Which is why I support the idea of a national corporation so everyone can benefit from these things.
It’s the classic who owns the means of production thing, just polarised.
Your average lad on the council estate doesn’t have a robot factory. Your average corporation can’t be trusted. Your average politician can be bunged out if they do a shit job.
A collective investment in an automated society could reap tremendous dividends for society at large, but if they don’t, people will ask why Mr Rich Man has the Robot Factory.
I don’t think they’ll be satisfied with the answers, which is why the new social contract is so essential.
Happy for a robot to take over my job. It would need to gather info from various sources, meet children and parents/carers/family gather info. Using theory, observation, different ways of talking to those people, direct work tools and being empathetic. Write it all up in different case notes, pull it all together in an assessment using evidence for the conclusion, recommending plans for children to ensure they are safe. On top of that fielding numerous calls and emails. Lots of visits, going with police, other professionals. Making referrals to other agencies for specific pieces of work. Attending court, giving evidence, writing reports etc, etc…
When is the robot taking over? I need a rest. Think my job comes in under number 1 on this list.
The danger is that under our current capitalist system, the job-taking-robots can design and build other job-taking-robots…and essentially we approach a singularity where private companies invent labour-saving devices/machines/computers which in one fell swoop outcompete the labour of other countries like China and India and obliterate their economy back to the stone age, whilst a relatively minescule class of elites become outright God-like trillionaires having a complete stranglehold on almost every single industry.
If Facebook invents this shit, then what should China do in response? What would it make sense for them to do given the fact that hundreds of millions of their citizens will in one fell swoop become totally economically unproductive and essentially a completely dependent class of adult children that need looking after?
It was interesting listening to a Sam Harris/Joe Rogan conversation on the future of AI a while back; many people in the scientific community seriously believe that AI is a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear war.
I don’t get the idea of sex robots. I mean I can completely understand the market for enhanced male masturbatory devices but surely they’d be better off going down the route of some kind of a virtual reality headset and a gizmo that wanks you off whilst you can watch ‘yourself’ plough Alexis Texas from behind? Or at least something within that realm rather than a piece of really, really obvious plastic that’s still miiiiiiles away from looking actually human.
There’s a reason that the tech companies have been investing so much in automation and AI. It cut’s out the human element. Amazon’s model works by selling everything at a lower cost. Everything is automated, the only flaw is distribution and those pesky humans who have to operate those driving machines (trucks). They’re working on getting over this complication.
The other scary technological development (and this is another reason why I’ve become more and more left-wing economically) lies in eugenics. I don’t know if this is too much of a tangent but again, under a capitalist system, as eugenics technology becomes better and better and more and more within reach, we’ll be seeing the exclusively wealthy able to genetically engineer their kids to be the tallest, strongest, most beautiful and handsome, the most intelligent, the most talented and so on. Its going to be a case of “the poor are fat and ugly because they eat crap food” x 100.
Over the Last 30 years I have seen automation take over the Oil and gas industry.
But what people appear to forget is that the instrumentation to keep everything running requires engineers and technicians.
we used to have 30 operators for a plant and 10 techs / engineers we now have 10 operators and 30 techs / engineers checking that it is all running correctly.
The amount of employees has basically stayed the same only the trades that they operate in have changed.
and operators were lazy buggers anyway. Would not grease a valve or change a gauge as they may get there hands dirty.
The lifespan of an instrument to control something is approximately 2 years so then it will have to be replaced.
Replacement at this present time has to be done by a human.
Regulations state things have to be checked and certified also this can only be carried out by humans at the moment.
Does the team think that in years to come human limbs will wither and drop-off. The need for direct interaction will be rendered redundant through extensive automation.
I think nature will take it’s course and turn “Couch Potatoes” into Mr/Mrs/Ms Potato Head.
Yeah I’m Out until sex robots are indistinguishable from humans. Or at least, they’re only distinguishable by lack of Nagging, Moaning, Complaining & Disappointment