Robotic Nation (Robots take over by 2050)

How Stuff Works ^ | 7-22-03 | Marshall Brain

[kildak]

Robot Insurance.....Because you never know when the metal ones may come for you.

[dogbyte12]

It seems alot of the problems will end up being software rather than hardware. We could probably do a ton more with what we have now, if we figured out how to tell the machines to do what we wanted them to do.

I am reminded a bit of Windows Source Code bloat. Compare the elegance of code written 20 years ago, where each bit was precious. Some elegant things were done under those limitations. Now, there is a bunch o crap, but the lousiness of it all is compensated by, with brute force.

Can't brute force simply get us around many hurdles? Even if an elegant solution to incredible optical recognition is theoretically available in say 2025, even without an intuitive solution 15 years later, won't power end up trumping it all in the end?

I guess an analogy for me would be, teaching a robot to run a mile in 4 minutes, but you can only figure out how to do it by having him skip, shuffle, wind it's arms twice with each stride, which are totally extraneous bits. With power though, you can stretch beyond the bare minimums, with out bothering with elegance.

We can argue about the date all we want. It may not be 50. It could be 100, or 150, but it is coming. It's inevitable. It also is a paradigm shift beyond that of any other technological advance. The whole reason d'etre is to replace all jobs done by those who do not have any special skills. People who have 85 IQ's can't stop being buggy drivers, and start mopping floors, or flipping burgers. There has always been a shift in menial labor, but a process to eliminate menial labor in toto is a brand new animal.

We will have a choice between armed forces, or socialism. A democracy can not function with more than half of the people redundant in the economic system.

[discostu]

That's a large part of why I think Moore's law doesn't really apply. I think we're missing key intuitive leaps, we're trying to tackle things through brute force and we need to find a way to program intuition. I remember a guy a long time ago explained how the math to judge the trajectory of a flying football to be in a position to catch it would take a doezn hours and relly on information that most people don't have (specific barometric preasure and exact win speed and angle), and yet we just eyeball it. Right now they're trying to tackle these kind of issues with brute force which can't be done without giving the robots all kinds of cool sensors, we need to find a way to give them intuition, they need to be able to eyeball it and until they do the dream of robots can't come to pass.

I don't think robots present a serious threat to the average manual laborer. That's another thing people have been saying is right around the corner for decades, so far nothing. We've lost many times more jobs to overseas than to automation. As for floor mopping we've got robots RIGHT NOW that will do it, and compared to the labor cost of janitors they're pretty cheap (3 to 5 grand, pricey for the home but when you figure minimum wage is roughly 11 grand a year a pretty good price). A robot will never be able to achieve the level of flexibility a human can, people can work overtime when a big wig is showing up when a robots bateries run out their batteries have run out.

[Consort]

Nano viruses (very little robots) might do us in before that.

[Axenolith]

http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/P3/

Neural nets will go a long way toward making them independant problem solvers.

You seen AI yet?

[Lancey Howard]

Thanks for that image.
I still have my Magnus, Robot Fighter comic books from the '60s, although I don't have the one you pictured. The cover art on the ones I have (earliest one is #2) is very good, better than the average comic books of that era. Gold Key usually did have good art, though.

[jwh_Denver]

"Excuse me, bithead, hey you moron robot, there's not enough "bites" in my burger."

[radiohead]

lower functioning units

Great phrase! I was going to chime in with something about not everyone wanting technology or needing intellectually stimulating employment, but I think I'll stop right here.

Do you think my liberal classmates will think I'm rude when I refer to the lower functioning units who are footing the bill for our fully-funded Ph.Ds via the unconstitutional taxes on their McDonalds wages? They use more high falutin' words to describe the masses, but I bet lower functioning units will get their attention!

[jwh_Denver]

http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/P3/

Wow, I'm really glad they put "Robot" on it otherwise I would never have known.

[RightWhale]

lower functioning units will get their attention!

It's right out of their own style manual.

[Jonah Hex]

Artists like Leiji Matsumoto also popularized the style of tall willowy women with expressive eyes and hair of exotic hues. Of course, some of Matsumoto's characters illustrated the extremes!