Will Robots & AI take over?

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  • With Amazon starting tests of drones to deliver packages and AI about to explode on the scene - that's the whole point of Google search. To program their computers with our searches and make their AI get cleverer and cleverer.

    Like the old sci-fi films and books used to say, are we about to see the RISE OF THE ROBOTS?

  • ROBOT brickies will be arriving on building sites across Britain within months – putting thousands of jobs at risk, it has emerged.

    The Semi-Automated Mason – or SAM for short – can lay a stonking 3,000 bricks a day in comparison with the builder’s average of 500. how-a-bricklaying-robot-will-build-homes-of-the-future-00_00_05_04-still024.jpg according to accountancy firm PwC

    SAM’s mortar nozzle pumps concrete on to the brick before its robotic arm places it on the wallIt is the creation of New York-based

    Construction Robotics and has already replaces humans on a handful of sites across America.

    It’s made up of a conveyor-belt, mortar pump and robotic arm.

    One builder helps feed the bricks into the machine, which are picked up by the robotic arm, slathered in mortar and placed on the wall.


    Full story

    This is just the start:

  • This is why overpopulation is such a big issue.The machine was a similar threat to our ancestors in the agricultural and industrial revolutions and the technological revolution and the android age will be no different.

  • I was thinking back to when I started out as an electronics designer: A small team of 3-4 engineers kept a drawing office of about 20 staff fully loaded. Now we put the design directly into the computer and lay out the PCBs ourselves. That whole drawing office no longer exists and those were relatively skilled jobs.

  • I worked for an accountancy firm and even back then, they saw the writing was on the wall as far as their jobs were concerned. Input a few basic figures into the software and it does all the accountancy stuff for you. I moved onto specialist departments within my firm which were mainly legal based and they were staffed by lawyers and barristers, rather than accountants. But even back then, 15-20 years ago, they were speculating that some of their jobs would go too.

    If robots do all the manual jobs be it cleaning or brick laying and you have artificial intelligence or just plain old bloody good software doing the white collar work, what is there left for people to do?

  • Yes, it's sad to see skills going. So many artisan skills have vanished and many of the kind you mention are going now too.We still have have big sheets of paper with plumbing drawings by hand in pencil with accompanying instructions and details by Mr Wing's father when he was a plumber. Whenever we wanted to know anything in that department we just used to phone him. Often we wish we could just contact one of these forebears to ask something we no longer know.

    But I think a small compensation and resurgence might be in the micro industry sector. People who want things made by people and not machines may have a chance to push through and keep some skills alive by reviving them through micro industry.

    But the old school world is dying and we are the last of the space cowboys of that time.

  • I worked for an accountancy firm and even back then, they saw the writing was on the wall as far as their jobs were concerned. Input a few basic figures into the software and it does all the accountancy stuff for you. I moved onto specialist departments within my firm which were mainly legal based and they were staffed by lawyers and barristers, rather than accountants. But even back then, 15-20 years ago, they were speculating that some of their jobs would go too.

    If robots do all the manual jobs be it cleaning or brick laying and you have artificial intelligence or just plain old bloody good software doing the white collar work, what is there left for people to do?

    Going to need to transform society into less people with specific skills and the days of enormous masses of humans will see the crashing of many extant civilizations. No one will listen and they are trying to plug the holes with immigrants from less developed nations, but that won't last, evolution of human society is underway and something new will have to take its place.

  • Hmmm, I hope not. Looks like it'll be the robots taking our place. Literally! A very pessimistic view there, LW. (may well turn out to be accurate, though).

    As you said with the agricultural revolution etc, I hope we'll adapt. But I think this may be different for two reasons:

    1. Machines are getting genuinely intelligent. Able to think, within limits.
    2. It is not just manual jobs at threat, but the "City" jobs too. Robots are even doing surgery, with surgeons looking on. (for now)

  • But I think a small compensation and resurgence might be in the micro industry sector. People who want things made by people and not machines may have a chance to push through and keep some skills alive by reviving them through micro industry.


    If you mean, arts and crafts type stuff, then I agree. But the reason most of that vanished, was the cost in the first place.

    I would love to have a hand made piece of pottery, or glass, or a "proper" painting. But they're expensive.

    The only recent example I saw of an old skill, was a thatched cottage near me getting it's roof redone. And very nice it looked too when it was finished, but it must have cost a fortune. But at least robots can't do that, yet.

  • Well, I am being as realistic as I can without getting too depressed. :D

    I was thinking about the surge of micro breweries, for example. They seem to have saved some pubs and at least have created a resurrection of the brew master's art.

  • I was sitting in my garden yesterday for a while minding my own business, it was very pleasantly warm, the birds were singing and even better, no neighbours, but then I heard a buzzing sound.... I looked around, but couldn't see anything, there were hover flies around, but I could see them and it wasn't them. Then the buzzing sound got louder, it sounded a bit like a bee or a wasp and it was right close to me, but I looked around and couldn't see anything. I walked up the garden and still couldn't see anything, but the buzzing was right there... I walked back to my table and had a quick drink, I tilted my head to have a drink and then I saw it....a drone hovering right over my head about 5-6 metres up in the air. Tiny, smaller than a kid's remote controlled aircraft and it had cameras. As soon as "it" had been spotted, it buzzed off, but then came back again a few minutes later, but not right over my head this time, but further away, but still "in" my garden. It then came back repeatedly for the next hour, or so.

    I know drones are getting popular and no doubt kids will love them, but I'm not entirely thrilled that someone in the neighbourhood now has one of these things, has decided to pay me visits and the fact it has cameras on them.

    I will never post a picture of myself on the internet. Never. Once you do, you lose control of your own image and it can be manipulated and abused by others. But, what if whoever controlled this drone, took a few snaps of me, or a bit of video and posted them on the web somewhere?

    What do you think? Are drones a brilliant new toy, or a new menace?

  • Quote

    In the STO Express building in Liny, Shandong Province, the 300 robots can get through 20,000 parcels every hour.

    The self-charging workers have saved the company, which has 300,000 employees, a staggering 70 per cent of manpower.

    They began operating in November last year at two of the company’s warehouses.

    The robots can identify the destination of a parcel through a code scan – practically eliminating mistakes.

    Once fully charged they can work eight hours flat out.

    Source

    All those jobs being created by Ebay and Amazon et. al. may be very temporary if this sort of thing becomes widespread

  • Don't worry, it's just the same as it was when factories were automated. Robots are lovely and they don't steal or strike.

    What humans need to do is diminish in numbers so that they don't get used as industrial labour fodder.

  • I agree. What will human's do? We can't all be computer programmers or doctors, some of us lesser mortals can only do the more mundane stuff, which, if that is all taken over by robots, what's left?

    It's difficult to see where the jobs are going to be apart from creative industries. Care robots are being developed for the elderly and infirm. Robots and remote controlled machines for farming and livestock rearing, self drining vehicles, drones and how many of us reach for Google before seeing the doctor? Whilst today code doesn't write itself, sometimes I wish it would, there's bound to come a time when all we need to do is to say what we want the program to do and a robot gets on ond does the actual coding and testing

  • They do menial jobs so it's good they are going to make those humans redundant as labour fodder. The internal combustion engine saved the horrors that happened to horses.

  • Source

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