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Bring On the Boring Robots
malachiorion writes: After a successful 6-month pilot, Savioke's 'butler bots' are heading to hotels around the country. These are not sexy, scary, or even technically impressive machines. But they were useful enough, over the course of their 2,000 or so deliveries, to warrant a redesign, and a larger deployment starting in April. Savioke's CEO had some interesting things to say about the pilot, including the fact that some 95 percent of guests gave the robot a 5-star review, and only the drunks seemed to take issue with it. Plus, as you might expect, everyone seemed to want to take a damn selfie with it. But as small as the stakes might appear, highly specialized bots like this one, which can only do one thing (in this case, bring up to 10 pounds of stuff from the lobby to someone's door) are a better glimpse of our future than any talk of hyper-competent humanoids or similarly versatile machines.
...as an astromech droid serving drinks aboard a sail barge.
And the best part is the robot doesn't sit around waiting for a tip and look impatient when you look for your wallet.
I think this is mainly going to be an excuse for hotels to add a daily $7.99 (+ $1.39 tax) "Robot Fee" to your bill.
>> We pretty much already have special purpose robots, it's just nobody refers to them as such
That's because they're NOT robots, they're machines.
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-literal-difference-between-a-machine-and-a-robot
Well, "boring" robots might represent the IMMEDIATE future, but highly integrated AI is already the present (search, siri, etc), and highly integrated AGI will follow with high probability, with highly integrated ASI highly likely to follow after that. There is no reason that I can find to think differently, outside of handwaving "it's impossible" arguments, which are immediately disproven by the existence of our own brains and the incredible things we have been able to do with neural nets on par with insect brains.
Have gnu, will travel.
Even leaving aside the absolutely pathetic weight limit, that is not even an empty suitcase, or a single change of cloths, we already have these; They are called elevators.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
From parent post:
I already have a "robot" that opens my garage door when I'm near,
From your link:
The other definition is a machine that does something a human might do.
Without the automatic garage door opening, a human would have to open it.
Same goes for electric gates as well.
I have a robot in my kitchen that washes dishes and one in the laundry that washes clothes.
I am rather grateful every time I go to fetch something that has slipped down into the drain that my garbage disposal is not evaluating the probability my fingers should constitute moving to the Destroy All Matter mode on its internal state diagram.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We are gradually moving towards a future where we don't ever directly interact with other humans. All of our "interpersonal" relationships will be handled through technology proxies, and robots will take care of all our lonely needs.
Me, I'd rather be a Spacer - not part of this generation.
#DeleteChrome
What's interesting is, today we'd like to give these jobs to really expensive machines instead of people -- right at the moment when jobs for people are disappearing. We are no longer interested in "the lobby boy who knows what you want before you do"; we'd rather interact with machines, because you don't have to say "Thank You" to a machine. I guess we're too busy putting the "ad" in Advanced Civilization to remember the "civil" part.
No, the point the article is trying to make is that you will not be impressed by the robots of the future. Rather than amazing high tech marvels, what will become common is everyday robots that are just good enough to do what they need to.
I, for one, welcome our new robot underlords.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
When it cooks too, it becomes a wife.
You're young, and this change ought to scare you. Us oldies have an outside chance of being able to afford some of these fine robots to replace your ass.
The machines are capable of working 24/7/365 (minus the maintanance hours) for no pay. In the long run, the reason menial jobs are being replaced by machines is that in many cases the machines are capable of doing the same job with far less cost per hour, and in the end that's what matters, not how much the machine costs out front.
Jobs for people aren't disappearing, they're changing. The demand for low-skill physical labor has been going steadily down since the 1700s because as I already said: if you can do the job with a machine, chances are it's going to be cheaper and faster in the long run. At the same time as many jobs have disappeared, new ones have emerged and keep emerging.
Thank you has nothing to do with it. The two possible scenarios for me to charge my local travel card (ie. train ticket) here in Helsinki are as follows:
1) Go to a kiosk or a store, wait in line, hand the card to the person and state the amount of money/time I want entered, wait for the person to do that, then pay and take the card
or
2) go to an ticket vending machine, put the card in, press literally 4 buttons to renew my last purchase (I usually buy a month at a time), slap in my debit card, punch in the pin and be done
The fact of the matter is, there's usually way less waiting in line at the machine, and the actual buying itself takes less time. I've no problem telling thank you to the sale's lady, but in most situations using the machine is just more handy unless I happen to have some other business to take care of at the store at the same time.
The same is true for many, many services that used to be handled by clerks: I'll rather do my check-in at the airport or the harbor via a machine because it's easier and quicker, no need to go stand in line to buy concert tickets as I can buy them online and print them out or just have 'em read the QR-code from the phone screen, etc...
So unfortunately no, I cannot agree with this" you don't have to thank the machine" -BS. The machine gives me the exact same end result as I'd get from a person, except it usually does it faster. Unless the product/service I'm buying is so complicated that I need a guy there to help me figure out what I need to get, having a person there brings no additional benefit for me as a customer.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
For me the problem isn't so much the machines, it is that we still have a political/economic system based on the idea that everybody needs to work to survive, yet we are quickly creating a society where only the smartest are able to do that.
In Finland you seem to have a much better appreciation of this and invest into things like education so that people can work in these new jobs in addition to having a more redistributive income tax system. However this is not common throughout the western world, and indeed in countries like the UK the quality and value of the education system has been eroded (thanks to the for-profit focus) over the last decade to the point where many graduates leave with little more than debt. In addition the de-facto tax system here is heavily skewed in favour of the wealthy (if you own capital it is easy to evade tax).
This dysfunction is what automation threatens to expose, and I think this is more what the original poster is lamenting when s/he talks about the problems with these machines.
Having been to Helsinki many years ago, you have a very unique culture and socio-political system. I hope you can serve as an example for others as to how this sort of automation tech can improve life for everybody rather than destroy the middle class.
We are quickly moving towards a pantsless society, and I couldn't be happier.