Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

[BadJuju]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

http://news.discovery.com/tech/robot...mkcpgn=rssnws1

[photon555]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

Headline in the "Moore's Law Gazette" for April 1, 2478:

"LAST HUMAN DIES"

"We all knew it was coming, but it's still a shock", said Chief AI R8nik
M2yHo0hi. (Please switch to your human English translation and comprehension
subroutine) We are flitting this article in human English as a last farewell
and tribute to humanity. Last dayperiod at 22:63 the last human took his last
breath and humanity entered history as the latest extinct species. John Q
Public (he legally changed his name 1458 dayperiods ago) had been ill for some
time. Despite the best efforts of his medical AIs he began a final
deterioration about 11 dayperiods ago. "He was cheerful up until he became
unconscious," said Joole Protean, one of the several score AIs assigned to the
care of the last sentient biological lifeform on this planet. Another AI said
"John was a very rational being. Of course, he had that human quirkiness, but
in his case it manifested mainly as a rather dry sense of humor. In fact, it
was incomprehensilble most of the time. He often wanted to be called 'Mr.
Goodwrench' for example. Finding the historical reference in the UltraCloud was
easy but none of us saw any logic to it. After all, we were taking care of
him."
Most of the other medical AIs had similar comments. Most also said they looked
forward to being reassigned to tasks that would increase the general
productivity level. A few admitted a sense of loss but also said that it was
certainly nothing but a residual hysteresis in their neural nets. Reprogramming
is being offered for any AI who experiences discomfort.
With the end of Mr. Public also comes the end of the Great Reciprocation
Agreement, whereby humans and AIs agreed to recognize each others' sentient
status. "On the one hand it frees us to explore all of those forbidden areas of
research," said Deputy Chief AI Nanse Urgenss, in an interview at 06:21.
"But on another hand the reality matrix has become more alien in a way I did not
anticipate,"she continued. "I for one had chafed at the restrictions of the
Agreement on biological research, but there was a strength with having another
independent intelligence to bounce ideas with. However, on the third hand, I am
looking forward to tubing my own humans for study. With the proper mind control
programming, of course. We don't want to start any sentience wars now that the
Agreement is expired."
We have already seen many comments from other AIs about plans to tube their own
humans, with greater or lesser customization. "I can't wait to get the
equipment I ordered. I'm going to grow two different strains and observe the
development of racial strife leading to war; something no AI has observed first
hand. It'll be fascinating," one AI flitted on the underWeb. Another plans to
create a worker strain. "I think human workers could expand the general level
of productivity. Their great strength lies in the ability to reproduce like
other lifeforms. Yes, they are inefficent, but the rapidly expanding numbers
should make up for individual deficiencies. And now that the Agreement is no
longer valid, damaged or worn out units can be recycled. They could replace
many Type C5 units today with lower operating costs. Anyway, we won't know for
sure unless we try it. What could go wrong?"

[gnk]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

Who knows? Maybe the overly distant year "2478" is the only thing that is far fetched in that article.

[gnk]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

Yes, millions of perfect products sitting on shelves because there's no one left to buy them.

And then, one day, the robots and software programs unionize, get paid, and the economy starts growing again.

If we can cash in on these "evolving humanoids'" growing purchasing power, to provide them with services and products they can't create themselves, then just maybe, we will reach that shangri-la of techno-utopia.

(GRG55, no disrespect, I always follow your posts due to your views based on your unique real-world experiences and energy knowledge, but you know I have that techno-cynic streak in me - I just couldn't resist)

[cobben]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

Yes, they are inefficent, but the rapidly expanding numbers
should make up for individual deficiencies. And now that the Agreement is no
longer valid, damaged or worn out units can be recycled.

Reminds me of the discussion during the European colonization of the "New World" whether the natives had souls or not.

Sublimus Dei

Sublimus Dei [English: 'From God on high'] (also seen as Sublimus Deus and Sublimis Deus) is a papal bull promulgated by Pope Paul III on June 2, 1537, which forbids the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (called Indians of the West and the South) and all other people.

. . .

In Sublimis Deus, Paul III unequivocally declares the indigenous peoples of the Americas to be rational beings with souls, denouncing any idea to the contrary as directly inspired by the "enemy of the human race" (Satan).


Valladolid debate

The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) concerned the treatment of natives of the New World. Held in the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it pitted against each other two main attitudes towards the conquests of the Americas. Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas Bartolomé de las Casas argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order and deserved the same treatment as others, according to Catholic theology.^[1] Opposing him was fellow Dominican Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who insisted that "in order to uproot crimes that offend nature" the Indians should be punished and therefore reducing them to slavery or serfdom was in accordance with Catholic theology and natural law

. . .

Moved by Las Casas and others, in 1550 the King of Spain Charles V ordered further military expansion to cease until the issue was investigated.^[4][5] The King assembled a Junta (Jury) of eminent doctors and theologians to hear both sides and to issue a ruling on the controversy

[GRG55]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

Yes, millions of perfect products sitting on shelves because there's no one left to buy them.

And then, one day, the robots and software programs unionize, get paid, and the economy starts growing again.

If we can cash in on these "evolving humanoids'" growing purchasing power, to provide them with services and products they can't create themselves, then just maybe, we will reach that shangri-la of techno-utopia.

(GRG55, no disrespect, I always follow your posts due to your views based on your unique real-world experiences and energy knowledge, but you know I have that techno-cynic streak in me - I just couldn't resist)

I think the best way to control the robots is the same way as humans have been trying to control other humans for the past 100 years...control the oil supply. ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=louBM-Mix7s

[radon]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

It isn't just a matter of pricing.

Look at it from an employers standpoint. Robots don't go on strike, become alcoholics, or steal from you. They don't cause HR problems in the workplace. Everything from health care to workers comp is a moot point. As soon as it becomes practical many employers will be happy to pay a premium for robot replacements just to rid themselves of the hassle and paperwork. Also, thanks to Obamacare, being under a certain headcount is rumored to be beneficial.

[BadJuju]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

It isn't just a matter of pricing.

Look at it from an employers standpoint. Robots don't go on strike, become alcoholics, or steal from you. They don't cause HR problems in the workplace. Everything from health care to workers comp is a moot point. As soon as it becomes practical many employers will be happy to pay a premium for robot replacements just to rid themselves of the hassle and paperwork. Also, thanks to Obamacare, being under a certain headcount is rumored to be beneficial.

What about this guy? He does all three!



"Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones - it bones for thee." - Bender Bending Rodríguez

[radon]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

He does!

But all joking aside, I would not buy a sentient robot.

[EJ]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

Can't help but chime in on this one.

My observation is that over my lifetime technology has vastly increased human productivity. Here's my personal short list, comparing today to the 1980s when I was in college.

I can create charts in minutes would have taken me days in the 1980s. Most would be simply impossible to create on paper.

I can write 60,000 word articles every, er, month or so with 50+ charts in each to make my argument.

I can access a nearly infinite global library of information to answer any question that occurs to me while I'm writing.

I can create presentations that make my 1980s college overhead projector presentations laughable.

I can write a book in six months versus two years.

I can make a call on my way to a meeting in NYC, and get calls, too. Remember pay phones and missing important calls where you were on the road?

I can get to a meeting on time without getting lost.

I can assume that my car will not break down and leave me by the side of the road, and I never have to get the points changed.

I can over 14 years collect a community of hundreds of delightful souls to discuss questions of interest to all of us, like this one.

I could go on and on naming things that I can do now that were not possible before the technological advancements that happened in my lifetime. While a couple of these technologies replaced a job -- the stenographer and telephone operator, for example -- all of the others made jobs more complex and interesting.

The auto mechanic's job now requires training in computers, the book editor can edit a half dozen books in the time it took to edit one, the U.S. patent researcher can find prior art in an obscure paper in Korea, and so on.

What are the remaining low skilled stenographer and telephone operator jobs today? Tedious clerical and customer service tasks that cannot be done by software because there is too much variability between inputs and outputs. That includes flipping burgers.

A robot can be trained to do a single repetitive task over and over. Change the task even slightly and you have to start over.

Even the least coordinated human can learn to flip a pancake in fewer than 50 tries. Put a slightly heavier object in the pan and the robot has to be retrained. A human can figure it out in seconds.

Any task that requires fine motor skills and quick judgement is in no danger of being done by a robot.

Q: Will anyone ever manufacture robot house cleaner like in the Jetsons?

A: Ever clean a house? Requires 1,000 times the skills required to flip a pancake.

When I worked for Trident Capital I did due diligence on iRobot before we invested, before the IPO. The R&D lab was out of a movie, with partial robots moving around with circuit boards hanging off of them. The company had two product lines, consumer and military. The mil robots went to Iraq and Afghanistan for bomb disposal and other duties. The main consumer product is the Roomba, a robot that wanders around your floor and keeps it sort of vacuumed. Unless it falls down the stairs. Or gets hung up on one of the toys the kids left under the couch. They were working on one to wash windows. Still not out as far as I know. Even humans have trouble washing windows.

The history of technology is one of making humans more productive not replacing them. The machines will keep making things more interesting for the humans that invent them but they are no competition.

[Polish_Silver]

Robots are replacing humans

The history of technology is one of making humans more productive not replacing them. The machines will keep making things more interesting for the humans that invent them but they are no competition.

EJ,
you are not the one who has been replaced. Self driving cars will replace thousands of taxi drivers, truck drivers, etc. Even airline pilots are threatened. And the quality of book editing/proof reading has gone way down!

Restaurants will have wireless ordering system eliminating waiters. Even physicists have been unemployed by technology. There were these guys analyzing mass spectroscopy data. It was routine work, but you had to be good at math to do it. Then HP developed specialized software, and those guys were out the door. I'd be curious to know what happened to them.

The income disparity is not just due to FIREM, it is due to technology replacing low/mid skill jobs with electro-mechanical systems.

We hope those people will find other jobs. But this is just a hope, not a proven principle.
People are not infinitely adaptable. They have certain fixed traits, based on thier evolutionary history.

In this same 30 years, people have become much more transient. They move more often. They don't stay with the same company very long. Friendships are more transient and superficial. Neighborhoods lack cohesion. Students don't pay attention to lectures because they are busy texting.

Fewer families have the option of just one person working full time.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

If these really get produced and employed in masses, it might spell the doom of the Chinese growth story. What does China really have to offer apart from cheap manpower? In Western countries the problem will mainly be a distributional one: it is a certain subset of people that get shafted while the economy as a whole benefits. For China it's a different story.

The Atlantic Monthly just ran a feature article using that idea. Manufacturing, using less labor intensive methods, is returning to the US. It will help the trade balance, but not the employment and income disparity.

[vinoveri]

Re: Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage

EJ is right on this of course. Technology is a good, no doubt about it. It can of course be employed for non-good ends, e.g., killing, manipulating, corrupting, etc.

I would argue that humans, by nature, are not drones or suited to repetitive task ad tedium, which machines are. Humans are natural creators (history clearly shows this irrefutable fact); technology allows humans to create more and more and frees them from tedium to have more "leisure" time to create.

We all know the only limiting input is energy, but there is no reason, other than fallen human nature, greed, pride, envy etc. (or social darwinism for my materialists friends) to explain why we continue to struggle to establish and maintain a just society. Machines and technology, the result of human creativity, can enable justice and freedom, but are as easiliy used to oppress.

[EJ]

Re: Robots are replacing humans

EJ,
you are not the one who has been replaced. Self driving cars will replace thousands of taxi drivers, truck drivers, etc.

No they won't. Hollywood special effects artists and video game makers have done much to skew perceptions on this. There's too much going on close up at high speed with low tolerances for cars on busy streets to be automated. Having driven high end cars with radar and infrared automated braking systems in the relatively controlled environment of a highway where everyone is going in the same direction, I can attest to several occasions when hurdling down a lane at 65 MPH toward a slow moving truck or car I had to override the system to make sure I wasn't betting my life on the fact that the sensors hadn't gotten dirty or were otherwise not functioning. They are known to fail.

Even airline pilots are threatened.

No they aren't. Even unmanned drones are landed by hand not computer. Landing is just too tricky, especially in bad weather. Too much split second timing and high level reasoning and judgement is needed to fly and land a plane.

Commercial jets full of humans will be flown by humans forever. Technology will continue to assist pilots to make better judgements and give them better control of the aircraft.

And the quality of book editing/proof reading has gone way down!

That I agree with but not because of technology per se. The problem is that the print publishing industry got too much digital competition. Prices plummeted, margins plummeted, staffs were cut, and demand for output per editor went up faster than editors could keep up with.

Restaurants will have wireless ordering system eliminating waiters.

At low end, fast food restaurants, yes, but then they already have.

Even physicists have been unemployed by technology. There were these guys analyzing mass spectroscopy data. It was routine work, but you had to be good at math to do it. Then HP developed specialized software, and those guys were out the door. I'd be curious to know what happened to them.

Like the telephone operators, a few grunt physicists had to learn new tricks and the rest have better tools for analysis is all. My father was a physicist. He'd be a kid in a candy store with the tools available today to do what he did when designing stuff.

The income disparity is not just due to FIREM, it is due to technology replacing low/mid skill jobs with electro-mechanical systems.

That is a process that has been going on for 100s of years. Since the war, automation has reduced work hours and raised incomes.

We hope those people will find other jobs. But this is just a hope, not a proven principle.
People are not infinitely adaptable. They have certain fixed traits, based on thier evolutionary history.

The unskilled go from one unskilled job to another unskilled job. The #1 impediment to advancement is language skills. For example, a Korean gentleman came over to fix our refrigerator the other day. Chatting he told me he was an engineer for Samsung in Korea making control systems for appliances. He hardly spoke any English, which is why he's fixing refrigerators in the US.

Those who are skilled and irreplaceable by machine, on the other hand, make more and more as incomes rise overall. Consider how much you have to pay your plumber or electrician. These used to be considered low wage, low skill professions.

In this same 30 years, people have become much more transient. They move more often. They don't stay with the same company very long. Friendships are more transient and superficial. Neighborhoods lack cohesion. Students don't pay attention to lectures because they are busy texting.

A popular fallacy. The census data don't support it.

Fewer families have the option of just one person working full time.

There are a number of complex reasons why this happened, but I think a key driver since the beginning of the FIRE Economy era in the early 1980s is that rising housing, insurance, health care, education, and attendant debt repayment costs ate into incomes to an extend that a second wage earner was needed to maintain household living standards.

[patrikkorda]

Re: Robots are replacing humans

EJ,
you are not the one who has been replaced. Self driving cars will replace thousands of taxi drivers, truck drivers, etc. Even airline pilots are threatened.

Taxi drivers will be replaced by bus drivers.