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Robots4Us: DARPA's Response To Mounting Robophobia
malachiorion writes DARPA knows that people are afraid of robots. Even Steve Wozniak has joined the growing chorus of household names (Musk, Hawking, Gates) who are terrified of bots and AI. And the agency's response--a video contest for kids--is equal parts silly and insightful. It's called Robots4Us, and it asks high schoolers to describe their hopes for a robot-assisted future. Five winners will be flown to the DARPA Robotics Competition Finals this June, where they'll participate in a day-after discussion with experts in the field. But this isn't quite as useless as it sounds. As DRC program manager Gill Pratt points out, it's kids who will be impacted by the major changes to come, moreso than people his age.
My concern is that companies will continue their current methods of spending money. For example:
Current:
Revenue: $100,000,000 per year
Salaries, VP+: $30,000,000 per year
Salaries, standard: $40,000,000 per year
Other (R&D, maintenance, etc): $30,000,000 per year
With Robots:
Revenue: $110,000,000 per year
Salaries: VP+ $50,000,000 per year
Salaries, standard: $30,000,000 per yar
Other (R&D, maintenance, etc): $30,000,000 per year
How'd they flip salaries? With robots in place, after the initial expenditure of conversion, you're bringing in $10,000,000 per year extra due to simply making things more efficient -- faster work, less errors, less levels of management. You've laid off $10,000,000 worth of employees, work now done by robots, and given that salary savings to the executives. The other option, which many companies decide not to take, is to raise salaries for the remaining standard employees, reduce time worked for standard employees while keeping them at their current rate, train standard employees in other tasks, etc. There's lots of places for that extra $20M to go instead of executives' pockets. And those places would be better for the company's future, if not for the executives' vacation destinations.