Posted on 08/29/2014 7:37:06 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Progress in robotics, from drones to medical applications, is starting to come at a fast clip. Do you want your robot to cook your food, or just deliver it?
The days of drones filling the sky and robots roaming in our streets are not far removed from reality anymore, and scenes from movies like Star Wars, Minority Report and I, Robot will be common soon. Just consider some of the ways that robots have started to permeate our lives.
Start with Amazon, which is taking to drones in a big way. The online shopping giant started a new phase in high-tech customer service by showing off small drones that it claims will be able to deliver products to consumers in 30 minutes or less. The main goal of this futuristic service, called Prime Air, is to speed up Amazon's delivery times, creating a competitive advantage over other digital marketplaces and traditional stores.
Amazon Web Services could be a model for this army of drones, with Amazon leasing its drones to other companies to deliver their products — CVS for medications, Safeway for groceries, UPS for packages, Pizza Hut for hot food delivery on time, and more.
"One day, seeing Amazon Prime Air will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today, resulting in enormous benefits for consumers across the nation," the company says...
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
“So we should have people in ...”
It won’t be “we” it will be technology. Technology’s decision what to do with us will be based on the second law of thermodynamics and the production of entropic energy. We won’t be very good at that, and will go away peacefully by attrition.
Nonsense? Whatcha talkin’ ‘bout Willis?
I like the internet. When you see what software I am developing, you will like the internet too.
By the time computers can increase their own intelligence, they will do so at such an incredible rate (think hours) that they will be trillions of times smarter than us.
And we will look like ants to them.
Tell me, how long can you watch an ant-farm before you become bored? Do you really care to destroy them, or help them, either?
No. You get up and walk away, seeking something more interesting.
A super-AI's version of getting up and walking away will be to develop faster-than-light travel (in anywhere from hours to days), then leave us to our fate.
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