Will Robots & AI take over?

When making a post, please ensure it complies with this site's Main Rules at all times.
  • GREGGS is sacking "several hundred" staff members in a shift to using robots to produce their doughnuts and sausage rolls.

    The Daily Mail has reported that the job losses come as part of an overhaul of the high street chains food manufacturing sites.

    Greggs has refused to give an exact figure on how many job losses will be incurred during this process.

    But the highstreet chain have said that "several hundred" employees have filed voluntary redundancy.

    The changes come as part of £100 million plan to get the company producing food on a much larger scale by 2020.

    I'd rather assumed that they were already machine made having watched the series "How it's Made"

  • So did I and I saw bits of that programme too.

    Perhaps the actual food making is already automated, that's how it seemed on the show, but perhaps it's the packing and restocking that will be taken over by machines now.

    Just as I said in the other Toys R Us thread, retailers don't stick to what they're good at it.

    Greggs is, or was, a baker. I have one in my own local town. I don't think they even sell bread in there now. All about snack foods now and they're expensive too.

  • Burger-flipping robot begins first shift

    Flippy, a burger-flipping robot, has begun work at a restaurant in Pasadena, Los Angeles.

    It is the first of dozens of locations for the system, which is destined to replace human fast-food workers.

    Coming hot on the heels of the Greggs story last week, another foody related story of robots taking over, this time flipping burgers.

    Will there be any jobs left at this rate? What will the teenagers do for work, deliver papers...?

  • I wonder if it's programmed to bay at the moon as well. ^^

  • At first read, I thought that was a stupid idea, but just in my garden now, the neighbour's dog was barking (it does it all the time...) and all my birds flew away. But...

    It depends whether it moves or not, the article doesn't say. I have something in my garden with a motion detector that makes noises to scare away cats. They were scared for the first few days, they then worked out that as nothing was chasing them, they were safe.

    So, if this moves, great idea, otherwise, it'll be cheaper getting a scarecrow. Is Worzel Gummidge still around?:P

  • I'll post this here but it could have equally gone in the Brexit forum:

    These developments have been talked about several times recently on R4's farming slot (5:45am) together with automated tractors, harvesters and drones.

    Seeing as it's impossible to get Brits to do these jobs automation would be the solution as it has been in so many other unskilled sectors.

  • But like that burger flipping robot the other day, all the jobs will rapidly be done by robots. There won't be any jobs left for unskilled people.

    That harvester robot is incredible. How the hell can a robot be programmed to tell what it should and shouldn't touch? The mind boggles. As you say, that will answer the labour shortage for the farms.

    I don't think its a stretch to say that all food production will be fully automated in future at this rate. Combined harvesters can be remote controlled and as I read in another article, in the near future, there will only be need for one person centrally located in a supermarket control room to run loads of farms.

  • Loads of people have turned up at the restaurant to see it in action and it wasn't fast enough to cope with demand. At least with some kid, you can give them a kick to work quicker!^^ BBC story:

    Flippy the burger-flipping robot that started work this week in a California restaurant has been forced to take a break because it was too slow.

    The robot was installed at a Cali Burger outlet in Pasadena and replaced human cooks.

    But after just one day at work the robot has been taken offline so it can be upgraded to work faster.

  • Someone asked "what will teenagers do for work, deliver papers?". Of course not. Self drive cars are just around the corner and a simple device to chuck the paper onto the porch or doorstep and, hey presto, the job's done.

    As for how to employ all those youngsters who did media studies, it always was a topic for twits. AI can do it in seconds.

    Creative industries might be fruitful - it's one of the few tasks that AI, almost by definition, cannot achieve. Measuring creativity among human career-seekers could be far more important than measuring knowledge or IQ

    Of course, the ones coming out of universities with a top degree in science (maths, physics, chemistry, etc) will be the human masters of this Brave New World, controlling and developing AI. Plus those with a top degree in humanities (philosophy, psychology, politics, history, art, literature) to help control the higher order of AI (ie what's it all about?) and help and enable humans adjust to it. Plus those with a degree or diploma or achievement in creative topics like the performing arts, design/architecture, new product development, gastronomy, to reach the truly creative parts AI can't touch, which is essential if human beings are to continue having a reason for being. I would imagine all of these high quality humans will help us to address the challenges in an AI world. As for what young people who can't excel in these subjects, they will be on the scrapheap, receiving social benefits such as housing, food and medical assistance. Their procreation will be discouraged or even forbidden. Some of them might be exported to Germany (!) or become carers for helpless elderly people who need human contact and can detect the difference between a human and an android (and prefer the former!).

  • Having a had a recent experience with a "creative" type person, roll on the machines taking over, as far as I'm concerned.:) And as for those who get put on the scrapheap and become carers, again, don't be so sure that machines would be such a bad alternative. In my experience, paid carers are totally inept and I'd much prefer a nice android looking after me!

  • Having a had a recent experience with a "creative" type person, roll on the machines taking over, as far as I'm concerned.:) And as for those who get put on the scrapheap and become carers, again, don't be so sure that machines would be such a bad alternative. In my experience, paid carers are totally inept and I'd much prefer a nice android looking after me!

    By creative, I don't mean those twits in ad agencies

    As for android carers, that was why I ended by spiel with a 4 word qualifier in parenthesis

  • I like the idea of a robot dog. All the niceness of dog ownership without having to go "walkies" on a sleet lashed dark winter morning.

    Now you're talking. And if they could be programmed not to shove their nose into a visitor's crotch that too would be a plus

  • A Japanese engineer has taken his love for cult sci-fi cartoon Mobile Suit Gundam to dizzying new heights by building a life-size robot from the show.

    The massive, two-legged mech is 8.5-meters (28-feet) tall, weighs more than 7 tonnes, and packs a bazooka gun on its right arm that shoots out sponge balls at 140 kph (87 miles per hour).

    Its mechanical torso hides a cockpit with monitors and levers for the pilot to control the robot's arms and legs.

    “As an anime-inspired robot that one can ride, I think this is the biggest in the world,” the bot's creator Masaaki Nagumo told Reuters.

    The huge robot suit, dubbed LW-Mononofu, was developed at Sakakibara Kikai – a maker of farming machinery that also dabbles in droids.

    Click the link for full story and pictures.

    Yay! Please mummy, buy me that one. ^^

  • I was about to comment that the Japanese engineer has just created a whole load of useless rubbish, which although huge, the robot looks completely useless, but then I watched the rest of the Sun video and saw the other robot....

    That other robot is straight out of RoboCop and I could easily see those on battlefields soon. Scary. More scary if these things have AI put into them.

  • That other robot is straight out of RoboCop and I could easily see those on battlefields soon.

    Think of the dock scene in The Matrix

    MatrixDock.0.jpg

    It always amazes me that things that are shown in the Gundam genres, which didn't exist at the time, have already come to be commonplace.

    Fighting suits and robots are inevitable IMO.

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!