Now Hiring For a Fascinating New Kind of Job That Only a Human Can Do: Babysit a Robot (wired.com)

From a report: Book a night at LAX's Residence Inn and you may be fortunate enough to meet an employee named Wally. His gig is relatively pedestrian -- bring you room service, navigate around the hotel's clientele in the lobby and halls -- but Wally's life is far more difficult than it seems. If you put a tray out in front of your door, for instance, he can't get to you. If a cart is blocking the hall, he can't push it out of the way. But fortunately for Wally, whenever he gets into a spot of trouble, he can call out for help. See, Wally is a robot -- specifically, a Relay robot from a company called Savioke. And when the machine finds itself in a particularly tricky situation, it relies on human agents in a call center way across the country in Pennsylvania to bail it out. [...]

The first companies to unleash robots into service sectors have been quietly opening call centers stocked with humans who monitor the machines and help them get out of jams. "It's something that's just starting to emerge, and it's not just robots," says David Poole, CEO and co-founder of Symphony Ventures, which consults companies on automation. "I think there is going to be a huge industry, probably mostly offshore, in the monitoring of devices in general, whether they're health devices that individuals wear or monitoring pacemakers or whatever it might be."

Comments

Future jobs? Or future games?

[DontBeAMoran]

What if it's the short-term solution? Robots remotely operated by humans?

And if you're able to game-ify the job, you'll get people paying you to do your work!

Let me guess

[burtosis]

The job comes with a very comfy modern chair and a big red button you push very occasionally, probably getting there on a moving sidewalk. If only we old timers had some kind of preparation for this day. Oh well.

The Industy of Decimation

[geekmux]

"I think there is going to be a huge industry, probably mostly offshore, in the monitoring of devices in general, whether they're health devices that individuals wear or monitoring pacemakers or whatever it might be."

Let's not try and paint the illusion that this is some massive job creator. There will probably be ten jobs replaced by automation for every one job added to the automation monitoring.

A huge industry is being replaced by something more the size of a cottage industry.

Re:The Industy of Decimation

[geekmux]

Otherwise known as progress.

Sorry, but this has become an invalid response, because the past does not easily apply to the future.

We're not just targeting lowly repetitive jobs with automation. We're also targeting highly skilled and educated jobs. You won't be able to tell someone to simply go get an education in the future. Even the justification of higher education will start to become weaker and weaker as automation and good-enough AI take hold.

Let's see how the economy defines "progress" when employing a human is the target of obsolescence.

Re:The Industy of Decimation

[jjmcwill]

I'm extremely skeptical of the "high quality lifestyle for everyone" utopia being promoted.

In America, the Republican view is that if you're not supporting yourself through work, you're a freeloader and a drain on society. The top 1%, and even the top .1% rightfully earned their billions. They're the "job creators", and how dare we impose higher taxes on them for the betterment of the rest of society.

What you're suggesting is that Universal Basic Income becomes accepted everywhere. I feel like that's a fantasy that only happens in Science Fiction.

Re:The Industy of Decimation

[geekmux]

Let's see how the economy defines "progress" when employing a human is the target of obsolescence.

SIgh... nobody seems to comprehend that this is not the case. The target of obsolescence is human JOBS and I [for one] see no reason that people need to be employed when machine productivity is high enough to provide a high-quality lifestyle for everyone.

Sigh...you seem to have forgotten what makes the capitalistic world go 'round. Care to explain exactly how our economy survives and thrives when it is only the automation overlords receiving a paycheck? All the efficiency in the world becomes rather pointless without a massive change in the reward system, which tackling that issue is far from priority.

And please don't try and regurgitate the concept of UBI being our financial savior. As much as we want to believe that will be our utopia, We can't get the 1% to pay their fair share of taxes now, so you can rest assured that those who fund UBI will lobby to ensure it becomes nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the unemployable masses. We'll see how the definition of "high-quality" changes when billions live in the Global Welfare State. You think there's a global imbalance of wealth and power now? Look into a future where a dozen trillionaires control the entire planet.

This will happen because we will never find a cure for the disease of obscene greed.

Re:The Industy of Decimation

[Monster_user]

How does one come to own shares of robot factories, or own robots? Sure now at the transitionary period, we have the ability to buy and prepare, but as each generation erodes their livelihoods through mistakes, what is the mechanism to recover once one no longer has any robots or shares, or even the minimum one needs to provide basic survival necessities?

The forethought, restraint, and financial planning required to maintain sustainability in a capitalistic system that is post-employment/post-job creating, just doesn't exist in the human element at large.

Re:The Industy of Decimation

[Monster_user]

What do we need or want anymore that requires any amount of human labor anymore to drive an economy? I don't have any ideas that would employ any one body, much less 7 billion bodies.

We are in a race against automation. Keeping new jobs coming, and the education facilities teaching and training and humanity adapting at a fast enough rate to keep ahead of the loss of jobs due to automation. And automation itself is currently a thriving field with a lot of innovation and a lot of energy, and a lot of demand. Like a cancer or parasite consuming its host.

Automation Exists .. News at 11

[OzPeter]

This is just an extension of every automated job in factories since day one. The operators sit there monitoring the machines for problems and only intervene when there is a problem - and the process has been engineered the hell out it to minimize problems.

The "novel" approach being gushed over here seems to be that:

1. It's a robot that is being monitored.
2. The operator is working remotely.

neither of which are particularly novel, or new.

Now git off my lawn.

----

Although I recently did read a sci-fi story where some US company was touting AI home help service robots which were actually being tele-operated by ex-DACA kids who had been deported from the US back to Mexico (and were hence fluent in US English and mannerisms)

Decades if not over a century old

[davidwr]

IBM mainframes "phoned home" for tech help back before most of today's college students were born.

Robotic tape drive malfunction? Phone home and a technician was dispatched.

Even prior to the computer age, unattended automated industrial equipment had fault sensors. When a fault was detected, a remote alarm was raised and a technician was dispatched.

Same principle as 50-100+ years ago, but with 21st century sophistication and a 21st century application.

Robot suicide hotline

[Shag]

This is an improvement, since now when a robot becomes depressed, there is someone it can call, who will try to talk it out of plunging suicidally into the nearest mall fountain.

Old joke

[LQ]

Our new robot-run factory employs just one human and a dog.
What does the human do?
He feeds the dog.
What is the dog for?
To stop the human interfering with the robots.