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

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.

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.