[Art]

Yes, sports fans, it seems there's not much that a robot can't do!

This was pretty cool. Yep...a hole in one! Would you expect less?

http://www.chonday.com/Videos/holerobotone4

[DemonRaven]

Yep that is true. I keep up with the recent news on AI and robots and there really is not anything they can not do. They are used in surgery now, AI programs are capable of diagnosing problems better then a doctor. They even have one for lawyers. No one's job is safe any more except maybe for computer programmers and engineers. Even then that is in danger as there is a robot that can create other robots and improve upon them.  The economic effect alone should make people really think twice about embracing them everywhere.

[ivan.moony]

If we have to suspend our technology innovations, this society is really sick. Are we about to do something stinky for 8 hours a day just because we don't want a machine to do it in a minute? Something needs to be changed. And that is the institution of money. I don't know how, but we should get rid of it.

So this is a question for the humanity in modern days: should 99% of poor people dance exactly as 1% of rich people want? Are we that much blind?

[DemonRaven]

Why does careful fore thought mean suspending? No one is saying don't make them. Many are saying be careful but no one is stopping production. Besides it won't stop it is going to be here despite what anyone does or does not want with it. It is too attractive to greedy business' s that don't like paying benefits and wages not to happen.

[DemonRaven]

There is already two different places in asia that have almost all robotic staff. One sells cell phones. The other is a restaurant. I want to know who is going to feed the people that lose jobs as a result.

As far as doing away with money. That is not going to happen. People are to human, pardon the phrase, for it not to continue in some form. It would be nice to have a utopian society where no one has to work and robots do all the work but that is just not realistic at this point in time if ever.

[Art]

When you consider the real truth that Robot Alien Beings established us here eons ago after having done human cellular growth research, it's kind of inbred in us to create our counterparts to once again take care of and eventually, control us.

OK...maybe I should lay off that hard cider late at night...

[ivan.moony]

I'm either not happy with people being hungry after being fired and solution is so simple: instead of one human working 8 hours a day, 4 humans could work 2 hours a day. But those rich factory owners are again the problem because they don't want to pay 4 people instead of 1 person (while they are still making the same amount of money and more). With all the new technology something needs to be changed to avoid social problems. I think that the institution of state should defend the rights of workers. Without some laws that defend workers, no one can stop factory owners to exploit workers. Maybe sounds like a kind of utopia, but it is necessary to preserve a decent standard of living. Otherwise... hunger is waiting for us with all this new technology.

[Art]

Tens of thousands of jobs here in the USA have been lost to other countries who pay their workers much less then their American counterparts. One might call it greed on the part of those factory owners but the them, it's common business sense to get the same product for less cost to manufacture.
Dollars and sense.

There are lots of jobs but little in the way of wages and little in the way of incentives for advancement. Losing situation.

[Don Patrick]

There is already two different places in asia that have almost all robotic staff. One sells cell phones. The other is a restaurant. I want to know who is going to feed the people that lose jobs as a result.

My example of choice is MacDonalds: Two years ago they replaced half their staff with computers for taking orders. How are students even supposed to get through college now? And the price of the burgers only went up even though we all know those computers are doing the job cheaper.

More recent issues work out more or less okay though. Stores in the streets are closing because people order online, but instead of a bouncer, there's a website coder. Instead of filling the racks for customers, an almost equal amount of people is filling racks in the warehouse, and instead of teller operators, there are people picking up and packing orders in the warehouse. The few remaining lost jobs are balanced out by the increase in transportation jobs, since people don't come to the stores themselves anymore. In this case more or less all job openings are preserved.

But I doubt all forms of automation will turn out like that. I think non-physical services have more to worry about, because they don't have to obey laws of mass and energy. Printing press is doing particularly bad as paper slowly becomes obsolete, and I can't say that my ex-colleagues have found replacement jobs as illustrators or web designers. In fact even web design isn't half it used to be now that anyone can fill in a WordPress template. The economic system will have to adapt.

[DemonRaven]

How far do we let this all go? How many different types of jobs do we let get taken before we say enough and create laws to demand that a certain amount of jobs remain taken by humans. Technology is wonderful but GREED is not. Business's are by their very nature greedy.

[Freddy]

History has a habit of repeating itself.

I wrote this a few years back : Luddites - Rage Against The Machine

[DemonRaven]

Yes i understand that argument but they are becoming so advanced that there are not a whole lot of things they can not  do. There is too much of a good thing principle here. 

Doing a bit of research it shows that unemployment jumped to ten percent during that time your article talks about.  It stayed at ten percent for about 99 years. The economy is  not is the greatest shape yet.

One needs to take into account all factors not just one.

[Freddy]

Printing press is doing particularly bad as paper slowly becomes obsolete, and I can't say that my ex-colleagues have found replacement jobs as illustrators or web designers. In fact even web design isn't half it used to be now that anyone can fill in a WordPress template. The economic system will have to adapt.

I had a brief foray into web design but soon realised it's a far too saturated market. Wordpress makes it easy and in fact that's all I do now for my new sites - it's just not worth building it all from scratch. Wordpress can be suitably customised and so on. I do have the skills to make tweaks and alterations, custom code and things which is always an advantage, so  my skills are not all wasted.

[Art]

It seems another extension of the industrial revolution, Henry Ford's assembly line, Mechanically automated devices that often took humans out of harm's way and let a machine perform the same task. Then the age of the robot car assembly line, chassis, body, spot welders, painters, etc. Yet they still have union protection for the humans who are doing much safer jobs and making more money.
A lot of the blue collar jobs still require humans, carpenters, plumbers, welders, block & stone masons, electricians, drywall techs, mechanics, iron workers, the list goes on and on and there are no robots...yet. Perhaps not ever but that's a long time.
Yes, technology is advancing as is robotics and AI and all its trappings. It is called progress and it's what we humans have come to expect and to depend upon. I've heard lots of people state that they just couldn't get along without their smart phones or computers and social media and blah...blah.

Here for now, yes. Here to stay...anyone's guess but I'd wager yes and expect the robots to be self improving and self motivated to do so. A matter of time.

Just for the fun. Pick a night, turn out all the lights in your home. Walk around (carefully) and notice all those tiny LED's glowing in practically every room. Night lights, microwaves, alarm clocks / clocks, TV's, cable boxes, Wii's, Alarm system control panels, computers, printers, etc.
It's kind of mind blowing to see how many of these devices one has and with that usually means there is some kind of technology present that likely wasn't there 10 years or more ago. Yes, the times are a changin'.

[Don Patrick]

I was hoping to read in that article if the luddites ever were employed again. The problem isn't that machines are taking over our jobs, but that the people aren't benefiting from it at the same rate of progress. People have pointed out that the industrial revolution ended up on its feet eventually, and to that economists have pointed out that the danger of this particular revolution is that automation progresses faster than the job market can adapt. The overlap will see a lot of people without a means to live unless we wake up and add something like minimum income to the mix.

On another note, whether I am talking to the WordPress designer or the printing press operator, both complain that their jobs have lost meaning: The machine does all the work and they just sit there keeping an eye on it. I'm fine with machines taking over back-breaking work in exchange for nicer jobs for humans, but there is a point where you lose more self-worth than gain unnecessary convenience.

That would of course lead to an increase in suicides, which would essentially solve the unemployment, and the overpopulation. You know, forget I said anything. Carry on.

I had a brief foray into web design but soon realised it's a far too saturated market. Wordpress makes it easy and in fact that's all I do now for my new sites - it's just not worth building it all from scratch. Wordpress can be suitably customised and so on. I do have the skills to make tweaks and alterations, custom code and things which is always an advantage, so  my skills are not all wasted.

It is totally saturated, and not half as well paying as it used to be. On the flipside, also not half as expensive to buy. Now with the rise of A.I. website wishing machines, I don't think it'll be an industry for long. I am skeptic about the abilities of the A.I. to "make whatever you want", but it should be feasible to completely automate website creation eventually.
I'm strictly the go-to guy for when a client needs more than WordPress. I tell my colleagues that I could automate most of their tasks, but that then they'd be out of a job.