Gadzooks! Let me sleep on it... 
and I'll get back to you--
Posted on 01/24/2014 2:28:11 PM PST by Second Amendment First
It is an invisible force that goes by many names. Computerization. Automation. Artificial intelligence. Technology. Innovation. And, everyone's favorite, ROBOTS.
Whatever name you prefer, some form of it has been stoking progress and killing jobs—from seamstresses to paralegals—for centuries. But this time is different: Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in "a decade or two," according to a new paper by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, discussed recently in The Economist. The question is: Which half?
Another way of posing the same question is: Where do machines work better than people? Tractors are more powerful than farmers. Robotic arms are stronger and more tireless than assembly-line workers. But in the past 30 years, software and robots have thrived at replacing a particular kind of occupation: the average-wage, middle-skill, routine-heavy worker, especially in manufacturing and office admin.
Indeed, Frey and Osborne project that the next wave of computer progress will continue to shred human work where it already has: manufacturing, administrative support, retail, and transportation. Most remaining factory jobs are "likely to diminish over the next decades," they write. Cashiers, counter clerks, and telemarketers are similarly endangered. On the far right side of this graph, you can see the industry breakdown of the 47 percent of jobs they consider at "high risk."
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Someone my age has to do something otherwise conversations consist of a lot of; You know that movie we saw back in 87, their was this guy with a gun that was shooting at the girl who was in the bar and he shot the bartender instead, yeah that guy.
Believe it or not we answer those type questions all the time on our iPad with IMDB.
And yet hardware continues to improve.
Compare what’s possible right now vs. what was possible in 1994. Now, extrapolate (even conservatively) out to 2034.
What jobs will require humans at all? Very few.
In a freer economy new jobs replace the old. The straight-jacketed government-subsidized econmy of today will prevent that for quite a while, quite a while.
First the managers repace the workers with robots... then the owners replace the managers.
Yes, Twilight Zone did it way back,
When will the Equal Rights/Wages for ROBOTS movement begin?
Congress.
Bender2 PING- your input is requested here.
Triple the minimum wage. That will slow down the automation process.
Once people start replacing wives with robots, I suppose the libs will want to legalize robot/human marriage. Which I think is much better than gay marriage. After all, a robot probably won’t be causing problems with unsafe sex… unless the human dies from sex with the robot then in that case there will be a fight over the robot inheriting everything. Automation, auto-mating, whatever.
Didn't Harry Mudd in a Star Trek episode make a robot cyborg that looked just like his ex-wife… just so he could order it to shut up?
Robots will only take jobs Americans and illegal aliens won’t do.
‘Sounds like something a robot the size of a vacuum cleaner could do. ‘
LOL! You tell me: The Unit would have to find the grave in one of hundreds of cemeteries up to 450 acres each, remove all obstructions to the stone including digging it out if it is buried as well as tilting, lifting or moving the up to 1200 lb stone, assess the free space on the stone with respect to the desired inscription, make any necessary changes to the order, lay out the inscription, cut the template, glue same to stone (first cleaning stone), patch the template then, with up to 150 lbs of media called staurolite sandblast the template @90lbs/185CFM (requires 3000lbs of compressor) while assessing the template surface for burning or lifting (one full second of which will blow a hole in the stone which will then require repair or a new stone), asses the depth of letters, remove template, remove glue from stone, place stone in original position if moved, replace any plantings previously removed, blow dust and staurolite from grave, grave stone, neighboring graves and stones. Repeat 8 to 10 times per day.
Gadzooks! Let me sleep on it... and I'll get back to you--
Everything manual, everything repetitive, and everything semi-skilled or less.
Machines already design and build other machines, machines already troubleshoot themselves, and machines can repair each other and install themselves easily.
Before you think you can’t be replaced look at the modern age of mining. Strip mines run with dozens of machines that don’t have any people in them, there’s one person in a tower watching and not pushing the kill switch.
Sorry but all that’s pretty easy stuff. All the parts are already there, just nobody has put them together yet. And when they do the machine will be doing 20 to 30 cycles a day.
LOL!
Not being in the industry you don’t have the slightest idea of what you are talking about.
Putting aside the necessity of cognitive reason in some tasks (the LOUD dirty cutting of the stone must be accomplished AROUND funerals and visitors) Any ONE of the separate tasks can be done by a machine and the main task already is (actual blasting of the stone albeit in factories)but once you try to put ALL of the tasks to one machine you have an impossibly complicated and huge machine and even then it CAN’T EVER BLAST AS FAST AS A MAN thus making impossible any hope of even getting past five jobs a day.
Very few cemeteries would allow a machine of any size to drive over the graves since the weight of even an F350 superduty with compressor will collapse the graves and eventually get stuck.
It will happen that people will be to poor to provide for tombstones before I will be automated out of a job.
Being in the software industry, and just generally nerdy, I know how many of the tasks you outlined we ALREADY have machines doing. Finding a specific location is easy the Death Valley test hasn’t been passed but the attempts to pass it could easily navigate a cemetery. Removing obstructions and getting the stone out, most of the strip mines in the country are doing that right now, with things much bigger and heavier than your 1200 pounds. Assessing free space on the stone with regard to adding content and adjusting to fit, the computer you’re sitting at right now has software that can do that. Making the template, cleaning the stone, afixing the template and carving is something every custom bike shop in the world has equipment to do.
It’s just a matter of putting it all together, and that’s not that tough. The only thing slowing it down is that it would be more expensive than you so it’s not worth the expense. But eventually your wages will climb and the cost of the machine will fall. The weight is the least of the problem, the key there is big wheels (like mars rovers), spread the weight over a larger area, less crushing.
We’re really looking at 5 to 10 years. The equipment exists, they just need to adjust the cost and have a reason to do it.
Less tiremore?
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