oh well...
Posted on 10/28/2014 12:31:21 PM PDT by Hojczyk
If you plan to shop at Lowe’s (LOW) Orchard Supply Hardware store in San Jose California next month, you might find your sales associate replaced by a five-foot tall, taking robot.
These robotic shopping assistants, or OSHbots, will be the first of their kind in the country. They will greet customers, ask them if they need help and show them through the store to the customers' desired products. The robot will also feature screens on its front and back which will display ads for products as well as allow customers the option to videoconference with an in-store sales associate.
Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Aaron Task said it is “amazing” technology, but also points out the implications of adding OSHbots to stores. “The downside is you don’t need a human begin on the floor of your store now if you can do this…” and while there will still be a person in the store assisting via video conference, this means “one human being with a job but there are a lot of human beings who used to be on the floor and now don’t have jobs.”
The robot was created through a partnership with Lowe’s and Fellow Robots. Kyle Nel, the Executive Director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs tells the Wall Street Journal the robots will bring some of the benefits of the e-commerce experience into a physical store.
In its next phase, the robot could have the ability to scan a particular part presented by the customer, say, a nail or a bolt, and actually generate it using a 3D printer built into the body of the robot itself.
This isn’t the plot of a new science-fiction movie, but Task says “we are getting closer and closer to an era where artificial intelligence robots are interacting with us and are going
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Actually yes, they can speak Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, or whatever else the management deems worthy. Speech recognition and synthesis engines are available for probably all languages on this planet. It's just a matter of buying a license.
This makes robots actually better than humans in some way. For example, your local store people may have nobody who can speak Swahili. However if you press the button on the robot and choose Swahili, you will be connected, via VoIP, to the only specialist in the whole OSH system who speaks the language. Can you imagine getting the same level of support out of your local sales guy in the aisle?
And, naturally, on-screen menus (the map of the store, list of departments, etc.) can be in any language. The "guide me to the shelf" part is not insignificant, as more than once I held a printout in my hand that said "this item is available at this store" and couldn't find it. Then I asked the worker - and here it is, hanging on a peg in a section that I didn't even consider looking at.
Lay a firring strip in front of it and walk away. ;-)
Better yet slap a Ready for Hillary! bumper sticker on the touchscreen.
Looks like 6whine and chadboy won’t have the backup jobs after all.
You’re an idiot.
At my local Lowes in New Port Richey, FL, employees know where EVERYTHING is, and they have a team on weekends that does nothing else but walk around and direct people to what they are looking for.
Lowes also gives ex-military 10% off on everything, everyday.
Perhaps you’re thinking of the guys across the street in the orange aprons?
They need to put trailer hitches on them. If they're going to follow me they can pull my shopping cart for me.
I like technology, but I hate the thought of being followed by, or following, a giant advertisement.
...
I can’t stand the gas pumps with the ads.
Yeah, the talking Murphy Oil pumps are almost enough for me to pay a penny or two more a gallon somewhere else.
Almost....
” and show them through the store to the customers’ desired products. “
I went to HD recently and asked two associates to help me locate a 3/8” to 1/2” barbed splice.
No luck.
I went back home and their website said 8 in stock.
I went back the next day and asked an associate for one stating it was on their internet inventory.
He said I must have been looking at another store.
I pulled out my smartphone and looked it up. Eight in stoc k in Aisle 10.
I went over and found them.
I am sure a robot would have located it ....
oh well...
History is not linear. Technologically advanced societies have risen and fallen through the ages. Minos, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Romans, the Chinese dynasties, even we, too, shall see our time come to an end.
We are not growing into some sort of utopia that will enable all people to have luxury time to do what they want because we’ll all be rich. There are hardworking people out there who will never have the mental, physical or financial capabilities to work beyond low-skilled jobs. What will happen to them when they have no means of supporting themselves?
We already have a huge number of people sitting around getting paid by the government not to agitate.
The technological changes from the early industrial era to the 20th century were incredible, but they cannot compare to the rapid exponential advancements of today.
Without the underpinning of a Christian ethic toward one’s fellow man, we are lost. We live in a post-Christian era where secularism rules and the individual is their own god.
If you truly believe that laying off more workers is going to lead to some pinnacle of human society where machines wipe our butts, cook our food, make our clothes, build our houses, care for the sick, clean our homes, create art, and protect us...with all that kind of technology available, what good are people for?
Mass population reduction is the agenda here. People are naively embracing the freedom that technology will bring us from our earthly burdens. But who will be those select that will inherit the earth?
But hey if you are a cucumber wanting to have safe sex were covered no pun intended
There is no "or" in that sentence. It's "and." We see it already, and it will be only worse.
One could think that it's really nice to stay at home, do not work (because robots do everything, and magically the conversion from capitalism to communism has occurred.) What percentage of those "free humans" will choose to write books, create art, and dance? I'd say pretty much as many as today - meaning, a fraction of a percent. It takes talent, and very few have it.
What will other people do? What is it that, historically, people always do when they are left alone? They start creating tribes, hierarchies of power. This is in human genes. Some people - not many, but enough - are motivated by personal power. They will be perfectly positioned to acquire control of the society, as they don't need to waste their time on hunting their food.
At the same time there are people who find it enjoyable to inflict pain into others. We see it today in many CCTV clips on YouTube. Those become the perfect soldiers for the power-crazy.
One could say: "But hold on, there is no money in this society, why would anyone want to do any of that?" The answer is simple: you can get material goods from a robot for free, but robots don't manufacture human emotions - so those, obviously, become the new currency. A thug can earn it in the gang. In the brave new world of tomorrow a few percent of the least intellectually burdened will be just walking the streets and randomly attacking strangers. Oh, by the way, this is already happening. You can say that a few percent is not much... but if only 1% of the population performs 99 attacks each, everyone in the world will be beaten, maimed, or killed. You cannot guard everyone, unless every person will be issued a personal defense robot.
The myth that technology is creating MORE jobs has been shattered over the last decade. It does create many new & different kinds of jobs, but in numbers of job positions (maybe one programmer for all the robots in Lowes with maybe two maintenance & repair guys; replacing a dozen or more human retail workers) that are LESS than the numbers of job positions needed to be filled previously by humans.
Over time it is NOT a sustainable trend, but it will unfortunately bring demands for politics to resolve it.
Just think of Henry Ford and how he gave raises so at least his own workers could consider buying his cars. Eliminate more human job positions than the remaining positions available for humans, and who is left to buy the products being designed, manufactured, transported, delivered and sold by the robots or at least “robotics” in general?
We've already seen an economic disconnect in this period of economic “recovery” with decreasing U.S. employment participation rates & sluggish job growth but some of the best profit rates ever for some companies, yet they are profits still not translating into great overall economic or job growth.
You can say its only “irrational fears” but in many ways a larger number of humans are becoming superfluous in both "industry" and "services".
Exactly, we must never forget the tens of thousand of years of human history behind us. There is an arrogance here that we are moving to a one-world Utopia where we will be unburdened by the shackles of human drudgery. But people will always need more. And what will happen then?
To quote the great film, Apocalypto:
"And a Man sat alone, drenched deep in sadness. And all the animals drew near to him and said, "We do not like to see you so sad. Ask us for whatever you wish and you shall have it."
The Man said, "I want to have good sight." The vulture replied, "You shall have mine." The Man said, "I want to be strong."
The jaguar said, "You shall be strong like me."
Then the Man said, "I long to know the secrets of the earth."
The serpent replied, "I will show them to you." And so it went with all the animals. And when the Man had all the gifts that they could give, he left.
Then the owl said to the other animals, "Now the Man knows much, he'll be able to do many things. Suddenly I am afraid."
The deer said, "The Man has all that he needs. Now his sadness will stop."
But the owl replied, "No. I saw a hole in the Man, deep like a hunger he will never fill. It is what makes him sad and what makes him want. He will go on taking and taking, until one day the World will say, 'I am no more and I have nothing left to give.'"
I didn’t say new technology is going to create more jobs. I said it’s going to open up lots of new areas of job opportunities. Instead of new I should perhaps have used the word “different”. And no, neither I nor others my age are totally clueless. We are, perhaps because of our age and background, focused on other areas of society such as the moral decline, runaway spending of government, or climbing tax rates to name a few issues. Our children are raised and gone, we generally don’t have huge mortgages or extravagant lifestyles to maintain.
From a purely technological perspective, there are three groups of people in the U.S. The 35 and under, the 40-65 and the over 65. The 35 and under has grown up in an almost totally automated society. The over 65 group has grown up and aged without being pushed totally into the electronic world. The group in the middle has and will continue to suffer the consequences of the changes wrought by the Obama regime and it is their lives that are going to be affected the most. It is their jobs that are gone and are not coming back, some not for the foreseeable future, others not ever.
Personally, I shop at my local hardware store, not Lowe’s or Home Depot, do my deposits with a teller, not an automated system, go through the non-automated line at the grocery store and buy my meat at the local butcher shop. I do this not because I’m opposed to automation, but because this is the one thing I can do to prove to companies that service by a human being is still important enough to retain.
In my small business, I automate everything I can. Not because I want to get rid of employees but because I simply don’t want to deal with all the state and federal regulations that one must adhere to when having employees. So if you want to start somewhere, launch a campaign against Washington to get rid of regulations that cause businesses to look elsewhere for ways to make a profit.
Home Depot has to motivate their staff to actually help customers; in my area there are a lot of self-checkout registers that probably cost some of the “hiders” their jobs...
Luddites have made those type claims for centuries. They never seem to understand that society is not stagnet. Productivity climbs and new task are desired, paid for, and cause employment. It is not a claimed utopia. It is just normal progression of society.
You keep your fears. I’ll keep learning new stuff; it helps keep me happy.
I hear you and don’t disagree with anything you said.
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