Posted on 12/14/2018 7:16:35 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Here's the rule: If something can be automated, it will be automated. If a machine can perform a task more cheaply and efficiently than a human worker, that's what will happen. That's why professions like town crier and rickshaw driver and blogger are no longer in demand. That's why "Please place item in bagging area" is the new "You've got mail." That's why, in the unlikely event that anybody is reading this, you're reading it from a screen instead of a flimsy, disposable piece of pulverized wood that a kid threw on your lawn instead of your porch like you keep telling him. That's why you can click a button and get pretty much anything you want delivered directly to your door within days, possibly hours. That's why you're not starving to death. (Quite the opposite, sorry to tell you...)
That's why I'm a big fan of machines like Flippy, the burger-flipping robot that's currently being tested at Walmart. Finally, you can buy a meal at Walmart without worrying that it's been touched by an employee of Walmart!
Not all robots are good, though. Not all robots are even robots. In 2018, even the machines are no longer safe from the threat of identity theft.
Russian state television praised a “hi-tech robot” at a technology forum that was actually a man inside a robot suit.
Russia-24, a state-owned television channel, applauded a man in a suit believing he was a real robot, saying that "Robot Boris has already learned to dance and he’s not that bad..."
Photos that emerged later showed the neckline of a person in a suit, revealing that the "robot" turned out to be a $3,800 "Alyosha the Robot" costume made by a company called Show Robots...
'Russia's most modern robot' revealed to be just a person in a suit pic.twitter.com/o5Jww8fTQJ
— The Independent (@Independent) December 13, 2018
Makes sense. If the Russkies can steal an election from a crabby old lady, why can't they steal a job from a robot?*
This is making me even more paranoid than usual, though. Now I'm thinking back to all those other "robots" we've been seeing for the past few years. Now I'm wondering how many of them were just guys in robot suits.
I mean, look at this. Just a few years ago, Boston Dynamics gave us this clumsy, pathetic piece of crap:
That junkheap could barely walk in a straight line! And yet now the big brains at BD claim they've developed this robotic super-ninja:
Either a lot of really smart guys used trial and error and science and stuff to figure out how to build a more humanlike robot, or that's just a dude in a robot suit.
Like the early chess playing robots.
The opposite in D.C. we have congressmen robots acting like humans.
That’s why professions like town crier and rickshaw driver and blogger are no longer in demand.
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