest successes, but I am referring to more autonomous robots than those which currently paint cars and so on. For instance, large earthmoving projects could be carried out with little to no human intervention simply because the problem domain is so simple. Through use of a combination of sensors (including visual/optical, radar, sonar, lidar, and others) a sophisticated map of geometry can be built. If you're not moving very quickly, this can be done with sufficient accuracy using current technology to carry out moderately complicated tasks.
I envision a cluster of wirelessly networked systems which will share computing time with one another when they have cycles to spare, working together to carry out such a project. The sum of the data from stress analyses, efficiency plans, and so on would be combined to carry out tasks as rapidly as possible. Ultimately, people will be able to focus on management tasks rather than laboring.
The question posed, then, is what do we do with all the people who will soon be unemployed by robots? Aside from forming labor unions and legislating inefficiency, what is the solution? I cannot picture any true capitalism managing to care for people displaced by robots, which will only happen with increasing regularity as robotics becomes a better-solved problem. It's bad enough when the jobs leave your country, but only the corporations (and of course the consumers - but they have to have jobs in order to consume!) benefit when the jobs go to robots.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Most recognition algorythems in actual deployment use rule-based heuristics. Most successful chess games still use brute-force logical reasoning.
You see, neural networks are a means to a solution. They are not a solution onto themselves. For each net is only useful for one task at a time. For certain recognition tasks, they are brilliant. But only if, for instance, you need something to recognize a "C" note.
What eludes us still is how the networks commnicate with each other to produce what we call conciousness. And NO, it's not just a matter of wrapping a bunch of smaller nets together with a larger one.
I can't give you an answer what the ulitimate solution is. No one knows.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Robots dont form unions.
Yet.
This is VERY optimistic! First of all, most of the above statements rely on a lack of AI.
Allow me to make a list:
- Humans cannot be remotely controlled through some software security flaw and home network.
- Humans don't lock up, restart or mysteriously crash (often)
- Humans often can do what you want, not just precisely what you asked them to do
- Humans who find your p0rn collection and are later interrogated by your spouse know when to lie to save their job
- Humans can provide intelligent companionship
Of course, all of the above can be negated by AI but then you are back to losing most of your advantages above.
Although I would generally agree on the economic benefits of robots, I didn't want to let you go over the edge!
Come play Moral Decay!
I, for one, welcome our new robotic masters with their shiny metal asses.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.