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Office Robots of the Near Future, Gearing Up
Reader jsrodrigues points out Businessweek's article on the predicted coming wave of office robots. These include offerings from Willow Garage, Anybots, and Smart Robots, all designed to automate certain bits of office-building meatspace gruntwork, like ferrying mail and making coffee, but more intelligently and smoothly than previous generations of such tools. Smart Robots has posted a scenario describing the benefits of office life with robots; a test run of robots from that company is set for early 2012 at "a major office building in Manhattan."
Personally i think i'll stick with products from Aladdin or Hired Girl.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Coffee making is pretty automated as it is... the coffee maker in my office is hooked up to a water source so the only thing we have to do add beans every so often.
I wouldn't suggest using "meatspace" in general conversation - it's the sort of thing that gets you beaten up and stuffed into a locker.
#DeleteChrome
Why have robots to move paper around an office? Get rid of the paper.
I find this interesting because history shows that new machinery which helps cut (labor) costs almost always displaces human labor in the long run. But, even if it is only for a short term, I would love an office robot that could fetch me a new pot of coffee every hour, until it learns how to do my job.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
I think timothy has been into robots recently...second article on robots in a short bit.
Hell there is nothing wrong with robots however, they are awesome and they stories need not even be plausible as I love robots. From the article:
...it can fetch a beer from the fridge...
'Nuff said.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Unemployment will skyrocket due to the lack of companies needing interns anymore.
Honestly, they'll probably just have to order in a prostitute or buy a fleshlight.
So an office will be using hi-tech robots to transport... paper folders. Right.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
With an optional upgrade, the office bot will be able perform these functions as well.
Just call them consultants.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
A real win would be a floor cleaning robot with some smarts. Enough smarts to vacuum carpets, wash and dry hard floors, work around obstacles, use reaching tools to get into corners and crevices, notice when it finds something it can't clean and report it, recover small lost objects, stay out of the way of humans, recharge itself, clean itself, and replenish its supplies.
You could actually make a DoS attack on a company by installing an anger detection algorithm in those robots, and add a genetic algorithm which alters the robot's behaviour in small, individually unnoticeable steps optimizing for maximal anger. Over time, the robots would start misbehaving in subtle ways ... and once the employees are constantly angry at those robots not much work will get done. Moreover, since the differences to wanted behaviour are so subtle, it will be sometimes hard to argue that it's a malfunction; after all, the robots still do their jobs, just in a way that makes people angry. Maybe just a few small delays at specific points ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This was covered by The Register 17th September 2010, with several follow-ups!.
Incidentally these stories also address the issue of consequences for programmers/manufacturers whose robots, through incompetence or malfeasance, cause harm to their owners. (Slashdot 16th Jan: Robots May Inspire Suits Against Programmers)
ARE YOU A CONSULTANT OR A HOOKER?
1. You work very odd hours.
2. You are paid a lot of money to keep your client happy.
3. You are paid well but your pimp gets most of the money.
4. You spend a majority of your time in a hotel room.
5. You charge by the hour but your time can be extended for the right price.
6. You are not proud of what you do.
7. Creating fantasies for your clients is rewarded.
8. It's difficult to have a family.
9. You have no job satisfaction.
10. If a client beats you up, the pimp just sends you to another client.
11. You are embarrassed to tell people what you do for a living.
12. People ask you, "What do you do?" and you can't explain it.
13. Your family hardly recognizes you at reunions (at least the reunions you attend).
14. Your friends have distanced themselves from you and you're left hanging with only other "professionals."
15. Your client pays for your hotel room plus your hourly rate.
16. Your client always wants to know how much you charge and what they get for the money.
17. Your pimp drives nice cars like Mercedes or BMWs.
18. Your pimp encourages drinking and you become addicted to drugs to ease the pain of it all.
19. You know the pimp is charging more than you are worth but if the client is foolish enough to pay it's not your problem.
20. When you leave to go see a client, you look great, but return looking like hell (compare your appearance on Monday AM to Friday PM).
21. You are rated on your "performance" in an excruciating ordeal.
22. Even though you get paid the big bucks, it's the client who walks away smiling.
23. The client always thinks your "cut" of your billing rate is higher than it actually is, and in turn, expects miracles from you.
24. When you deduct your "take" from your billing rate, you constantly wonder if you could get a better deal with another pimp.
25. Every day you wake up and tell yourself, "I'm not going to be doing this stuff the rest of my life."
Dilbert RSS feed
In the long run, labor is redistributed to jobs better performed by humans and qualify of life improves for pretty much everyone.
O good, maybe we can finally solve that labor shortage in this country...
Right now the robots can only move folders to the desks of other people.
Recent experiments have proven that this presents problems of its own when said people are working remotely. Many robots were lost on the highway.
But in version 2.0, you will just call the robot and the robot will scan the folder generating an "electronic image" of the paperwork and then transfer it to a similar robot "living" with the person working remotely. Kind of like an "electronic mail" system. Truly then we will live in the world of tomorrow.
So you're suggesting that we should have jobs for the sake of jobs--provide busy work for more bodies, rather than actually being necessitated for advancing progress, creating things, or providing services. That is an offensice proposition and you should be ashamed of yourself.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
And the companies considering this are already looking to get or keep tax breaks under the stimulus program. What difference to a CEO see between a new face on a robot or a human? I bet they are already scheming with American robot manufacturers to get a tax break for buying a US made robot instead of an import.
We already have those--the superautomatic espresso machines, which grind, tamp, extract, and clean up on the spot. The one thing they don't do is make good coffee. Convenience trumps quality every time, and this is not making me hopeful of upcoming robotic baristas...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA [youtube.com] ... A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income."
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Both directions lead to disaster. The real problem is that the dominent economic system right now is based on employment creating production creating employment in feedback system. It works, and it works very well, under the current circumstances - but it could easily collapse if circumstances changed.
Let's say, hypothetically, that a new series of robots was introduced that could do all the low-skilled jobs. Fast-food server, shelf-stocker, cleaner, window cleaner, routine building maintainance. That's good - lower costs for businesses means lower prices for customers (Let's assume enough competition, anyway). Except that unemployment has just gone up, a lot - and, while companies are now able to produce cheaper goods, the market of people able to afford them has suddenly shrunk. Costs must be cut, more people laid off. The positive feedback that has lead to centuries of economic growth and the vast wealth we take for granted today easily turns into a cycle of self-destruction, as unemployment causes a drop in consumption and in turn further worsens unemployment.
Long term, some form of economic reform might be required. Perhaps something as simple as a basic income, to ensure that even the vast legions of unemployed are able to eat. At most, it might take real socialism of some form, with government taking over one market sector at a time as they collapse.
I prefer the BOFH approach to dealing with office robots.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/17/bofh_2010_episode_10/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/01/bofh_2010_episode_11/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/15/bofh_2010_episode_13/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/29/bofh_2010_episode_14/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/05/bofh_2010_episode_15/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/12/bofh_2010_episode_16/
From my comment here: http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-392
In brief, a combination of robotics and other automation, better design, and voluntary social networks are decreasing the value of most paid human labor (by the law of supply and demand). At the same time, demand for stuff and services is limited for a variety of reasons -- some classical, like a cyclical credit crunch or a concentration of wealth (aided by automation and intellectual monopolies) and some novel like people finally getting too much stuff as they move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or a growing environmental consciousness. In order to move past this, our society needs to emphasize a gift economy (like Wikipedia or Debian GNU/Linux or blogging), a basic income (social security for all regardless of age), democratic resource-based planning (with taxes, subsidies, investments, and regulation), and stronger local economies that can produce more of their own stuff (with organic gardens, solar panels, green homes, and 3D printers). There are some bad "make work" alternatives too that are best avoided, like endless war, endless schooling, endless bureaucracy, endless sickness, and endless prisons.
Simple attempts to prop things up, like requiring higher wages in the face of declining demand for human labor and more competition for jobs, will only accelerate the replacement process for jobs as higher wage requirements would just be more incentive to automate, redesign, and push more work to volunteer social networks. We are seeing the death spiral of current mainstream economics based primarily on a link between the right to consume and the need to have a job (even as there may remain some link for higher-than-typical consumption rates in some situations, even with a basic income, a gift economy, etc).
Essentially, mainstream economists are clueless and living in a conceptual bubble. And that is not just e saying it, other economists say that about their peers, like here:
"They Did Their Homework (800 Years of It)"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html
"But in the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists -- like Professors Reinhart and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan Taylor -- have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record. "There is so much inbredness in this profession," says Ms. Reinhart. "They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.""
For more info:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-402
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
" the market of people able to afford them has suddenly shrunk. Costs must be cut, more people laid off."
This only follows if you assume that only banks have some sort of unchallengeable, divine right to create money and keep it artificially scarce. If the govt prints money and gives it to ppl, standard of living rises; and if the govt encourages ppl to innovate through challenges, technology continues to increase so standard of living increases faster, and confidence in the currency remains strong.
welcome our new office assistant overlords.
- -
But going beyond that, the way mobile devices are trending, and with just a little more acceptance from society with regards to telecommuting, I don't see why many people would even need to go in to the office most days. Even face to face meetings could be done in some temporary venue, like a nice coffee shop.
Once businesses realize that they don't have to spend all that money just to rent office space so they can stuff their employees into cubicle farms, well then ...
Rather than designing robots to do very simple tasks that don't pay much, we really should design robots which do very specialized task much better than a human can.
I would be very interested in designing a robot that could cut diamonds. 4/5 of the cost of a diamond is reflected in the cut. If we can design robots which maneuver around obstacles, I would think it would be much easier to just program the physics of a cleave and use that to chop up rocks.
That's a fallacy: If the government prints money and gives it to the people, the value of the money shrinks. Basically printing more money is a tax on all existing money. So in the end printing new money doesn't raise the standard of living, but just transfers value from the people owning money to the government. This is the money that can then be distributed.
If the government prints too much money, the value of the money will shrink too much, and confidence in the money will go away.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Bare with me, I'm terrible at economic theory, but: What about mandating shorter work days, to force redistribution of work? Even if salaries drop somewhat to accommodate more people, the drop in prices should cover that, while allowing people to have more free time instead of living to work.
Dilbert RSS feed
I'm surprised they picked the PR2 from Willow Garage and compared with the Anybot. Willow Garage also makes the Texai robot, which has almost identical capabilities as the Anybot, and fulfills the same kind of role. PR2 and HRP are not designed for offices, but are research robots which are loaned out to universities and other institutions. Neither is designed to be a commercial robot, while Texai and Anybot are commercial products.
Disclaimer: I work for Willow Garage
In the tradition of the highly successful paperless office.
That sounds like it could work.
already being sold. Just check out the back of porn magazines for the gadgets already available.
Personally, I don't trust those things. What if the off button pops off and there is no way of stopping it? Will the insurance "umbrella policy" cover a mangled body organ inserted into a washing machine? I bet the person who does that is the same idiot who was talked into sticking his tongue to a metal pole in the winter.
Ugly fat chicks still have a future!
business have been able to do that for a decade already, with decreasing costs as time has progressed. It's not a cost issue, it's a management issue, they simply don't trust that staff will work if the management aren't keeping a constant eye on the grunts.
Obviously this doesn't apply to all employers, but enough to have stopped its uptake.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Yes, let's hope this isn't the slow slippery beginning we are experiencing now. :(
mediocrity rules, man
That is one possible solution, for example, most people in the developed world no longer work 7 days a week. We could try reducing the working week by another day, and later another day after that. But eventually we will run out of days to cut out of the average working week.
In the end, either the basic social structure for getting paid needs to change, or we need to reach a point where past which robots can not go, either because of technological limits or through artificial restraints created by society which says we can not afford more people out of work (which I'm not hopeful of since we are living in a globalised world and someone somewhere will break the rules and gain a benefit).
Note, above I mention a change to how we are paid, some posters above seem to think that means the government printing money to give to those out of work, I don't think that is needed and indeed couldn't work in the long term. I think it could be accomplished by taxing the companies using machines to produce stuff at a much higher rate and redistributing that money to make up for the loss of the money which is no longer being cycled through the economy via service providers paying wages which in turn is used to buy services. It has to be done like that or you will end up with huge wealth concentration which is deterimental to society, where the poor will always be poor and the rich will be so super rich as to untouchable economically, at that point society breaks down and you will get a violent uprising (which will probably fail because all the resources are in the hands of the super-rich).
A Socialist system might also be required as mentioned above, where the government provides certains requirements for free at the point of use, it would be ironic that the ultimate output of a capitalist government system is the requirement of a socialist government system to look after the population.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Are you suggesting we should replace jobs with machines for the sake of it? I'm as much a tech geek as anyone else on this site, but I don't see in what way these robots do the job better than humans. There's always been a bit of an act of faith in early implementations of technology, but most tech has some obvious advantages early on - the first computers did calculations faster and more consistently than the human calculators they replaced, so it was worth pursuing that technology. These robots might be less likely to disappear outside for a cigarette break or steal company property, but they are also more likely to randomly fall down the stairs, run out of batteries or fail in any number of ways. It also seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut - I'm sure most companies could give everyone dual 24" monitors for paperless working, and put a bean-to-cup automated coffee machine every 12 feet along the office and still not come close to the cost of buying these robots, providing the infrastructure, technical support, repairs and maintenance etc. that they would require.
In my case, the paper is already mostly gone. Most documents that I work with are on the computer. Most of the info I read is now online. And I hardly ever print anything anymore - there's just no need for it. - -
But going beyond that, the way mobile devices are trending, and with just a little more acceptance from society with regards to telecommuting, I don't see why many people would even need to go in to the office most days. Even face to face meetings could be done in some temporary venue, like a nice coffee shop.
Once businesses realize that they don't have to spend all that money just to rent office space so they can stuff their employees into cubicle farms, well then ...
Let me guess, you work as a programmer or something?
Most low level office jobs require people working in the same place, with physicl access to paper documents. Most companies aren't going to be too thrilled to have their accounts team sitting at home performing online electronic transactions., or secretaries communicating only by email and phone with their bosses.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
printing new money doesn't raise the standard of living, but just transfers value from the people owning money to the government. This is the money that can then be distributed.
Sounds good to me. No-one starves or goes cold, most people are slightly more comfortable, and a few people's standard of living will go down (no more $45m yachts, what a fucking tragedy).
Alternatively, just have a proper tax system and an earnings cap offour or five times the lowest wage.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it