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I value my functional antiques ,many older the most of you all ,but I am responsible for some improvements to modern equipment as well in manufacturing and maintenance and repair.
You have to understand that the toaster is as much a robot as many other things we depend on automatically . Even a watch for that matter is robotic.
These advancements gave us the liberty to make more advancements, and find better materials and methods for manufacture for other things that could not be made before like titanium and Teflon nylon carbon fiber ,and so on .
Plastics have been at the fore front of manufacturing especially the computer your playing on.
Robotics force us to evolve to more sophisticated technologies and thinking past the box.
Just yesterday I was speculating a fabric that would revolutionize the industry ,I have not yet seen any one develop.
The applications are endless, but the manufacturing does not use traditional means, so it would have to be developed slowly.
New technologies would have to be developed and implemented for manufacture and processing ,and like the beginning of any thing, expensive ,but for what it is designed ,nothing relative could function like it.
( My idea may already exist ,I just have not been made aware of it as yet. )
This particular material however has such a broad application that jobs could be created to manufacture and handle and distribute , even special machinery to blend it into other existing fabrics for applications I may not have thought of.
I guarantee you this product can only be made robotically, but at the same time need people to design build and maintain and innovate on as time goes by.
So I don't see robotics as a problem , I see it as an opportunity.
Actually, any sea captain / navigator would understand the concept very well not only in the XIX century but much earlier.
Putting a radio beacon in orbit would be a very well understood idea ever since the radio was invented. It doesn't require the knowledge of how to travel to space, merely the overall high level concept.
There are things / technologies / algorhitms today however that probably no one person fully understands. And certainly not one single person is capable of reproducing.
There were intellectuals in all centuries, I agree. The concept of the Big Bang was explored by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.
There were intellectuals in all centuries, I agree. The concept of the Big Bang was explored by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.
Not just the geniuses.
The propulsion concept of modern space travel would be well understood by any educated person in the XIX century, since it only involves basic Newtonian laws.
Of course the details of how to make it work would be extremely hard to get without highly specialized modern knowledge. But that is no different to, say, sailing. Pretty much anyone understands how and why the sail is used to propel a boat, but very few people have the skill and knowledge required to build a well functioning sailboat.
Now, there are concepts that are much harder to understand because even the basic knowledge required is not yet there. The same early XIX century school physics teacher who would be easily able to grasp the basic ideas of rocket propulsion (not only what the outcome is but how it actually works) would have very hard time understanding how the electronics or computers work. It would require basic knowledge that haven't yet existed at that time.
One of the problems of robotic based society in which the research and science are left to independently functioning machines (assuming that the society is able to overcome the economical hurdles) is that there will be a stage at which the humans simply can't grasp the concepts behind the world that machines built.
The only way out of it is to become one with them.
The propulsion concept of modern space travel would be well understood by any educated person in the XIX century, since it only involves basic Newtonian laws.
When Max Plank decided to study physics he was called a fool because there was nothing NEW to discover and Newton was king, ha, ha.
And Einstein did not believe in Quantum Mechanics and went as far as to say "God does not play dice".
Quote:
One of the problems of robotic based society in which the research and science are left to independently functioning machines (assuming that the society is able to overcome the economical hurdles) is that there will be a stage at which the humans simply can't grasp the concepts behind the world that machines built.
The only way out of it is to become one with them.
Besides having the ability to visualize things we cannot see the computers will have access to a far greater degree of information than humans.
Dr Watson:
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Watson is already capable of storing far more medical information than doctors, and unlike humans, its decisions are all evidence-based and free of cognitive biases and overconfidence. It's also capable of understanding natural language, generating hypotheses, evaluating the strength of those hypotheses, and learning — not just storing data, but finding meaning in it.
As IBM scientists continue to train Watson to apply its vast stores of knowledge to actual medical decision-making, it's likely just a matter of time before its diagnostic performance surpasses that of even the sharpest doctors.
Back in 2011, McAfee wrote on his blog about why a diagnosis from "Dr. Watson" would be a gamechanger:
It’s based on all available medical knowledge. Human doctors can’t possibly hold this much information in their heads, or keep up it as it changes over time. Dr. Watson knows it all and never overlooks or forgets anything.
It’s accurate. If Dr. Watson is as good at medical questions as the current Watson is at game show questions, it will be an excellent diagnostician indeed.
It’s consistent. Given the same inputs, Dr. Watson will always output the same diagnosis. Inconsistency is a surprisingly large and common flaw among human medical professionals, even experienced ones. And Dr. Watson is always available and never annoyed, sick, nervous, hungover, upset, in the middle of a divorce, sleep-deprived, and so on.
It has very low marginal cost. It’ll be very expensive to build and train Dr. Watson, but once it’s up and running the cost of doing one more diagnosis with it is essentially zero, unless it orders tests.
It can be offered anywhere in the world. If a person has access to a computer or mobile phone, Dr. Watson is on call for them.
The Luddites were most certainly right about the destruction of the livelihoods of some people engaged in some professions.
The quality of life for a lower rank Englishman in the XVIII - early XIX century was markedly worse than 200 years prior. One of the results of the first Industrial Revolution was the weakening of the population. The skeletal remains of the people who died in the High Middle Ages are about the same size as modern adults (5'-9" or so) while the people from the height of the first Industrial Revolution were smaller and less well nourished.
The problem now is we're running out of professions that can't be replaced by machines.
And today, just like 200 and 2000 years ago, a large part of population is not too bright and can't get cutting edge skills and education to stay afloat. Unless you believe that these people have no right to exist, how are you going to provide them with jobs ?
But the Industrial Revolution replaced the threat of famine with that of obesity. Within a generation or 2 people were working. Not as smiths but as factory workers. The amount of work didn't diminish. The nature of it did.
If Luddites had their way starvation would still stalk the land. We would be living in huts without power or plumbing. Never mind cars and planes. Our ability to adjust has improved. Or had until recently.
In any case, the work survived all the industrial and agricultural revolutions. Since it has never gone away, it is the sheerest of speculation to propose that it will.
As far as stupid people go, they have always been here and always will be. They'll be fine.
You must've missed the part about self driving cars being tested on the actual roads as we speak ? Not only in the US (all Big 3, Google, and now Apple) but also in Europe (Daimler just started city street trials) and Asia.
The trucks are not going away in the intermediate future. But they will at some point be fully automated and driverless, just like many subway trains are now.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Subway trains run on rails in subterranean tunnels to predetermined locations on predetermined routes at predetermined times - and their passengers load and discharge themselves.
In any case, the work survived all the industrial and agricultural revolutions. Since it has never gone away, it is the sheerest of speculation to propose that it will..
There is good logic in support of such speculation. In the past, when obsolete work was replaced by new work, and workers retrained for continued employment, there were no intelligent robots. We're now nearing the point where all human work can be done by robots. When a particular job becomes obsolete, there won't be a new job to replace it, because that new job will be done by robots.
That explains why workers continued to be needed in the past in spite of technology making their jobs obsolete. And it explains why that history doesn't support such continuation in the future. History is generally a good indicator of the future, except in cases where things are changing to make that history no longer apply.
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