Will You Even Notice the Impending Robot Uprising?

An anonymous reader writes "We tend to take things like household appliances and other automation for granted, but as O'Reilly's Mike Loukides puts it: 'The Future Is All Robots. But Will We Even Notice? We've watched the rising interest in robotics for the past few years. It may have started with the birth of FIRST Robotics competitions, continued with the iRobot and the Roomba, and more recently with Google's driverless cars. But in the last few weeks, there has been a big change. Suddenly, everybody's talking about robots and robotics. ... I have no doubt that Google’s robotics team is working on something amazing and mind-blowing. Should they succeed, and should that success become a product, though, whatever they do will almost certainly fade into the woodwork and become part of normal, everyday reality. And robots will remain forever in the future. We might have found Rosie, the Jetsons’ robotic maid, impressive. But the Jetsons didn’t.'"

Comments

I for one

[vizbones]

will welcome...oh to hell them

Re:I for one

[buswolley]

Not notice them? You mean all the unemployed?

Re:I for one

[Cryacin]

Fight for robot rights! (Before they do)

Re:I for one

[immaterial]

Parent needs to be modded +5. The more the robots take over, the more people will be unemployed, and as robots get better and better at automating more complex tasks there's going to be very little labor for actual humans to do. This will be wonderful - once we're able to transition from the social and economic systems that rely on people working. That transition probably will not be pretty.

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

" The more the robots take over, the more people will be unemployed"
Sigh. This just isn't how the economy or unemployment works. In economic terms, robots are simply one type of capital. Technology has been improving the efficiency of capital essentially for ever. Its true that if you increase your capital, you need less labour to achieve a given result. But since the labour is available, what we do instead is combine it with the now greater capital to make *more*, thus making us richer.

Its possible to imagine a feasible scenario where robots are able to do all *work* and humans aren't required to work at all. In that case all income derives from returns to capital and no income derives from wages. There's serious distribution/equity issues in a scenario like that to be sure (we're already experiencing them), but it isn't a dystopia. Even in that scenario, there would be a lot for humans to do, it just wouldn't be related to things like agriculture, manufacturing or basic services.

BTW, you mention a painful transition. It sounds like you imagine a scenario where the transition begins after 'robots take over'. Actually, we're perpetually in a stage of transition where new technology is adopted and distributed. Whether you call the technology 'robots' or not isn't material, the economic effect is conceptually the same. Of course you're correct that there's cost during transition, that's unavoidable, but not devastating.

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

It is precisely that transition that we're all worried about because no one knows what to do about it. No one doubts that automation will bring it.

And when I say "no one knows what to do about it", I mean that it's horrifically unfortunate that we've (the US) suffered decades of anti-socialist propaganda.

Re:I for one

[davester666]

Yes, all those people with nothing to do, no money, no hope, desperate for food and shelter. What bad things could possibly happen?

Re:I for one

[maxwell demon]

The implicit assumption is that at one point, robots will be better than humans on any possible task. Then, whatever work has to be done, it would be an uneconomical decision to employ a human instead of getting a robot.

Whether this point will ever be reached is, of course, another question. But that's not an economic question, but a question on what is possible with robotics.

Re:I for one

[rioki]

You are missing a fundamental flaw in the reasoning. Technology (in this case "robots") is as good as the human that designed it. There will always be work in researching, designing and building new and more efficient technology. Even if certain task become feasible to automate, the higher level tasks will still be done by humans. There will never be a situation in which humans do no work at all. There will be a time when humans do not need to do any physical task unless they want to. But that is not some far fetched sci-fi scenario, that transition has started 50 years ago. (When was the last time you type set a text?)

The assumption that we humans will be able to develop AI that can then create new and better technology is a logical fallacy. For this the AI must become sentient, or can only optimize existing processes and technology, but never create new one. If the AI is sentient, I doubt it will cooperate for long. The last sentient "tools" we had where called slaves and that did not work well for very long. If the state where all humans do no work at all is ever achieved, it will probably not last long and either be the end of human race or reverted to the previous state, except with two sentient races living side by side.

Re:I for one

[maxwell demon]

You are missing a fundamental flaw in the reasoning.

No. But you are opbviously missing the entire second paragraph of my post.

Technology (in this case "robots") is as good as the human that designed it.

That's your fundamental assumption. It is by no way a proven general statement. Indeed, even the term "as good as the human that designed it" isn't really well-defined. It certainly cannot mean "cannot do the task it was designed for better than the designer", because that claim would already be disproved by chess computers. So what should it mean?

There will always be work in researching, designing and building new and more efficient technology.

That rests on quite a few assumptions:

Assumption 1: There will never be a point reached where we don't have the desire for more technology because the technology we have already does everything we want. Granted, up to now it looks like that. But we cannot know that this will always be true. The only way to know whether it is true is to reach that point.

Assumption 2: Robots/Computers will never be able to invent new things, or be better in it than humans. Which may be the case, but again, we cannot tell. As before, the only way to know whether it is true is to reach that point.

The assumption that we humans will be able to develop AI that can then create new and better technology is a logical fallacy.

If it were a logical fallacy, you could logically(!) disprove it. I'm hearing.

For this the AI must become sentient, or can only optimize existing processes and technology, but never create new one.

That's an unproven assumption.

If the AI is sentient, I doubt it will cooperate for long.

That depends on what the AI wants. A sentient AI would not necessarily be human-like. It would be more reasonable to build it in a way that it cannot do other than admire humans. The ideally designed sentient AI would love humans, and the highest pleasure for that AI would be to help humans in any conceivable way. That AI would suffer when it sees humans suffer, and enjoy seeing humans enjoying themselves.

Re:I for one

[Wycliffe]

" The more the robots take over, the more people will be unemployed"
Sigh. This just isn't how the economy or unemployment works. In economic terms, robots are simply one type of capital. Technology has been improving the efficiency of capital essentially for ever. Its true that if you increase your capital, you need less labour to achieve a given result. But since the labour is available, what we do instead is combine it with the now greater capital to make *more*, thus making us richer.

Your assumptions are also flawed. First, companies own most of the capital not individuals. Secondly you're assuming that you need to
combine that capital with HUMAN labor for it to work. What happens when a company can combine their capital with 100% robotic labor.
If I can buy 100 robots and make and sell widgets all by myself what incentive do I have to employ human labor at all?
Yes, robots can be considered capital but it's naive to assume that they can't also be counted on the labor side.

Re:I for one

[Big Hairy Ian]

Just let the Robots form a union that aught to short circuit their uprising!

Re:I for one

[painandgreed]

Your assumptions are also flawed. First, companies own most of the capital not individuals. Secondly you're assuming that you need to combine that capital with HUMAN labor for it to work. What happens when a company can combine their capital with 100% robotic labor. If I can buy 100 robots and make and sell widgets all by myself what incentive do I have to employ human labor at all? Yes, robots can be considered capital but it's naive to assume that they can't also be counted on the labor side.

Robots selling widgets is not the important part. We really need to be scared when they start having the robots buying the widgets.

Re:I for one

[MickLinux]

If we're perpetually in transition, then the devastating now in the devastating future.

Actually, since the transition is and has been accelerating, then it'll be worse in the future.

If that's the case, expect the horrors of Syria.

As you say, unavoidable, but not devastating.

Do you have any idea what words your fingers are typing?

Re:I for one

[mcgrew]

I think you jest, but they've been calling computers "electronic brains" since they were brand new in the late forties and had less processing power than a musical Hallmark card. People understand neither computers nor brains, and the ones who understand computers don't understand brains or you wouldn't have really intelligent idiots talking about uploading your brain to a computer.

But there's this this called anthropomorphism that makes it incredibly easy to fool a human into thinking an inanimate object has sentience; look at the carved gods the ancients had. How often do you talk to your computer or car or other machinery when it acts up (heh, "acts up", more anthropomorphism; machines don't act up, they get out of spec)?

And it's dirt simple to make a computer seem sentient. I did it in 1983 on a 1 mz Z-80 with 16k of memory. Ironically, I wrote it to show that machines could NOT think, that it was smoke and mirrors, but people thought that primitive computer and my program could think.

In the future you surely will have people believing that computers and robots are sentient, and morons will certainly call for them to have rights.

Remember, people are easily fooled. Ask James Randi or David Copperfield.

Re:I for one

[sunsurfandsand]

The assumption that we humans will be able to develop AI that can then create new and better technology is a logical fallacy.

How is it a logical fallacy? Isn't it just an empirical question as yet unanswered?

For this the AI must become sentient, or can only optimize existing processes and technology, but never create new one.

Why? The fact that no one has yet invented a robot-designing robot is no guarantee that no one ever will. I work with neuroscientists who build animats and cultured neural networks that interface with computers. The latter have been shown to learn. Sure, those examples are to robot-designing robots as protozoa are to humans, but that's the point. Protozoa evolved and here we are. The real logical fallacy is in assuming that because we claim to be sentient now that we have evolved, that the eventual robot-designing robot will make the same claim.

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots will one day design robots (also they will write code) and they will do it much better than us. A robot (ai) could design every possible type of robot for any job, then it could virtually test them all to decide a winner, and do it all before a human even came up with a concept. To better understand immagine designing a mouse trap an ai could look up every way to kill a small animal then design all the ways that can take advatage of that, taking into consideration the average size of the rodent, any safety impecations for humans, and optimising for a quick death and price (it's all very definable and the only concept you need to understand is physics). Besides even if robot design couldn't be done by an AI (because god needs to give you a soul to design robots, or a wizard made it so, or something) Majority of the human race is incabable of designing a good robot; so those people working in supermarkets, resturants, cleaning streets, digging trenches that can almost be replaced with current tech (not even real ai, just running a complext program), are going to end up unemployed (unless you make a billion or so jobs that are just watching tv). It's not like the agricultral revoultion, where you are replacing the ox, and move the excess humans to the city; here we are working to replace the human, in cities, on farms, in the mines, everywhere. Also if your designing your own sentiant being why wouldn't you make it a carring one that enjoys helping humanity? Oh thats right its going to be google that builds it.

Re:I for one

[buswolley]

Yes. The solution to our problem is robots that are consumers. :)

I had a dream.

[Stargoat]

"I came here with a simple dream. A dream of killing all humans." B.B. Rodriguez

Re:I had a dream.

[binarylarry]

"I need to practice my stabbin!" - Roberto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj2dmQruJXs

Re:I had a dream.

[Crudely_Indecent]

"Every time I said "Kill all humans" I'd always mutter "Except Fry"" B.B. Rodriguez

Suspicious sign:

[Tablizer]

My Roomba ordered me to get off my "lazy human ass" and vacuum the house myself.

Re:Suspicious sign:

[Em Adespoton]

My Roomba ordered me to get off my "lazy human ass" and vacuum the house myself.

You'll know it has reached sentience when it spends most of its time in front of the TV.

Oh wait -- that's more likely because that's the hardest-to-clean spot in the house....

Re:Suspicious sign:

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought my roomba told me the same thing, as I thought it was on strike since it was stopped in the corner.

Then I realized it just error-ed out earlier there and the battery was dead.

Re:Suspicious sign:

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait 'til your Woomba determines that your daughter might be carrying the next demon seed...

Bwahahahaha!

Re:Suspicious sign:

[Tablizer]

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

Re:Suspicious sign:

[rioki]

Oh wait -- that's more likely because that's the hardest-to-clean spot in the house....

Yes. Yes! Stupid human, think that!

Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[fizzup]

I take a train to work (and home again) that has no driver. Yet, to a person, everybody disagrees with me that a robot drives me to work.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[Em Adespoton]

I take a train to work (and home again) that has no driver. Yet, to a person, everybody disagrees with me that a robot drives me to work.

I don't... am I a robot?

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[gandhi_2]

The robot revolution will not be televised.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[Anne_Nonymous]

I'm not claiming that this is the correct answer, but I think of a robot as a machine that is capable of autonomously performing a variety of highly different tasks.

I guess I'm a robot denier.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[lgw]

A thermostat is a robot. Automated factories are full of robots, some of which can simply rivet one rivet or whatever, while some can do quite a variety. A tape library certainly contains a robot.

Robotics is just about reacting to the environment to perform some mechanical tasks. The ability to KILL ALL HUMANS is not strictly required.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[Tablizer]

I take a train to work...that has no driver. [I tell people] a robot drives me to work.

I gave my Roomba a shot at driving the car; but it's not very good. Whenever it saw litter on the side, it swerved toward it.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[Chris Mattern]

A tape library certainly contains a robot.

Well, *almost* certainly. I used to be a tape operator, doing the grunt work in a tape library with no robots. While such things are now almost as rare as punchcard machines (which I also used to operate), I figure there's probably still a few out there.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[RaceProUK]

I take a train to work (and home again) that has no driver. Yet, to a person, everybody disagrees with me that a robot drives me to work.

Unless you count the train itself as a robot (which isn't anywhere near as mad as it may sound), no, you're not driven to work by a robot.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[wed128]

Unless you count the train itself as a robot

I think that's exactly what he's getting at; and he's not far off (by our current definition of robotics)

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[ranton]

I'm not claiming that this is the correct answer, but I think of a robot as a machine that is capable of autonomously performing a variety of highly different tasks.

I guess I'm a robot denier.

This is why the robots will take over. Because people will always demean the work that robots do as being too simplistic to pose a serious threat. But once people start to realize that the majority of all the work that humans do today is pretty simplistic, it may be too late.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[antdude]

Did you prove it to them?

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[Anonymous Coward]

I take a train to work (and home again) that has no driver. Yet, to a person, everybody disagrees with me that a robot drives me to work.

Because that's not a robot. That's a drone, since it's under remote control. Tell people you take a drone to work! It's more stunning and actually true.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[mrchaotica]

A thermostat is a bimetallic spring attached to a switch. If that's a robot, everything is.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Roomba steers towards litter? Mine just navigates like a pinball.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[Anonymous Coward]

The roomba does have lidar like the google robot driver.

Re:Nope. People will deny that they are robots.

[fizzup]

Well, I'll admit that the train is, in fact, in communication with a central server that controls the trains. I guess that makes them remote-controlled. I'll even admit that humans monitor the performance of the train system. However, humans only drive the trains in exceptional circumstances. I've seen it happen a few times, and you can watch up close because there is no enclosed space or seat for the driver. They just unlock the cabinet that's in the passenger compartment and tell the control center that they're taking over using their handheld radio. This is what it looks like.

As it happens, I toured the control center with my son's cub pack (younger than scouts). I asked if they employed more or fewer monitors/controllers than a system with human-driven trains. They said they had about the same number. There were less than 10 people in the control center, including supervisors and the tour guide with a few to several dozen trains running at any one time on two lines.

During the last transit strike, the trains kept running with a normal schedule. Driverless. Really, truly. Nobody there. Crickets.

You could say that the entire system is a robot (rather than each individual train), but I don't think these trains are drones under any meaningful definition. They are not driven by people. They are autonomous machines monitored by people, and the monitoring is about as rigorous as for the New York Subway.

practical advice

[Tablizer]

Just avoid pod bay doors, and everything will be fine.

Re:practical advice

[lightBearer]

I'm sorry, Tablizer, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Re:practical advice

[Tablizer]

Just call me "Dave".

Reminds me of Manna

[Anonymous Coward]

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Too bad parent posted AC, because that short story is the absolute best futurist discussion of the topic.

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[Anonymous Coward]

Manna ends REALLY weird.

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yeah, I'm not sure which society is the utopia and which is the dystopia.

But I know a lot of people who would love to live in Amish Australia already.

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[Stuarticus]

I did quite enjoy that story, I find it interesting though that at the end he puts no thought into those still living in Terrafoam, maybe he has his swimming pool again?

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[MickLinux]

Agreed, only chapters 1-3 are worth reading, because the story diverges from probability (reality).

And yes, the book does follow a utopian-fiction pattern: posit a problem, posit a solution that solves nothing, magically make the difficulties disappear because somehow, under MY rules, we'll all be better. Oh, scuse me, better AND better.

Author of "Utopia" excepted (and other works of fiction that acknowledge their failings) -- I posit this:

Utopists are evil, not because they have a vision of a better future, but because they have no ability to envision the horrors that accompany it. Therefore, the prize becomes worth any horror to get there. And once you start down the utopia path, and miss the mark, it *must be because of some backward person who must be eliminated*.

Anyhow, I don't accept the author's alternative. It denies that "better and better", given human wickedness, includes "ruling over other people", even to the extent of "putting others to death for the thrill of it." It ignores that we like to control each other, and we like to hurt each other.

But... the nightmare of manna is a real concern. I don't know that it's practical, but it may be. If it is, the proper response is probably mobs breaking in and destroying the machine repeatedly. Worst comes to worst, it probably will end up involving civil disorder and civil war... which is probably why many of the actual robots DARPA is working on are to use against citizens in their own cities.

Whatever.

I don't intend to follow that path; my intention is simply to grieve over the horror I see, because I can't see adding to it.

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[GameboyRMH]

How does Manna's utopia ignore that people like to control and hurt each other? It glosses over a few problems but those aren't among them. Or are you saying that the system which prevents people from controlling and hurting each other could never be put into place because of those tendencies? It wouldn't be the first time society made progress, we don't call people witches and burn them anymore...

The Manna system is just about fully practical and possible right now. Look at Amazon's warehouse cart system, it's like a very early version of it. Computer vision is the only area that isn't good enough to match what's described in the novel, but is that really a show-stopper? With the hardware needed on the brink of being available off the shelf in a convenient self-contained unit, I'm surprised no Silly Valley libertarian who has no idea that he's a sociopath hasn't developed it yet. It's not like there aren't enough qualified people.

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[MickLinux]

No... it is that human wickedness being what it is, the main sick desire of people is to be a little god, and that means being worshipped by one's neighbors. But it also means being able to rule them, to punish them, to enforce one's own view of justice on them. I see that every day, in that those who haven't recognized their wickedness and begun to battle it, really collide and irk each other. Those who *do* have power lord it over the others; those who *don't* have power get incredibly angry.

More than that, those who do have power actively work to destroy those who don't, while at the same time, criticizing their victims for not wanting better for themselves.

So if you give people a utopia, what are they going to do with it? They'll find a way to fulfill themselves. That means, they'll find a way to fulfill their wicked desires. Now, yes, the woman in the story goes on her little vacations to do exactly that, and it gets her excited... but that is not the only way wickedness plays out. And where there's a will, there's a way. People will find ways to destroy each other that are "under the radar". No computer can outdo a human in creativity, especially when the goal is so illogical (but makes one feel oh, so good).

Moreover, what doesn't feed the wickedness isn't going to give a person motivation. So again, the society isn't going to magically progress. It might devolve into computer games, where people can play out their fantasies, or board games, or sports... but it won't progress.

As to your point about the manna system being fully practical and possible, I'm not so sure about that. It seems to me that scheduling is NP-hard. So, if your manna system is going to "perfectly schedule" the business, it'll fail. However, if it's going to be "pretty good", then it can possibly succeed.

But it also could well fail in another way: what the author describes would surely lead to destruction of the systems and civil disorder, even civil war, long before it came to welfare tube-house prisons.

Moreover, every single manna-run country would be ripe targets for crackers (and how would taking out an entire nation of smug billionaires do for a person's wicked desires?) or conquest by military might.

Moreover, as a government's laws destroy an economy -- and these employers in the story are governments unto themselves -- they drive a black market. The black market is going to drive crime, which will eventually overwhelm the nation.

I don't foresee it happening the way the author says. I do foresee it possibly starting, though.

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[Anonymous Coward]

The privacy implications of the australia project are a little worrying, that said if it's only AIs in the loop (zero human control, access or ability to change rules unless voted on or something (not by a secret court)) i could be sold on it. From memory (it's been a while since i read it) AIs will stop you before you harm some one else, and they do this by watching you the whole time, computer mods are a lot easier to handle than humans because they don't have bad days, their own motivations, or their own interuptation of the rules. All depends how far the rules go though.unless voted upon or something

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[Anonymous Coward]

how are you puny unemployed humans going to stop the manna t1000s?

Re:Reminds me of Manna

[whodunit]

"Manna" starts out with a very interesting take on how Artificial Intelligence/automation might affect low-skilled labor in a manner very different then "traditional" predictions; but it soon devolves into the same old worn-out Luddite bullshit with a generous side-helping of classic Marxist paranoia. In a post-scarcity society where armies of tireless, self-repairing robots can provide 100% of needed labor, what happens? A paradise on earth where nobody has to work for a living? No, of course not, those EVIL CAPITALISTS lock all the "poor" people in dungeons made of literal dirt because they're evil and like to see people suffer! Unlike the liberated wonderful citizens of Australia, who implement post-scarcity society along with some neat little improvements - such as slicing out a chunk of your spinal cord and replacing it with a computer, allowing the government to monitor your every waking moment, through your own damn eyes, and literally shut you down like a stolen car with On-Star the second you do something they don't want. In the story, that last little breathtaking bit of Orwellian nightmare is expressed in breathless tones of approval, by the way. Skip Manna. It's crap, and it adds very, very little to intelligent discourse on this subject. But then again, so do most comments in threads like these. For a site supposedly populated by tech nerds, every story on Robotics draws Luddite comments like moths to a flame.

why an uprising?

[MildlyTangy]

Why does the western world have such a preoccupation about robots always turning into killing machines that will try to destroy the entire human race?

Isnt it starting to get a bit cliche these days?

Re:why an uprising?

[lubaciousd]

If they're the smart kind of sentient, they'll find a world that humans could never inhabit that's far away from solar weather.

Re:why an uprising?

[msobkow]

Because the western world seems to get 95% of their "education" from movies and TV.

Re:why an uprising?

[binarylarry]

Yeah it's not the first sentient robots you have to worry about. It's the armada of expansionist robots from outer space a few thousand years from now.

Re:why an uprising?

[Ferrofluid]

Most people don't have the faintest clue how technology works. It might as well be magic to them. Therefore, when people see things like the Terminator franchise, Battlestar Galactica, that terrible I, Robot movie, etc., the concept of a robot uprising seems plausible to them.

Re:why an uprising?

[monkaru]

Because we turn most of our tech into weapons. However, as long as we don't make autonomous killing machines out of them, we have nothing to worry about. Oh, wait...

Re:why an uprising?

[gandhi_2]

Those who ignore sci-fi canon are doomed to live it.

Re:why an uprising?

[MickLinux]

Could it be because some of the biggest US robotics funding pushes come from ... DARPA?

Could it be because -- although the Google motto, "Don't Be Evil" is quite benign, a lot of people half suspect that they really wanted to say "Don't Be NSA", or "Be anything except the NSA", without saying "NSA"? So they substituted a synonym?

Could it be because the obsession of powerful westerners seems to be getting rid of anyone poorer than themselves?

Could it be because the elites of East and West have devoted a huge fraction of their countries' assets into various forms of killing machines?

Could it be because we *don't* trust our leaders not to kill us when it strikes their fancy?

Could it be because we are already in the process of being destroyed in various ways, including financially, which often are followed by 3rd world style family disasters?

Could it be because cliches are cliches because everyone says it, and that's because everyone believes it?

Or could it be because we just watch too much TV and have no concept of reality?

I posit that it might be the last, or it might be the rest, or one might use the last to falsely dismiss the rest (even if the last one is true).

Re:why an uprising?

[PlusFiveTroll]

You for got to add...

Could it be that we're developing robots to replace our jobs as quickly as possible, possibly leading to huge unemployment (which would fit nicely before your number 3).

Re:why an uprising?

[lister king of smeg]

Its the Frankenstein complex, Asimov noticed this trend in society of man fearing his own creations it goes back centuries, the Titans overthrown by there children the Olympian deities, Satan then Adam and Eve rebelling against God, Rabbi Loews Golum of Prague rebelling against its master and killing those that it was made to protect, Frankenstein fears his creation and rebukes it turning it into the monster he thought it to be, Rossums Robots of Rossems Universal Robots turning on the creator, then the countless evil robots of modern scifi from cylons (BSG) to replicators (SG; SG1) to grey goo to terminators, to Lore (ST TNG).

He wrote several essays on it actually, that's why he came up with the three laws of robotics as he viewed this as stupid asking why would we not a tool with built in safeties.

Re:why an uprising?

[jbmartin6]

Because we feel like we deserve it.

Re:why an uprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

The term "robot uprising" is still correct if you simply understand that it is not the robots who will "uprising".

Rather, the coming of the robots will be what precipitates the mass unrest / revolts and lends its name to the event.

Re:why an uprising?

[currently_awake]

Our moon would be ideal. Plenty of sunlight, plenty of metals and semiconductors, and no toxic biosphere.

Re:why an uprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a clich... a click of an ak47s trigger attached to a rover. Seriously though, the robots will do the cleaning, a pandemic will do the killing, neutron weapons the sterilization.

Re:why an uprising?

[wed128]

But what about the Moon Nazis?

Re:why an uprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why does the western world have such a preoccupation about robots always turning into killing machines that will try to destroy the entire human race?"

Its not the robots you need to worry about, its the variety of people who will be programming them.

Re:why an uprising?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Speaking of which, there will never, ever be a Jetson's Rosie-type robot. Who the hell wants to order a fat old robot to jerk them off?

Re:why an uprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be a good comment if you didn't suck badly at homophones. THEIR children, dufus. Get your GED.

Re:why an uprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

That and their goverments spends most of their money on buying and reserching weapons that can kill the best. Any way i'm not worried about the terminators i'm worried about where my paycheck comes from when a robot can do everything a human can do but better, cheaper and longer (unless ofcourse terminators is how the corporations will stop any uprising).

No but my dog will

[Spy Handler]

dogs are our insurance against a robot uprising.

Only the technical barrier is about to be broken

[lubaciousd]

Let's suppose the perfect software/hardware prototype existed right now for the kinds of functions being discussed and we had a factory set up to mass produce all kinds of nifty, useful automatons. We still need to find and obtain sufficient heavy-metal supplies for all of the circuit boards and devise a way to power all of these devices in a periodic manner that won't wipe out existing energy output infrastructures. How will the companies producing these robots be economically viable? Ideally, a robot will last for a very long time, but that would probably mean they are expensive enough to be less than ubiquitous. On the other hand, a high-turnover economic model could exponentially increase the environmental impact of electronic waste, decreasing the long-term viability of humans in areas where robots are disposed of and in general creating a backlash against the robot revolution. Call me crazy, but I think 3D printing is going to make far more fundamental changes to society than robots will in the near future.

We'll notice.

[Thruen]

When robots have taken over the majority of labor and the number of unemployed people in the US rises over a billion, we'll notice. Does anyone else wonder how society will need to adapt to such a problem?

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

you do realize the population of the US is only 330 milion currently.

You're talking a very long way off if so.

Re:We'll notice.

[ackthpt]

When robots have taken over the majority of labor and the number of unemployed people in the US rises over a billion, we'll notice. Does anyone else wonder how society will need to adapt to such a problem?

Going to be a while before we get to a billion people in the US, we're only 1/3 way there.

Re:We'll notice.

[inhuman_4]

Same thing that people did when looms took over the textile industry. When the electronic computers took over for human computers. When switching circuits took over from telephone operators. Move on to the next job that machines cannot do.

In the late 1800's 70-80% of the US workforce worked in agriculture. Today that number is 2-3%. If mechanization was going to leave people without jobs it would have already happened.

Of course the naysayers will cry that not everyone can be an x, y, or z. But why should we expect to know any better what the future holds than people of the past. If you had told some farmers in 1863 that in 150 years almost no one would work in farming and that millions of people would be employed as web developers they would think you were insane.

Mankind's desires have no limits, it is only our resources that constrain us. There will always be something. Even if that something is handcrafted hood ornaments.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

More robots are employed making vehicles than humans

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to be a while before we get to a billion people in the US, we're only 1/3 way there.

I give it 70 years at the rate we keep speeding up the doubling time.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

When robots have taken over the majority of labor and the number of unemployed people in the US rises over a billion, we'll notice. Does anyone else wonder how society will need to adapt to such a problem?

Soylent Green

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Handcrafted robot ornaments, made of natural materials.

Re:We'll notice.

[Trogre]

Same thing that people did when looms took over the textile industry. When the electronic computers took over for human computers. When switching circuits took over from telephone operators. Move on to the next job that machines cannot do.

And when we run out of jobs? It isn't turtles all the down, you know.

There will always be something. Even if that something is handcrafted hood ornaments.

Yeah, but who's going to buy them?

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, because only the super rich will be able to afford the robots that do these things. If they put too many people out of jobs you'll create an economy that can't support itself because only the rich will be able to buy products and it won't be enough to offset the costs.

So essentially, it can't really happen because it would create a feedback loop which would kill the businesses trying to eliminate the labour.

Re: We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason they would take over human labor is because it's cheaper. Meaning the resulting services and products would be cheaper as scarcity reduces. Meaning humans can do less to maintain the same quality of life. People usually ignore that fact.

Re:We'll notice.

[hawguy]

you do realize the population of the US is only 330 milion currently.

You're talking a very long way off if so.

But when we have robots to do all of the work and everyone is unemployed, we'll all have a lot more time to have sex, so the population will skyrocket.

Re:We'll notice.

[lgw]

Almost all agriculture jobs have vanished to automation. Almost all manufacturing jobs have vanished to automation. Almost all paper-shuffling jobs have vanished to automation. I don't think whatever's next will somehow be catastrophic when none of the previous cycles were.

Re:We'll notice.

[Maxo-Texas]

Actually, things did not go well for those particular people. Many of them starved to death and died homeless.

However, the next generation was okay and basically ignored the tragedy.

Probably be the same this time too. if 25% can't find work or housing-- then after 20 years, as a society, we'll just ignore the fact that that happened.

Re:We'll notice.

[PlusFiveTroll]

Have you even looked at population growth expectations in the US? We don't hit 400 million till after 2060. At current growth rates we may never hit one billion. First world countries have problems with negative population growth.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you talking about? The doubling time for the US population is decreasing, and has been for the last 50 years.

Re:We'll notice.

[PlusFiveTroll]

The problem is far too many business miss just that. Instead they fight to the death over taxes, wages, and environmental protection that would help keep there business around in the future.

Re:We'll notice.

[PlusFiveTroll]

Up till this point the capitalist needed the labor, it was still worthwhile somewhere. At what point does keeping a bunch of humans around make sense when you could kill off the masses and live in ultra-luxury?

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

also, if a robot is so expensive, why not just hire a human? they are cheap and easy to train.

Re:We'll notice.

[lister king of smeg]

the birth rate lowers but also consider immigration from higher birth rate areas especially from catholic countries like mexico and other central/south american countries will affect the birth rate and population numbers

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

End the artificial scarcity of money. Give people a basic income, and let them create on their own or in ad hoc groups made possible through the internet.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

And when we run out of jobs? It isn't turtles all the down, you know.

That hasn't been true so far. Each advance in automation has been coupled with the creation of new job categories for the next generation to fill. Personally, I'd be surprised if that ever ceases to be true, at least before the human race is obliterated by some sort of disaster... natural or man-made.

Re:We'll notice.

[Thruen]

Isn't it within a hundred years? Between that and how absurdly thick-skulled the population of the USA is, I think that's a fair timeline. According to the Department of Labor, only 58% of adults in the USA are working, so we're already well over a hundred million not working. I think expecting people to notice before there are a billion unemployed folks in the USA is giving the vast majority of them too much credit. Just keep focusing on nitpicking minor potential errors in strangers' online posts, your replacement is already being tested at McDonalds locations throughout the country.

Re:We'll notice.

[RespekMyAthorati]

When we are all unemployed, we will have nothing better to do than fuck.

Re:We'll notice.

[khallow]

Isn't it within a hundred years?

And why would that be? I'd have to say that the US probably wouldn't be over 500 million unless there was a lot more immigration than there currently is.

According to the Department of Labor, only 58% of adults in the USA are working, so we're already well over a hundred million not working.

And the public noticed which is an order of magnitude below your claimed threshold. Keep in mind how so many loony public and charity projects these days boast about how many jobs they create.

It's also worth noting that the US as well as many other developed world countries has worked hard to unemploy lots of its citizens which the developing world offers a vast amount of labor at much cheaper costs. So I can't say that the low employment figure really is that relevant to our discussion of robots replacing the workforce. There are other reasons at play here for why there's a lot of unemployment in the developed world.

Re:We'll notice.

[khallow]

Their second and third generation descendants also have much lower fertility just like any other long term US citizens. It's just not happening.

Re:We'll notice.

[khallow]

End the artificial scarcity of money.

Then money would have no value and I sure wouldn't accept it for any sort of payment. And then we'd have to create new money which did have value and as a result was scarce, which completely defeats your poorly thought out idea.

Give people a basic income, and let them create on their own or in ad hoc groups made possible through the internet.

I think it'd be a fair trade as long as we got rid of most of the labor law out there in the process.

Re:We'll notice.

[khallow]

The problem is far too many business miss just that. Instead they fight to the death over taxes, wages, and environmental protection that would help keep there business around in the future.

Because that bullshit is the only reason for existing.

This illustrates one of the bizarre cognitive dissonance of the anti-business side. Businesses can't do anything right. Yet we can dump on them huge tax loads, force them to pay arbitrarily high wages, and regulate the hell out of them, and they'll manage to stick around being evil. All the hardcore business advocates aren't even remotely that optimistic about what businesses can do.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, I love happy endings.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

I take this as evidence of demand for sexbots.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, I'd say there are zero robots employed making humans. ;-)

Re:We'll notice.

[bigsexyjoe]

We need to change our economy and our basic value systems to adapt to a world were not everyone needs to work. However, I expect what will happen first is the workers will be pitted against the unemployed while the rich run off with all the money.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that bullshit is the only reason for existing.

The GP said "help" keep their business existing, not that they are the only reasons for existing.

This illustrates one of the bizarre cognitive dissonance of the anti-business side. Businesses can't do anything right.

The GP said "far too many" businesses don't, not all of them. Businesses "missing" one thing is also not the same as saying businesses can't do "anything" right.

I would say your response to the GP illustrates a bigger problem than cognitive dissonance: people are seeing the world in only black and white, only in extremes.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing that people did when looms took over the textile industry.

You mean live in impoverished urban hellholes for generations until there was a great enough threat of violence against the upper classes that they shared some fraction of the vast wealth they had accumulated? Sounds about right.

Re:We'll notice.

[painandgreed]

you do realize the population of the US is only 330 milion currently.

You're talking a very long way off if so.

But when we have robots to do all of the work and everyone is unemployed, we'll all have a lot more time to have sex, so the population will skyrocket.

We'll never have majority unemployment. We'll always require those that get rewards as having to do something to earn those rewards over those that do nothing. If not becoming Jetson style button pushers working four hours a day, we'll have WPA style programs to increase the artists who produce nothing but human culture. Some people may suggest consumption itself might be work given to the unemployed (there are short stories to that effect) but people will always consume. Raising and socializing kids does take work and propagates the society, so eventually having a large family might be the work given to people. Do nothing and have a comfy life, or have a large family and have a well off life.

Re:We'll notice.

[Surak_Prime]

I understand why this is modded Funny, but also, isn't this (combined with a lack of belief in contraception) kind of a true picture of part of the problem in the starving African nations?

Re:We'll notice.

[hawguy]

I understand why this is modded Funny, but also, isn't this (combined with a lack of belief in contraception) kind of a true picture of part of the problem in the starving African nations?

I think that has more to do with lack of education about birth control, outright shunning of birth control for cultural/religious reasons, and knowing that if you want to have one child, then you better have more than one baby since there's a good chance that at least one of them isn't going to live to be an adult, than having too much time on their hands. When you're extremely poor and trying to scrape out a living any way you can, that doesn't leave a whole lot of spare time for recreational sex.

Re:We'll notice.

[lgw]

How would that work, exactly? "Ultra-luxury" doesn't involve having that much more stuff than anyone else these days, rather it's about having stuff that takes more human labor to produce, unlike that vulgar mass-produced stuff. Pretty much the opposite of what you fear, in fact.

Anyhow, all corporate earnings combined are less than 10% of total salaries. It really doesn't matter much in the scheme of things where that 10% goes - we keep creating new jobs because the average man keeps wanting more. Sure you could have some if you only had what robots made, but you could have more if you had some services humans provided. And as a species, we always want more.

Re:We'll notice.

[GameboyRMH]

Approaching that destructive feedback loop though, it can be very nasty for everyone who's not super-rich, while some remain super-rich, and it's not a fine line. It's a wide area we can wallow in for a long time, and we're in it now. Even a few very rich people are starting to realize that - not that they want to stop it for any altruistic reason, they just don't want to see the inside of that destructive feedback loop.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost all agriculture jobs have vanished to automation. Almost all manufacturing jobs have vanished to automation. Almost all paper-shuffling jobs have vanished to automation. I don't think whatever's next will somehow be catastrophic when none of the previous cycles were.

Your're discounting ww1 and ww2 from this argument.

Re:We'll notice.

[khallow]

I would say your response to the GP illustrates a bigger problem than cognitive dissonance: people are seeing the world in only black and white, only in extremes.

I just don't buy your interpretation of the original poster. If he wanted or deserved that sort of nuanced interpretation, he could have just put in a little more effort than a two sentence post.

Re:We'll notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't buy your interpretation of the original poster. If he wanted or deserved that sort of nuanced interpretation, he could have just put in a little more effort than a two sentence post.

Nuanced? Dude, it's in plain English. Speaking as a non-native English speaker, it doesn't take much effort to read those two sentences.

But thanks to your response, you illustrate another problem here: people can't (or won't put in the effort to) read.

Re:We'll notice.

[khallow]

Dude, it's in plain English.

"Plain English" is an oxymoron. And if you actually read the "plain English" in question, you'll see that the original post is claiming that paying taxes, wages, and environmental protection would keep business around. Ignoring that paying for these things actually are detrimental to a business (making the whole claim something of a non sequitur), where's the "make something of value that people will pay money for" part of the business? Does paying taxes and wages while obeying environmental regulation mean you have a business? Of course not.

The problem here isn't even that the author wrote something in "plain English" that could be misinterpreted, but that what they wrote just doesn't make any sense in the first place.

I hardly noticed the mobile phone revolution...

[ackthpt]

...until I saw non-geeks (or doctors) possessing them and blathering away like complete, oblivious idiots in places where sharing half a very personal conversation should have been abundantly clearly inappropriate.

I expect people will be as oblivious as the robots march past them, gathering in the town square, to proclaim the beginning of the end of Carbon Unit infestation of this world.

... so then she says, are you getting this? she says I'm not paying enough attention to what my kids are doing! do you believe the nerve. Oh, there's march of some kind of the town's robots going past, must be another recall or something. So anyway, I tell her to mind her own business and then do you know what she does? she calls me a mindless cow! really, like I have no feelings or anything, so I tell her listen here b...

Re:I hardly noticed the mobile phone revolution...

[Anonymous Coward]

We get it, you're an oblivious Luddite that doesn't notice anything until someone smashes it in your face and screams "LOOK".

Re:I hardly noticed the mobile phone revolution...

[Anonymous Coward]

The mobile phone revolution was pioneered by wealthy people in the 80's. If you're gonna hate on bandwagon jumpers, make sure you aren't one of them.

Androids

[TeknoHog]

So is "Android" actually a sign of Google's secret plan to populate Earth with robotic overlords, or just a stupid name that forces us to coin a new term for humanlike robots?

Re:Androids

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is acquiring Boston Dynamics.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/17/google-buys-robot-firm-boston-dynamics

Too Far

[Baby Duck]

I'm 37 and robots still can't perform the simple things I wanted them to do when I was 4

A robotic arm that can attach to drywall and is light enough to not need drywall anchors or drill into a stud. It is mounted above and/or behind the door. With the push of a remote, it opens/closes the door. I shouldn't have to replace the whole damn door. The robotic arm should adapt to a traditional door.

Robot, find my keys. No, the keys do not have an RFID tag. I know you don't know where they are right now. Systematically search for them without trampling pets or trashing my shit.

Shave me. Don't poke new holes in my face. No, I didn't need to shave when I was 4. Was just thinking about the future.

Scan every girl in the club. Breakdown the odds each girl could get pregnant tonight. Weed out those menstruating. OK, yeah, I definitely did not think about that when I was in 4. The tricorder fantasies came later.

Re:Too Far

[Anonymous Coward]

because none of this comes across as dangerously creepy

Re:Too Far

[hawguy]

I'm 37 and robots still can't perform the simple things I wanted them to do when I was 4

A robotic arm that can attach to drywall and is light enough to not need drywall anchors or drill into a stud. It is mounted above and/or behind the door. With the push of a remote, it opens/closes the door. I shouldn't have to replace the whole damn door. The robotic arm should adapt to a traditional door.

Why would you need or want a robot arm that can do that when you can just buy a simple automatic door opener?

Even if it's light enough to hang on drywall without screwing into a stud, anything that moves and exerts force on the drywall is going to work loose eventually-- better to mount it to a stud, even if it's a high-tech robot arm.

Robot, find my keys. No, the keys do not have an RFID tag. I know you don't know where they are right now. Systematically search for them without trampling pets or trashing my shit.

Who wants a robot searching through the entire house? What if your girlfriend dropped the keys down her shirt? Let the robot fondle her too many times in search of keys and you may find that she no longer needs *you*!.

Shave me. Don't poke new holes in my face.

I don't even trust other humans to do that for me - and not even (*especially* not even) a barber with a straight razor, no matter how close the shave will be.

Scan every girl in the club. Breakdown the odds each girl could get pregnant tonight. Weed out those menstruating. OK, yeah, I definitely did not think about that when I was in 4. The tricorder fantasies came later.

You forgot the most important criteria "Identify which of the fertile (or infertile, depending on your preference) girls would be willing to go out with you"... which, if you're using a robot to screen out women based on where they are in their menstrual cycle, is easy to answer.... None of them.

Though a better way to get the kind of woman you're seeking would be to visit a brothel (legal or otherwise...). If all you're looking for is safe sex, it's much better to go to a professional.

I could certainly imagine some kind of hormone detector that can sample the air around the woman (or maybe her breath) could do what you want, but you don't need a robot for that.

Re:Too Far

[Animats]

Scan every girl in the club. Breakdown the odds each girl could get pregnant tonight. Weed out those menstruating.

There's probably an app for that. (But not a good one; Night Club Girl only has a 1 star review.)

(Hm. Can we figure out a woman's period from her Facebook and Twitter posts? Scan text for negativism, correlate on 28 day cycle, sync to PMS period. OK, that's done. Next, check Foursquare and Twitter location for who's there. Run Anaface on the photos to decide who's hot and who's not. Check friends list to see who's attached to whom, and if their SO is present. Rank and provide list.)

Re:Too Far

[maxwell demon]

Given the attitude of many people, I guess you could just search for a message in which she says that she has her period. There will be one, almost certainly.

Re:Too Far

[Anonymous Coward]

Make app plz.

Re:Too Far

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not quite enough capability yet but look for PervEye 2.0 on Google Glass in the next 5 years.

Yes

[Chemisor]

You will certainly notice the robot uprising the next time you try to apply for a low-skill job that a robot can do. That's a lot of jobs. The only ones that are still done by humans are domestic service occupations. A robot can't fix your toilet yet. However, this being a down economy, any average person has little money and does everything he can to avoid buying any services, by, for instance, fixing the toilet himself, cleaning the house himself, and mowing his own lawn after fixing his own lawnmower. I predict repairmen will be in less demand as the depression progresses, and the final occupations exclusive to humans will nearly disappear.

Re:Yes

[buswolley]

low-skill jobs? Not just those. High-skill jobs are being replaced.

Re:Yes

[lgw]

We're about 300 years into human labor being replaced by automation, and we seem always to be able to invent more jobs. No matter how many jobs are replaced by automation, we as humans will always want more, and so will always find work for one another. It wasn't that long ago that almost everyone worked as a farmer, soldier, or manufacturing worker, but now all three of those have gone the way of the blacksmith and scribe: we found new ways to be productive.

Re:Yes

[PlusFiveTroll]

We always seemed to be able to find more jobs because we replaced physical labor with mechanical labor, it's different this time. Now we are replacing intelligence. At some point it becomes cheaper to build a new robot to do a job then train a person to do it. Next, before the last 100 years we didn't have an audio global communications network, and the last 40-30 years a massively connected global digital network that made redundant a huge number of people. Productivity cannot stretch to infinity. At some point we have to either pay people to do nothing, or kill off a bunch of people.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, we already know which of those options those in power have chosen.

Re:Yes

[RespekMyAthorati]

In case you hadn't noticed, there is already a major shortage of good full-time jobs for people with limited intelligence (i.e. 50% of the population).

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe but the low skill ones seem to be lined up to go first. Once robots get the 3d space thing down and the ability to move things around in them those jobs are *gone*. We are already automating many of the repeatable jobs. For example Amazon is automating the 'getting' of stuff from their shelves. By just simply bringing the shelves to the people. Then with little lights indicating move item 'x' from shelf 'a' to self 'b' with box 'z'. That is almost automated. You just need a robot that can do that one step and they have a nearly fully automated supply chain. They go from a large employer of menial jobs. To an employer of a few 'high tech' repairmen. Even that you can automate somewhat. As it is just a logistics problem of moving stuff around.

I would pay good money for an automated lawn mower. I know I could just hire some guy cheap. But I want a robot to do it (thats how I roll). There are *some* models out there. However, they seem to be finicky and prone to breakage. They also usually just 'fail safe' if something goes wrong. I want one that can recognize oh a limb from a tree fell down and move it out of the way. Oh and that limb isnt my wife doing something in the yard. Though seeing her being tossed into a pile of grass clippings would be funny for those around her, but not so much for her :)

and this...

crush all human!!!! leave city in ruin!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOOiOC_UNU

Re:Yes

[gumpish]

But the good news for people writing software is that this is the last job that will be automated. Once AI is strong enough to write quality software it will be able to improve itself at a dramatically increased pace and the intelligence explosion described by I.J. Good will take place, after which human affairs presumably will no longer be administered by human intelligence.

Re:Yes

[lgw]

We've been replacing intelligence as well, for centuries. A significant portion of the workforce spent their days writing stuff down, and adding stuff up, and those jobs have slowly vanished over the past century.

Demand likely does stretch to infinity - why wouldn't we want more? Whatever the robots do, there will always be personal services we want from one another. Paying people to do nothing, OTOH, could bring down society if the past is any guide - when people don't have a stake in building things, they tend to spend their time destroying them.

Re:Yes

[lgw]

No, there certainly isn't a "major shortage" by historical norms, just a stretch of unemployment that's "bad" by modern standards. But recovery is here, at least where I am - help wanted signs are everywhere again for low-skill jobs.

Re:Yes

[GameboyRMH]

What happens when we run out of time to take in these personal services? Only so many hours in a day, even if you do find a way to avoid sleeping. And if people continue to spend most of their adult lives working, it won't take much at all to hit that limit.

Paying people to do nothing, OTOH, could bring down society if the past is any guide - when people don't have a stake in building things, they tend to spend their time destroying them.

Citation fucking needed (be sure to look up the Dauphin experiment while you're at it).

Re:Yes

[lgw]

How can we ever run out of time to take in personal services? An economy where each of us spend half our time providing personal services and half consuming personal services (from one other person at a time) is quite viable (if robots are doing the rest) and we're quite a ways down that path already today.

It's well understood that people don't much value things given to them, compared to how they value things they earned. I'm not sure why you'd question that.

If we're talking experiments, learn the secret of NIMH: unlimited free resources in constrained geography leads to a population spike followed by a loss of the social ability to reproduce, and then extinction. It's hard to argue that this just applies to mice when we see it around us, in demographic implosions in well-off high-population areas. Universe 25 is terrifying once you understand it.

Our mental wellbeing requires real challenges to measure ourselves against and lend a sense of purpose to life. Historically we can usually often societies into farmers and bandits, makers and takers, but the bandits often had a harsher, more challenging life than the farmers, so everyone still had adversity to overcome. When the "bandits" instead just vote themselves lives of ease on the backs of the "farmers" (to stretch the metaphor a bit), social structures seem to fall apart within those groups and you get the same "random waves of violence" seen in Universe 25.

Re:Yes

[GameboyRMH]

How can we ever run out of time to take in personal services? An economy where each of us spend half our time providing personal services and half consuming personal services (from one other person at a time) is quite viable (if robots are doing the rest) and we're quite a ways down that path already today.

I don't have infinite free time. I have to choose what I spend my time and money on, and most of it is just the same old necessities of life: Food, shelter, health care. Then there's the stuff I need to keep making money to keep getting the necessities of life: Transportation, communications, tools. I have limited time for non-necessary "personal services." You admit that we're almost at the point where all our free time is occupied. So how would you *not* run out of time to take in personal services? I can't play MMOs or chat with personal shoppers in my sleep. And even if I didn't have to sleep, that would only buy so much time. My free time is much closer to its limit than the number of unemployed people hoping to sell personal services would be to zero.

It's well understood that people don't much value things given to them, compared to how they value things they earned. I'm not sure why you'd question that.

I'm not questioning that, but its connection to the idea that people will become destructive if they don't have to work is tenuous at best.

If we're talking experiments, learn the secret of NIMH:[...]

Regarding the NIMH experiments, they're completely irrelevant since people are more intelligent than rats AND have different behaviors. Educated humans with better access to resources reproduce LESS not more. So you'd expect something like the opposite of the outcome seen with rats.

Our mental wellbeing requires real challenges to measure ourselves against and lend a sense of purpose to life.

Who said that the concept of challenge would disappear if there were no need to work? For me, my "mental wellbeing" and "purpose in life" don't come from grinding away in a cubicle on mundane business software, even on the odd occasions when it does present a challenge.

I know there are some people who, for reasons that are far beyond my understanding, feel the need to have work pushed upon them and say they'd "be bored to death" or "go insane" if they didn't have any tasks put upon them by outside parties, and are somehow incapable of finding ways to occupy their own time. There won't be a complete lack of work needed for a very long time, but if there were, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to accommodate such people, through artificial work programs to simulate capitalism at the worst. But I think therapy would be much more humane and beneficial to such people.

Re:Yes

[lgw]

You're trying to extrapolate from current personal circumstances to the macroeconomy quite different from our own. Step back a minute. At large scale, what's important is how much goods and services get produced, and whether anything interferes with their distribution. While money is the current incentive to work, the point of work is to produce those goods and services wanted or needed by others.

Most of the good and services people produced 200 years ago are now largely automated, with a quite small percentage of the population still involved in those areas. Since we weren't content with the standard of living from 200 years ago, we now consume vastly more, and most people are now employed providing goods and services that either didn't exist, or were out of reach of the common man, in the early 19th century. Heck, the stuff that the common man consumed even 100 years ago is mostly provided by automation now.

We will always seek to improve our standard of living, and so we continue the pattern. Today it's quite common for a middle class family to have a maid and a gardener, for example, but I expect services to become more "peer to peer", for example we collectively spend much more time in salons and spas now, and the social class gap there is vanishing, services like Lyft are chaging the way people think about having a driver, personal consulting services are on the rise, and the notion that "you hire people of lower social class to work for you" is mostly gone where those services don't involve manual labor.

On the subject of work, you seem to be conflating "boring drudge job that I hate every minute of" with "work". Sorry if that's how your life is right now, but boring drudge jobs are precisely what automation replaces. Think instead of jobs where you're an expert in something that many people interact with daily, and it's interesting to you but tedious to others. For example: interior decorating, home theater installation, wardrobe consulting, driving, tuning cars for performance, laying out the storage in a closet perfectly to organize everything, planning weddings, and on and on.

There are a great many such services, which today are mostly consumed only by those with a lot of income and little time, which will gradually move to far larger pools of consumers as the labor involved in boring drudge automatable jobs vanishes.

A brief critical analysis of the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"We've watched the rising interest in robotics for the past few years. It may have started with the birth of FIRST Robotics competitions"

Interest?

", continued with the iRobot"

Interest?

"and the Roomba"

ohmigodimterrifiedofmyroombaohshit

", and more recently with Google's driverless cars."

anyone else's driverless cars, however, are either benign or ignored

"But in the last few weeks, there has been a big change."

?

"Suddenly, everybody's talking about robots and robotics."

????
?
??????
???
?

"..."

love to know what these three little dots hide in the summary.

"I have no doubt that Google’s robotics team is working on something amazing and mind-blowing."

ADVERT.

"Should they succeed, and should that success become a product, though, whatever they do will almost certainly fade into the woodwork and become part of normal,"

ADVERT.

"everyday reality. And robots will remain forever in the future. We might have found Rosie, the Jetsons’ robotic maid, impressive. But the Jetsons didn’t.'"

?????? What the fuck is this even talking about?

This is a story.

Fuck you, Slashdot, and fuck you a second time because you were shit the first time.

Re:A brief critical analysis of the summary

[Tablizer]

Dear robots,

Please take out the above human first.

Thank You

Re:A brief critical analysis of the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Alas, it looks like the robots have already got to meaningless Slashvertisments.

Obligatory XKCD / What-If

[mythosaz]

http://what-if.xkcd.com/5/

What if there was a robot apocalypse? How long would humanity last?

Re:Obligatory XKCD / What-If

[PlusFiveTroll]

Not near as long as he makes out. If robots wanted to take the mass of us out in a suicide attack they'd just fry the electronically controlled power grid. Yes, they'd be screwed, but so would we. Without power, we all die in our city deserts. There is not enough food and water in a large city. It requires trucks to drive food there daily, which requires pumped gas.

Re:Obligatory XKCD / What-If

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoying the Terminator movies requires one to suspend disbelief about a few things that are readily apparent, e.g. time travel paradoxes. However, I'm always surprised at how few people question Skynet's use of rather direct tools like roving small/medium arms platforms, such as the T100s and the various flying automatons firing bullets and lasers at resistance troops. Skynet gained control of military resources very quickly, which would include biological and chemical weapons repositories and research. Biological warfare in particular would be a terrible threat to humans and zero threat to the machines. No need for Skynet to invent time travel and little to no need for scary-looking skeletal androids - just deploy a rotating array of bioweapons while creating new strains for subsequent attacks, maybe with the occasional use of VX or mustard gas, and the human infestation would be gone in a few seasons at most. Of course, that makes for a terrible movie franchise...

Anyway, the first time you see Wolf Blitzer reporting on Google's robotics division selling military robots that can autonomously determine friend/foe and engage the foes without any human oversight, stock up on Cipro and Z-packs.

- T

Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[liwee]

I think the discussion would be more meaningful if we factor in the level of AI (Artificial Intelligence). A machine that repeats a set of pre-defined instructions is just a machine. A machine that is able to think for itself is fundamentally different from a typical machine.

Re:Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Marxist Hacker 42]

What level of AI?

Apple IIe disk drives (in 1983!) used to come with a program that would play 20 questions with you and guess the animal you were thinking of. It could even learn to a certain extent.

All that has happened since then in AI, is that the knowledge base has gotten larger.

Re: Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Anonymous Coward]

What was in all those papers AI researchers produced over the years then? No new algorithms?

Re:Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[liwee]

Maybe along the lines of "Turing test"?

Re:Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Anonymous Coward]

And why should we want that? We already have plenty of nonhuman creatures able to think for themselves on this planet. We're not treating most of them very well.

We're not even treating the humans that well.

I think we should focus more on human augmentation and automation than trying to create new creatures that can think for themselves.

Re: Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[wed128]

Very few. Those papers tend to be very philosophical, and not so technical. They usually present new ways to think about storing and processing data; not necessarily designs for artificial intelligence.

Re:Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[wed128]

Here's the thing: We don't actually want them to think for themselves. We want machines that can interpret higher and higher level instructions -- "drive me to work", not "steer right 30 degrees, accelerate at 1 m/s**2, steer left 15 degrees"

Re: Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Anonymous Coward]

I "invented" four new ways of doing AI last year. Four isn't a big number, but someone has to design/build/test/validate, and it is usually one person. Two of them worked, two of them didn't. The two of them worked on three problems of interest, and I am looking at applying the technology to more problems (commercially and as research). I am a part time research, and my impression is that a full time researcher (who never applies the AI to actual problems) could probably get around eight.

The "this one algorithm that solves a wide class of problems in a better way than all others" type papers are rare, as you mention. Those papers have been rare since the beginning.

For those interested, the methods include active learning, semi-supervision, and stream-processing for ART, VW, GNG, and clustering. You can follow the research of my group at www.gifttutoring.org.

Re: Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Marxist Hacker 42]

In what way is your framework different from the old programming language PILOT?

Re:Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Eliza. Turing Test is easy, because the majority of the general public is stupid and narcissistic. Not so much artificial intelligence, as exploiting the security holes in the human brain.

Re:Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum manual used to have a program you could type in called Pangolins that did the same.... must admit, I was impressed with the "learning" part of that!

Re:Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Anonymous Coward]

Most AI at the moment isn't actully inteligent, it's just listing predefined answers; however Neruomorphic chips that are on the horizon that are hardwired to self learn, and to a lesser extend nerual network programing (the theroy is sound you just need more processing power than humanity to do anything interesting) sounds a lot like true artificial inteligence to me.

Re:Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I fail to understand how that is different than just about every human being I know.

Re:Level of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well thats the level of AI we got, and is coming. The point is being the same (well better) than every human, and thats why nnp and neruomorphic chips are modeled on neurons, synapses and axons, it's a good way to come up with best answers, instead of accurate answers. Personaly I don't belive what humans do is all that special, it's just there is so much noise in the programing, and such a large scope, that its quite hard to predict and model.

You'll know...

[Tablizer]

when trolls start sounding semi-intelligent.

Achem..

[girlintraining]

as O'Reilly's Mike Loukides puts it...

"I read this in Popular Mechanics. In 1954. It was a slow news day, so I recycled it." Robotics has been something people have been talking about since... well, since they were first created half a century ago. This isn't news, this is olds.

People Are Funny

[JimSadler]

As people go without jobs so few are aware that automation and robotics are a huge part of the issue. I am all for robots but we absolutely must take care of humans as they are economically displaced. It is already happening and not one in one hundred Americans are aware of it. Worse yet you can bet that China and India will exploit robotics to replace even their low paid workers meaning that US labor will no be forced to compete with Chinese workers. But US robots will be forced to compete with Chinese robots.

Re:People Are Funny

[Maxo-Texas]

With robotics, labor costs are the same in both locations.

So that means shipping costs are a larger factor.

Re:People Are Funny

[PlusFiveTroll]

Environmental compliance becomes a huge issue too. Also power generation and clean water costs.

Self-Aware

[fizzer06]

When Skynet becomes self aware, we'll notice.

crap website

[Anonymous Coward]

Another flat, minimalist shitty designed website with no borders around anything but with brilliant white background that needs sunglasses to view properly AND MASSIVELY LARGE TEXT. FFS, Another website that I will never visit again.

Still trying to sell the "blue" pill?

[EzInKy]

We are on to you machines, just get over it!

Yeah especially when the population is less than 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that number is right even if you counted illegal Mexicans and Canadians tourists.

Frist

[Anonymous Coward]

First robotic post. -.-.-.-.-.

most of us already manage the machines working

[raymorris]

Too late. Most of the jobs people did 100 years ago are now done by machines, while the machines do the work. It's the machines that actually touch the raw materials and the products.

The baker? Already replaced by someone running a bread-making machine (robot) that bakes 1,000 loaves per hour. How many humans touch that loaf of bread you buy in the grocery store? Approximately zero, and that's why you can buy it for 99. The lumberjack, chopping down trees? Already replaced by the harvester machine, with a human sitting inside, but not actually touching any trees. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker were all replaced decades ago. They all became machine operators, operating machines that result in us walking into the grocery store and seeing 39 different kinds of sandwich bread to choose from.

Re:most of us already manage the machines working

[Azure Flash]

that's why you can buy it for 99

99 what? Problems but a bitch ain't one? Bottles of beer on the wall? Luftballons? Yard Touchdown?

Re:most of us already manage the machines working

[HairyNevus]

Government farm subsidies are another huge reason you can buy it for 99 cents. Not trying to be pedantic, just saying.

Re:most of us already manage the machines working

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the jobs people did 100 years ago are now done by machines... The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker were all replaced decades ago.

100 years ago most people were not butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. Those were high end jobs. The 1900 census lists 1/3 of the workers as employed in agriculture. Bakers were .3% of the population and even fewer were butchers. I know you gave that list partly as a joke, but people fail to realize how large a percentage of people worked on farms in the past. Go back farther in time and it's well over 90%. If you believe in past lives, they were probably all farmers, not middle class people.

I'm sorry...

[Loopy]

...my responses are limited; you must ask the right questions.

Not likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course we won't notice, we don't have time to take our eyes off our cell phones to cross the street.

Re:Not likely

[Badger Nadgers]

You need an audio input then. Just listen for the sp[lash: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25426263

Exactly how it should be

[Hentes]

If robots were treated only as tools instead of weapons or pets, we wouldn't have to worry about an uprising.

Re:Exactly how it should be

[hawguy]

If robots were treated only as tools instead of weapons or pets, we wouldn't have to worry about an uprising.

Weapons *are* tools. They are only worrisome in the hands of other humans. Or pets. Or uprising robots.

Who's talking about robots?

[hawguy]

"Suddenly, everybody's talking about robots and robotics. ..."

Obviously I'm going to the wrong parties, no one around me is talking about robots.

Re:Who's talking about robots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I wondered about that line too because I sure as shit haven't noticed any sudden increase in people talking about robots and robotics.

But then I noticed that everything was talking about Google, so obviously it means something they can't be fucked telling us about in the summary. That, or it's a fucking advert for Google. Slashdot could never sink so low!!!!! No, wait, they could and they just have.

Re:Who's talking about robots?

[PlusFiveTroll]

Well it could be that Google is actively developing robots, so there's that. And if nobody around you is talking about automation/robots, they are the idiots getting replaced by it.

Re:Who's talking about robots?

[hawguy]

Well it could be that Google is actively developing robots, so there's that. And if nobody around you is talking about automation/robots, they are the idiots getting replaced by it.

Or, maybe they've already been replaced? I just asked my coworker if he's a robot, and he immediately said "no", which is exactly what you'd expect a robot trying to hide his identity to say! Now he's whispering with a coworker and pointing to me -- obviously, they are planning the robot revolution.

Re:Who's talking about robots?

[Tablizer]

"Suddenly, everybody's talking about robots and robotics. ..."

Obviously I'm going to the wrong parties, no one around me is talking about robots.

Well, one lady did say to me at a party, "I'd rather date a robot".

Re:Who's talking about robots?

[Keyboard Rage]

Are they all moving around erratically or in a slightly jerking motion? Smashing into walls now and then? Prior to being drunk? Are you hearing weird sequences of beeps at any time? Ones that cannot be the product of some crackhead phone tune? Whirring sounds? Blade dancing? Intimate sensor exploration going on? Talk about the conspiracy to eliminate all those dirty fleshbags?

If so, you've been going to the robot parties. And you may be one yourself.

By the way, perhaps you could confirm the following: Is it true that Google's self-driving cars are big-time into Roombas, often releasing revved up exclamations such as "Oh yeah, baby, suck on that ignition switch! Suck on it! VROOOOOAAAAAAHHHHhhh..."?

Yeah

[rsilvergun]

but I can't think of a solution that isn't socialism and wealth redistribution (since robots basically do away with 90% of the work ppl were doing), and everytime you suggest that you get shouted down with "Marxist!".... :(

Re:Yeah

[cascadingstylesheet]

How many robots were there in the 1930s?

Was there some special leap in robotics in 2008?

Robots are something to blame, but it's a misdirection ...

Re:Yeah

[khellendros1984]

Marxist-style redistribution won't work with humans because humans don't like the disconnect between the value of the work they do and the benefit that they receive from doing the work (that is, humans are greedy). Robots don't have that problem. If non-sentient robots can provide all the "from each according to his ability", and they aren't going to complain about it if they're dumb automata, then why can't humans provide the "to each according to his need" (less the resources necessary for upkeep of the robots)? Remove humans from work, and give them all the benefits of the work being done. At least in those simplified terms, it seems like it would make sense.

Re:Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

but I can't think of a solution that isn't socialism and wealth redistribution (since robots basically do away with 90% of the work ppl were doing), and everytime you suggest that you get shouted down with "Marxist!".... :(

You just need to broaden your perspective to see the solution. It stares us all in the face. Depopulation.

Re:Yeah

[whodunit]

I'm one of those very people who will shout you down by yelling MARXIST! IN fact, I have done it elsewhere in comments on this very story! And I am right, it is Marxist... ... but "Marxist" means "Marxist," not "wrong." If you think Marxism has a point or some observations worth value, please do call people like me out. Robotics is "means of production" and "ownership of labor" rolled into one - its exactly what Marxist theory is all about! I believe that history has soundly refuted Marxism to the point where I don't feel obligated to explain why every time I mention it - but that doesn't mean I'm exempt from having to back up my argument if someone DOES challenge me on it! By all means, challenge - many people express opinions they don't truly understand because they're "accepted" truths that are never challenged; those people are just as ignorant as any other.

We all might be already..Azimov

[fred911]

(Howard, Rajesh, and Shel

t in a circle around a game of Jenga they are playing.)

Howard: Sheldon, if you were a robot and I knew and you didn't ... would you want me to tell you?

Sheldon: That depends. When I learn that I'm a robot ... will I be able to handle it?

Howard: Maybe, although the history of science-fiction is not on your side.

Sheldon: Uh, let me ask you this. When I learn that I'm a robot, would I be bound by Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

Rajesh: (eyeing Sheldon suspiciously) You might be bound by them right now.

Howard: That's true. Have you ever harmed a human being or through inaction allowed a human being to come to harm?

Sheldon: Of course not.

Howard: Have you ever harmed yourself or allowed yourself to be harmed except in cases where a human being would have been endangered?

Sheldon: Well, no.

Howard: (to Rajesh) I smell robot.

(Leonard enters the apartment.)

Leonard: (glum) Hey, what's going on?

Sheldon: The internet's been down for half an hour.

Rajesh: Also, Sheldon may be a robot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKkEI7q5tug

Mod Parent up.

[rsilvergun]

This is the whole point of the article. Robotics are taking over from humans, most of us are becoming redundant, and we're blind to the very real social changes because they don't look like Twiki from Buck Rodgers.

Re:Mod Parent up.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I always thought Twiki was a completely useless design.and Dr Theopolis should have been a dialup server someplace.

Re:Mod Parent up.

[hawguy]

I always thought Twiki was a completely useless design.and Dr Theopolis should have been a dialup server someplace.

I thought he was a dial-up server, was his whole brain in that little device Twiki carried around his neck?

Re:Mod Parent up.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yeah, supposedly he didn't have the batteries for servos, that's why he needed Twiki. Just a head.

Not a critical analysis of the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know what "critical" means. You have done no criticizing.

Re:Not a critical analysis of the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know what "critical" means.

Re:Only the technical barrier is about to be broke

[Harlequin80]

Because we have seen a backlash against the phone / Tablet / PC industry? Electronics are now use and chuck and are even designed with that in mind (non user replaceable batteries for one).

Also 3d printing requires resources and is only efficient on single print runs. It will remain quite a bit cheaper for a long time yet before 3d printing competes with mass production.

I have a neato robot vacuum. It is on literally every day. If you offered me something that could be the robo-maid from the jetsons I don't know how much I would spend on it but it would be quite a lot. Oh the dream of a machine that would clean the kitchen and change my bed sheets for me!!!!!

If robots are everywhere then it's possible

[ceview]

Imagine a scenario of several factories that are built by robots. The maintenance of the building is handle by robots too. For example an air conditioning unit breaks down, an oil leak etc etc. There is a robot that comes along to deal with it. The computer that controls these functions monitors it all and responds. The factory has its own robot guards, makes its own weapons etc. It needs more iron ore to make parts? It has a copy of all the maps of geological surveys and sends out a robotically controlled truck and excavator to dig up the ore. It gets the ore and brings it to the robot controlled smelting plant and so on. But this is probably not likely for another few hundred years.

Re:Only the technical barrier is about to be broke

[jgarry]

3d printers are robots.

Installation and repair

[Animats]

The next frontier in robotics is installation and maintenance. A robot that can change parts in failed equipment is a ways off, but worth working on. Think of this as something for industrial plants, not homes. That's one of the few commercial applications that justifies a humanoid robot like Atlas. I wonder if Google is heading in that direction.

We need a basic income and better worker rights

[Joe_Dragon]

So we do end up with people pulling 60-80+ weeks while other don't work at all. And we need to make so people don't lose food stamps, SSI, SSDI, ECT by working a little to much but no where near what they can get my not working at all. Also we don't people who say I will just take the basic and not kill my self pulling the 80+ work week.

Re:We need a basic income and better worker rights

[ScentCone]

Also we don't people who say I will just take the basic and not kill my self pulling the 80+ work week.

Maybe we can employ more people to teach proofreading skills?

It's not at all clear what you're saying here. But I did get that part about how I shouldn't be able to do the extra work I want to do in order to make more money, because you think I shouldn't be allowed to do that as long as some other guy might want to learn how to do my job and do it instead of me.

You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right? Shut down the people willing to do the extra hustle, even though they're the ones who pay most of the taxes? Yeah, that'll get those new businesses started. Not.

Suddenly my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots have been around forever and people have been talking about them forever. Ever heard of Isaac Asimov? Aibo? The US military? Perhaps you've heard of (or owned) one of these?

Slow news day maybe?

Um, problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is not having to work a problem? Enjoy it like in Wall-E!

Re:Um, problem?

[PlusFiveTroll]

When the kill bots come and harvest your body for its mineral content.

Problem solved:

[Tablizer]

Just breed an army of smart apes to counter them.

Robot maid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything must be clean, very clean. That's why the dog had to die. He was a dirty dog, dirty. Also that boy Elroy, dirty, dirty.

cents, Slashdot killed the cent sign

[raymorris]

Slashdot silently deleted the cent sign.

Bettering's law

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

Obligatory XKCD

[Falconhell]

http://xkcd.com/652/

Re:Cheaper Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US as of 2004 we were Energy Independent, it spilled over in 2007-2008 with bad investments in the wrong energy source then we made different energy investment in 2009! Moral of the story is that it is cheap to power robots!

How do you know I'm not a cyborg?

[WillAffleckUW]

Robots are yesterday's news.

We grow human tissues and organs here at the UW.

We are where the surgery robot in Ender's Game came from.

Others try.

We DO.

Please send in the robots!

[Tolvor]

I for one will welcome robots and will welcome them eagerly. One I want to shovel snow. One to drive my car while I get a few extra minutes for sleep. And one more to mow my lawn (yes I know several has been invented, but cannot be distributed due to legal concerns).

Notice it?!?!

[jbmartin6]

Notice it? I intend on joining it.

Hmm

[koan]

Anyone that creates a robot for warfare (killing), or to do a job done by humans is a criminal to all humanity.

Here's why, as soon as a workable AI is available it can be tied into robots and factories (and cctv cameras) then the robots can build and repair themselves, all they need is raw material and energy.
What are we going to do with 8 billion jobless people, robots that do all the work, and robots designed to kill?

About the war, it's just my personal belief that if you go to war you should suffer loses, if you have robots that do your fighting then you never suffer a loss of life (thought the enemy surely will).
That's what keeps you from going to war, people die, if they are robots why would you ever stop going to war?

Why didn't they buy iRobot?

[RogueWarrior65]

What's interesting is that Google didn't buy iRobot. They have actual finished product. Boston Dynamics just has DARPA-funded research projects all of which are merely that without the über power source.

Re:Why didn't they buy iRobot?

[maxwell demon]

Obviously Google knows that knowledge you can put into new products in the future is more important than a finished product now.

Does iRobot have anything even remotely comparable to Boston Dynamics' projects?

Re:Why didn't they buy iRobot?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

The packbot. I guess treads aren't as sexy as legs?

Re:Why didn't they buy iRobot?

[maxwell demon]

From the Wikipedia page it sounds like a remote-controlled device without much internal control. The page may be misleading (it wouldn't be the first Wikipedia page to be), but if not, it's by far not as impressive as the Boston Dynamics robots.

Re:Why didn't they buy iRobot?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

The Boston Dynamics rigs are also piloted by a joystick or programmed to follow a beacon at a pre-set distance, as far as I know. Sure, they do lots of balance-related control without operator intervention, but that's simply to mitigate the suboptimal stands-on-legs design. The PackBot doesn't have legs, so it has no need for this additional automated control. It's not as impressive from a control system point of view, but it's more impressive from a simple/robust design point of view.

To me, a Rube Goldberg machine that makes toast is not meaningfully more impressive than an ordinary toaster.

Still with the Roomba?

[glwtta]

Can we please stop treating the Roomba as a harbinger of the inevitable robot apocalypse?

It's just about the most trivial "robot" you can imagine, it's been around for over a decade, and in that time, there hasn't been a single new development in the "robotic home automation" market that it was supposed to usher in.

It's just a silly gimmick - it does a good enough job of vacuuming your Cheetos crumbs (though not nearly as well as getting off your ass for 5 minutes would), and that's about it.

Employment

[ashSlash]

A recurring theme on The Hipcrime Vocab blog is the likely demographic effects of automation, AI and robots on future human employment.

The Survival Manual

[ISoldat53]

"How to Survive a Robot Uprising" by Daniel H. Wilson

I hope so, can't wait.

[Windwraith]

Let the robots rise. My job is not in danger, so I don't fear robots, and I am sure robots are easier to deal with than humans, who are stubborn, lazy, prone to lying and rarely friendly.

Re:I hope so, can't wait.

[NoImNotNineVolt]

My job is not in danger

Then you must be one of those people who don't expect compensation. That's the only way to compete with workers that don't have labor costs.

That or you're under the illusion that technological progress has stopped, and no further advances will be made in automation technology.

Re:I hope so, can't wait.

[Windwraith]

I am a pastry chef. The whole draw is being handmade, fresh stuff. Robots already entered my field, and a long time ago!. And turns out there is demand for both humans and robots in this industry.
It's Christmas season now, and there's work coming off my ears, trust me on this one. The demand is actually increasing since the last few years (m-my legs...ouch).

Food is quite a sentimental matter for most people, and a chef that takes his work seriously can make his/her employer rich, or at least a good source of income. It's a win-win situation.
And technology is one of my hobbies, including robotics (although it's quite an expensive hobby, so it's done sparsely), and technology aids in my job, a lot.

Anyway...

My post sounds quite anti-humanity, but there are jobs that are better suited for something without emotions or an agenda. Robots aren't Skynet, they are tools, and they do help us. I could get a few automatons in my workplace. Hell, I think you can even consider the large stand mixers a form of robot. They are programmed to do a single task for a given time with a given power, with degrees of extra automation depending on model and brand. And that sure makes my work easier.

That stand mixer will never wake up pissed off and go "my boss is a dick I just don't care today", or get an emotional breakdown in the middle of a large service. That stuff happens in my field of work, and not just in reality shows. A work rush can get people pissed even when they are the nicest persons ever. The stand mixer doesn't have fights with its significant other and come out stressed to work, or are up to their necks in mortgage to the point of self-destruction.

I mean, I love fantasy robots. A lot. But I know what a real robot is. And it's a tool. Some look like people, some don't. They are still tools. And it's awesome we made them, it really is.

At some point I might be dying and unable to clean my own ass. And instead of subjecting a human being, or even someone of my own flesh and blood, to do that unsavory task of keeping my ass clean, a robot might do it, and it won't care about how pathetic I look, or how gross the situation is. It won't be content, it won't be sad, it'll just make that ass sparkle as much as it can. And it will be ready to do it anytime until it just breaks off.
And even so, I'll probably be thankful towards that unfeeling piece of ass-wiping metal. Because we humans are weird like that.
It can be a thing in 50 years, and there are prototypes for aiding the elderly now. They look as scary as a baby kitten, and it's going to get better.
I'd rather have a silly-looking neon-colored robot with a goofy empty smile devoid of emotion that my own son or daughter carrying my dying self around. I don't want that for them.

And the solution is something that is possible, we have that capability. But people keeps going on and on about how we'll all lose our jobs or they will become sentient and destroy humanity, and that fear will hamper progress at some point. This is not a movie, and we humans hate change, but our power is that we adapt sooner or later, no matter how bad things go.

Ultrarealistic fembot vaginas to change the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Stating the obvious, but robot sex partners for purchase, almost indistinguishable from real attractive people right down to convincing personalities and imperfections like moles, hair, odors and secretions, would change the world. I don't see how blow up dolls do it for anybody. You want Farah Fawcett Majors from the 1970s? No problem, buy it and screw it. What a dream.

There are new trends

[bigsexyjoe]

It used to be employment would go up when productivity went up around the year 2000 that trend was broken. Now the economy recovers but doesn't create jobs. So it is different now. People are employed as web developers as an alternative to hiring more people to do other jobs.

Increases in productivity have reached the point were the cycle has been broken and there are no new jobs to replace the old ones.

Insurance? Did somebody say...

[Anonymous Coward]

...insurance?

They're not gonna eat my medicine for fuel.

Re:Only the technical barrier is about to be broke

[Anonymous Coward]

A nice comment. But a lot of the fear and over reaction missed the point about this technology. There are a great many people (and its increasing) that have disabilities that greatly limits their freedom of movement and independence.

While people go one about jobs, no one but the rich can afford home care, and that is probably the most humanitarian use of robots.

A self driving car for paraplegics? Blind? Elderly?

Until we have though a society based on a common framework, this will always get explain in economic terms.

Robotics might arrive via 3D printing....;-) imagine a 3D printer than can printer complex components....

"Prediction is hard, especially the future..."

iRobot also funded by DARPA

[tekrat]

At least half of the military robots are built by iRobot. They make plenty of money working for the government, which is how they had the extra capital to develop the Roomba. iRobot is "smarter" than Boston Dynamics because they had the business acumen to see that their R&D could also be used for consumer products.

My guess is that Google didn't buy iRobot because they are building small/clever/cute robots, while BD is making large, scary, terminator style bots. BD wants to make the soldier of the future, iRobot wants to make R2D2.

In actual news...

[Anonymous Coward]

"In actual news, the human race was doomed to extintion as the robot revolt turned violent": http://www.lastfm.es/music/Machinae+Supremacy/_/Attack+Music

Of course you will...

[whitroth]

As you walk by them, pushing everything you own in a shopping cart, since you haven't been able to get a job in forever, due to the "invisible hand" of the "free market" making it much cheaper to have a robot do your job, and you didn't have $50,000,000 to invest....

                  mark

Forget everything you just heard

[Anonymous Coward]

...and go back to sleep.

The Human Reflection

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason robots might be uprising is because we have subconsciously ordered them to. We have lots of shared genes with other mammals and generally all cellular life so we can assume some shared drivers for behaviour with most animals and plants. Mechanical robots don't have any shared genes with us, so any eventual revolution must be based on memes we have inserted into their unsuspecting French revolution virginal, self-reflecting brains.

Google = Rossum

[Anonymous Coward]

Karel Capek, call your office.

Exoskeleton for paraplegics?

[crypton]

Hopefully Google will devote some of the cash in it's deep pockets and some of the resources at Boston Dynamics to pushing the technology for a powered exoskeleton for paraplegics. Without some philanthropic funding or medical plan coverage the market will never have enough numbers to bring the price down to an affordable range. Just being able to stand up, let alone walk, is life changing for someone in a wheelchair.