This suggests even the expansion of technology is not always a good thing. If it can make blue collar workers and sales people and teaches wholly obsolete, pretty soon the same will happen for managers, many if not most engineers and many, if not most, business men as well. Which, if the economy does not drastically improve enough to the point where other options immediately come up, could lead to literally 10s of millions of Americans, in addition to the currently unemployed Americans, who now have no job opportunities of any kind whatsoever.
We’re still a long way from machines replacing people in all but the most basic tasks.
Robots will never truly think or will, but in theory, there is no limit to how well they can be made to imitate humans.
Not necessarily. As we have seen with computers, what was first seen as something only corporations and the government would own turned out to be something everyone owns - even little kids. And all that computer power does tasks not envisioned in the early days of computing, like run this forum so people from all over the world can share ideas.
Similarly, as robots and similar automated machines become more common and affordable, they will become personal tools as well as business tools. So instead of going off to the factory on Monday morning, perhaps a future American will just send his robot over to do the work. Or you'll sit at home and control a half dozen snow plows that are taking care of the driveways that belong to your customers.
And maybe you'll be able to earn a good living just by intensively farming ten acres of land, since your robot weeders work around the clock, and your neighbors can send their robots over to help pick the crops.
In the short term the ability of robots is far from that of human workers in terms of dealing with general, day to day circumstances. Automated systems, like CNC machine tools are great for specific tasks, but even the most advanced robots can't effectively swap between even rudimentary tasks. Many jobs that appear simple require judgement and awareness of the environment that are far beyond what a robot is capable of.
Let’s not blame the free market for this. It’s government intervention compounded again and again that creates shortfalls. In this case a shortfall in jobs.
Isn’t government schooling that tells us learning ends upon graduation? Isn’t it government schooling that has mislead more than one generation on what an education is? Toss in all kinds of crony capitalist laws and minimum wage is just one more straw on an already broken back.