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

[EJ]

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

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Is this as much of a distopian game changer as it looks like? Is this technology's "game over" card to both central banks and the severely destitute across the developed world? Or is this the herald of a Third Industrial Revolution that brings an end to the world economy's lethargic streak?
[/INDENT]

I'll summarize my thoughts on this interesting thread. Thank you for starting it.

The premise of the 60 Minutes coverage of Baxter the Automaton misframes important questions raised by this product. The shows producers ask, "Will robots take jobs away from workers who need them?" and "What will the workers do who are replaced by Baxter?"

Wrong questions, as usual, reinforcing ignorance in American society of the role of technology as a driver in the capitalist process to vastly improve our living standards since the Industrial Revolution and even more rapidly and profoundly since the start of the Digital Revolution.

The first issue I take with the 60 Minutes Machine Causes Unemployment formulation is the lack of diligence dedicated to understanding what Baxter can and cannot do, because only with a clear understanding of the capabilities of the machine can its social implications be discussed. That's where the story should begin, but it never gets there. It starts with the sensationalist, junk science assumption that Baxter can do anything a human worker can do.

Baxter can't see, at least in the sense of comprehending what it's looking at, or walk. A lab rat has greater capabilities in that regard. It can't talk or read. It can only perform a small number of pre-programmed activities under ideal conditions. As a tool for accomplishing work tasks it has a fraction of the capabilities of the most intellectually and physically impaired human child. But millions of viewers are taken in by its humanoid appearance and the positioning by the show's producers of the machine as contributing to unemployment, a hot button that the media can press to get an excited, emotional, and uncritical response from viewers.

The tragedy revealed by the story is that so few consumers of media have any real capacity for critical thinking. This makes them vulnerable to all manner of manipulation. It allows governments and corporations to exaggerate and lie with impunity. They entice Tweeters and bloggers to become their agents, spreading self-interested propaganda and nonsense by promising an emotional and puerile "conversation" that turns serious public policy matters into base entertainment.

Baxter, like the Google "driverless car," reminds me of "speech recognition" systems that came out from Dragon and other vendors in the 1990s. I worked for one of these companies as VP OEM Sales at the time. One day I did a live demonstration to Michael Dell and his 12 person Strategic Products group in Austin, Texas. The meeting with Dell was for consideration by him and his team to include the speech technology with every Dell PC. It was my third meeting at Dell, which is to say it took only three meetings to get to the top decision maker. I was also trying to OEM the product to HP. After nine meetings I still couldn't figure out who was in charge of making third party software decisions, which tells you everything you need to know about why HP failed in the enterprise PC market that Dell dominated. Less than a minute into the demonstration, Michael interrupted me as I recited my memorized script that appeared as words projected on the screen in the darkened room. Dell, being no dummy, had done his homework. He understood that these products, marketed as speech recognition systems, were in reality dictation recognition systems. All of them work more or less they same way.

The lead engineer once explained the technology to me in the car on the way to a meeting. They break speech down into phonemes, a unit of speech more or less analogous to a syllable. They then assemble the phonemes into a set of possible words that the phoneme groups might be. They then chose the most likely word based on grammatical rules determined by the language model for the speaker, such as standard dialect American English. British English is a completely different language model, as distinct as English from German; a brit trying to talk to an American English system will not enjoy the gobbledegook text that results. To put the word list in the context of the language model's grammar the system needs a complete sentence, but the average person does not speek in complete sentences. To speak in complete sentences is to dictate, a difficulty learned skill. Doctors and lawyers know how to dictate, which is why "speech recognition" systems succeeded in these vertical markets. But it's the broad horizontal market of his enterprise customers that Michael Dell cares about and he knows that 99% of his customers have no dictation skills. Additionally the systems have to be trained for each user and a special high quality noise-canceling microphone and headset has to be used.

He starts to give me phrases to speek into the the system. Without full sentences the word choices made by the system are erratic. The system produces nonsense sentences. Often the results are hilarious. Michael, his team, and I proceed to spend the next five minutes trying to get the most amusing results possible. "The parking lot has no time for a carrot." We have a good laugh. Dell says he thinks his customers won't have the time or patience to train the systems and won't want to wear a headset and look like "Suzy Telemarketer." The answer was no. I didn't feel too bad about it. Turned out the deal was going to be that we pay Dell to put the product on Dell computers by way of marketing to Dell enterprise customers in the hope that they later buy the product for personal use.

The legitimate name for the misnamed Speech Recognition technology is Dictation Recognition. To call it Speech Recognition is a kind of lie. It's sets a false expectation, as does Baxter marketed as a worker replacement.

Same goes for Google's so-called "Driverless Car." Once Google fesses up to the fact that the car can't be driven except on a route that was recently mapped and admits how frequently on average the system returns control to the driver because it encounters a situation that it can't cope with, then if they are honest they will rename it the Google Computer-Assisted Car, because that's what it is. Under special conditions the system can drive the car, but sometimes -- likely most of the time -- it can't.

That's were the 60 Minutes Baxter story should have started, with a skeptical eye on the claims of Baxter's manufacturer. But even if Baxter could replace humans in a wide variety of repetitive tasks, why is that bad? Humans are not designed to do the same activity over and over. It's bad for our bodies, resulting in receptive stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, and for our brains, causing depression and other forms of mental illness.

Lucky to have a job? Chinese workers sit inside a metal press.

To my way of thinking asking a human to do a machine's work -- to work like a machine -- is cruel and inhuman. The right question for 60 Minutes to have asked is, How can workers who were doing a machine's job and were replaced by machines be trained for more humane employment?"

Part of the answer is in the automation itself. The Machine Causes Unemployment formulation completely misses the reality of the role of automation in a capitalist system. The reality is that a new more humane and intellectually stimulating job is created by the machine. How?

A corporation is motivated by its obligations to shareholders to increase profits and use capital in the most efficient way possible. The only reason a corporation will deploy machines to replace human workers is if it increases profitability. What does the corporation do with the additional profits that automation created? It can either distribute the profits to shareholders or reinvest the profits back into the company. If it distributes the profits then it pleases shareholders in the short run but will displease them in the long run because a competitor, seeking similar advantage, that also deploys machines but reinvests the resulting profits effectively in new product development will gain market share and competitive advantage.

The new jobs created from the profits generated from savings from automation are higher level, creative, skilled, and better paying jobs -- product R&D, management, marketing, sales. These require more training and education than the automaton jobs they replaced. This is occurring across the entire economy in all industries as machines replace tedious and receptive occupations: milking cows, inspecting circuit boards, connecting phone calls.

Here is a list of the fastest growing occupations that cannot be replaced by machines that the Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks will be in demand from 2012 to 2020. How will workers get trained for these jobs? This comprehensive study by the BLS identifies a mismatch between training, skill levels, and jobs in the future.

This is the heart of the issue raised by automation in the digital age and the one that 60 Minutes should be putting forward instead of sensationalist garbage about Baxter the Robot. But that requires that the show's producers and reporters do actual journalism, and ask viewers to actually think -- and then, armed with an understanding of the issues, vote in an informed way.

Apparently this is all bad for 60 Minutes' business, and we wonder why our country is such a mess. Baxter isn't the problem.

[Jam]

Re: Robots are replacing humans

That's, "Who is the customer?" Next, "What is the customer need?" or "What customer problem does the product solve?"

A feature I would really like in a car is valet-style self-parking. Looking for a parking spot, only to find it hundreds of yards from where you want/need to be is one of the more frustrating experiences--especially if you are in a hurry. Imagine driving to work and getting off right at the entrance to the office building, or if you could go shopping and be dropped off at the entrance to the store/mall. After you are done, you call your car, and it waits for you as you get out.
Since such a task would involve only slow-moving vehicles, the required level of safety would be easier to achieve, I'd imagine.

[Polish_Silver]

Metaphor for Labor & technology

The new jobs created from the profits generated from savings from automation are higher level, creative, skilled, and better paying jobs -- product R&D, management, marketing, sales. These require more training and education than the automaton jobs they replaced. This is occurring across the entire economy in all industries as machines replace tedious and receptive occupations: milking cows, inspecting circuit boards, connecting phone calls.

--EJ

I view the job market as a ladder, standing on the ground, and reaching very high up, almost to the moon. The higher you get, the less competition you face, and the higher your salary. As you prove competency on any rung, you may get promoted to the next one.

How does technology and globalization affect this ladder?

The rungs on the bottom are the low skill jobs, that we hope go to high school students and recent immigrants, not to adults struggling to support families.

Globalization has cut many of these off and shipped them to China: shoes, furniture, and the manufacture of many consumer items.

Likewise, technology has streamlined the manufacture to require fewer low skill man hours per dollar of product.

So there are fewer rungs on the bottom, and the competition for them is increasing, causing the wages to go down, at least relative to those higher up the ladder.

(An unskilled factory worker in a South Carolina factory gets paid about 10X as much as a comparable worker in China)

As EJ says, there are still unfilled rungs near the middle and top of the ladder.

But the net effect of technology is to leave the people on the bottom further and further behind. This is born out in US labor department statistics, and I think it is happening in other developed nations as well.

My father never got past high school. His children have Bachelor's degrees and more. But can everyone get this degree of formal education? People are facing intellectual conditions that they did not evolve for. Hunter gathering is quite different from operating a milling machine, let alone a 7-axis turning machine.

The US is already spending a lot on education, but perhaps the priorities are not well thought out. Maybe more spending on vo-tech programs and less on university programs?

But we have to face the problem that we have babies born to crack addicted mothers, fetal alcohol syndrome, people with ADD. Fully 1/3 of my high school freshman class did not graduate. And it was mostly lack of motivation.

My friend teaches 7th grade English. He says an overwhelming proportion of the boys expect to work as rap musicians or professional basketball players. This does not do wonders for study habits.

[reggie]

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

Google's claim to foresee reduced traffic as a benefit of driverless cars has some merit. Common causes of traffic jams will be reduced if all cars are driverless and no driver takes over from the driverless system.

Wait times & Line Modelling is an area that I've done a bit of work in, and we don't need driverless cars to address this issue. Feedback based traffic-light control at entry ramps and intersections is more than enough to improve this dynamic. However, there's no money in that solution, nor is there remote control over individual vehicles. What's Google really after is the question that should be asked?

It is my habit to approach every technology as a potential investor, that is, the way an investor performs due diligence on a business idea. Let's ask a few of the more rudimentary questions. .

Is there a moral component to your evaluation as well? If so, how does that enter the picture?

[metalman]

Re: Metaphor for Labor & technology

--EJ

I view the job market as a ladder, standing on the ground, and reaching very high up, almost to the moon. The higher you get, the less competition you face, and the higher your salary. As you prove competency on any rung, you may get promoted to the next one.

How does technology and globalization affect this ladder?

The rungs on the bottom are the low skill jobs, that we hope go to high school students and recent immigrants, not to adults struggling to support families.

Globalization has cut many of these off and shipped them to China: shoes, furniture, and the manufacture of many consumer items.

Likewise, technology has streamlined the manufacture to require fewer low skill man hours per dollar of product.

So there are fewer rungs on the bottom, and the competition for them is increasing, causing the wages to go down, at least relative to those higher up the ladder.

(An unskilled factory worker in a South Carolina factory gets paid about 10X as much as a comparable worker in China)

As EJ says, there are still unfilled rungs near the middle and top of the ladder.

But the net effect of technology is to leave the people on the bottom further and further behind. This is born out in US labor department statistics, and I think it is happening in other developed nations as well.

My father never got past high school. His children have Bachelor's degrees and more. But can everyone get this degree of formal education? People are facing intellectual conditions that they did not evolve for. Hunter gathering is quite different from operating a milling machine, let alone a 7-axis turning machine.

The US is already spending a lot on education, but perhaps the priorities are not well thought out. Maybe more spending on vo-tech programs and less on university programs?

But we have to face the problem that we have babies born to crack addicted mothers, fetal alcohol syndrome, people with ADD. Fully 1/3 of my high school freshman class did not graduate. And it was mostly lack of motivation.

My friend teaches 7th grade English. He says an overwhelming proportion of the boys expect to work as rap musicians or professional basketball players. This does not do wonders for study habits.

like this...

[metalman]

Re: Prototype vs production costs, Machine Vision

I'll believe in widespread baxter and robot cars seven years after we finally get a damned robot with tank treads and a shovel that wonders the neighborhood digging out cars and dispensing hot cocoa.

prototype...

[shiny!]

Re: Prototype vs production costs, Machine Vision

prototype...

mesmerizing...

[RebbePete]

Can any worker be trained to do any job?

The new jobs created from the profits generated from savings from automation are higher level, creative, skilled, and better paying jobs -- product R&D, management, marketing, sales. These require more training and education than the automaton jobs they replaced. This is occurring across the entire economy in all industries as machines replace tedious and receptive occupations: milking cows, inspecting circuit boards, connecting phone calls.

The first issue is whether those who are displaced by automation can successfully be educated and/or retrained to handle those higher-level jobs. The notion of "nature vs. nurture" with respect to intelligence is an ongoing debate among researchers, but I have taught electronics in an evening trade school and I can attest that there are some students (of various races and ethnicity) that, no matter how hard they or their instructors try, can not master the subject, period. It could be some innate wiring in their neurons, or a poor early childhood experience, but by adulthood, it's persistent. People like them could, if we aren't careful, form a permanent underclass, on the government dole.

The second issue is that (and I believe there have been studies to verify this) there aren't a corresponding number of high-skill jobs to replace the low-skill jobs. Here's an example. I was the in-house engineering manager at a major newspaper. Our press room (thanks to union rules, but that's another story) had a crew of about a hundred people per shift. During a stike, we ran that press room with two managers because of automation. Also, we used to hand-stuff the inserts into the newspapers, with a staff of about a hundred and fifty low-skill staff (we used to joke about "work release" from the nearby prison). After the production facility moved to another location, and that process automated, the same operation was run with about a dozen skilled workers who fed the hoppers of the automated inserting machines.

In all of my experience, it has been the same - the higher the skills, the smaller the proportion of the workforce required. For example, it used to be one engineer to three technicians to five board assemblers, back before surface mount technology made robotic "pick and place" assembly standard practice.

This automation, by the way, doesn't look at all like "Baxter." A robotic pick and place machine looks like a big metal box. Pressroom automation looks a lot like non-automated equipment, but with additional arms and motors hidden inside or in the floor beneath. Automated inserting machines look like a row of metal cabinets with a conveyor running through it. CNC milling machines look like manual machines, but with additional motors.

Do I see, for example, the possibility of fast food preparation being automated? A possibility, but via some metal cabinet into which beef patties and buns are loaded into hoppers, and condiments sloshed into canisters. As soon as it's less expensive than the crew of workers, it could happen.

A team of maybe ten engineers would design such a machine, an automated process involving maybe 50 people would buy the parts, build the machines, do the order taking, and the shipping, but the product would displace thousands of workers. Maybe if the machine sold well, the company would double in size, but the net loss to the economy in number of jobs would still be overwhelming.

[DSpencer]

Re: Can any worker be trained to do any job?

People like them could, if we aren't careful, form a permanent underclass, on the government dole.

You don't think this has already happened?

The second issue is that (and I believe there have been studies to verify this) there aren't a corresponding number of high-skill jobs to replace the low-skill jobs.

That's sort of the point. If using automation simply upped everyone's pay grade without cutting any jobs that wouldn't save any money. There are still plenty of other unsatisfied demands. The question is whether there are enough high skill workers to do the jobs and like you said above, what about the people aren't high skill?

[davidstvz]

Re: Robots are replacing humans

A friend has worked as VP Engineering in the machine vision industry for 20 years. She taught me that getting a computer to recognize an object is a Herculean task, never mind trying to get a robot to do the right thing with it. She offered this as an example. You can teach a computer to recognize a bottle from a full profile view.

This is a bottle.

Here's the same object from the top.

Now what is it? To a human it's still a bottle.

To a human it's the same object but a computer has no high level concept of "bottle" so in the second view it's a different object altogether unless the object has been imaged from many angles and light conditions and backgrounds so that it can be pattern-matched against thousands of similar objects that have also imaged at many angles.

I agree, but I think this method (the bottle having been imaged from many angles and in different lighting conditions and backgrounds) is almost exactly the way humans recognize objects visually. We also have the benefit of other senses that can contribute information about bottles that helps us make the judgment. I'm sure we have a generalized idea about how different items might look in different lighting conditions so that we can recognize things even in circumstances that are new. I don't see any reason why a computer system couldn't do something similar. It would need to assign a 3D structure to an object it sees and then check that structure against a database of 3D structures using fuzzy algorithms to come up with a match. It could use contextual information to help it decide as well. There may not be any viable shortcuts for this process.

Look at the way a recent Android phone process voice input. The first gen Androids processed sound on the phone and tried to convert it into text. It didn't work that well. On my new Android, the voice is recorded, compressed, sent to a server and the results come back instantly. The server has a database of contextual information about the way language is used that makes all the difference in accurately transcribing my voice. Look at Watson (the IBM machine that played Jeopardy). In a similar way, self-driving cars may contact a powerful central server to process the image stream at some point. Currently, we don't have the network bandwidth and reliability to do this (and maybe we don't have the computing power yet; we certainly don't have the databases and algorithms), but when that is ready, Google's current methods may become obsolete and a solution may suddenly be much nearer than it seems now.

EDIT:

I didn't realize you had previously had such close experience with PC voice recognition software. I have a copy of Dragon that I played around with in the past and was not impressed. Just for kicks I tested "the parking lot has no time for a carrot" on my phone and it (rather the remote server) had no trouble transcribing it.

[c1ue]

Re: Can any worker be trained to do any job?

A feature I would really like in a car is valet-style self-parking. Looking for a parking spot, only to find it hundreds of yards from where you want/need to be is one of the more frustrating experiences--especially if you are in a hurry. Imagine driving to work and getting off right at the entrance to the office building, or if you could go shopping and be dropped off at the entrance to the store/mall. After you are done, you call your car, and it waits for you as you get out.
Since such a task would involve only slow-moving vehicles, the required level of safety would be easier to achieve, I'd imagine.

Being as this is what I do - I can tell you that this is even further away from reality than the Google Autodriving Car.

1) Parking is a remarkably fungible commodity. In peak times, an open parking spot is available for 30 seconds or less. In off peak times, parking can be completely open or not open at all depending no whether you're in a residential or commercial area - and of course assuming you are in a densely (car) populated area

2) Social parking is remarkably unsuccessful. Besides the issue of the latency (noted above), and the reach (everyone would have to be on the same social network), there is the location problem. Cell GPS is inherently inaccurate - ironically in the above noted high density areas, the accuracy is well under 50% for even being on the right street, much less a specific parking spot, on the correct side, of the correct street.

3) There are hardware means to overcome accuracy, but the purveyors of these solutions are charging $10 or $20 per month per sensor. This isn't a solution which lends itself to scale.

4) Even if the hardware cost issue is overcome, the reality is that coverage just is never going to be that good. San Francisco hosts SFPark - a joint venture between the Department of Transportation and the city of SF. $60 million of which 80% was paid by the federal government. The result is roughly 8000 of the city's 30,000 meters are of a new type which accepts credit cards and can collect the above sensor data. Unfortunately, the city has a total of 320,000 parking spaces. Adding in the 12000+ City of SF parking garage spots, total sensor coverage obtained for this $60 million is 6.25%. To put this in more clear terms: I divide a city up into contiguous sides of blocks - one of which is called a street section. SF has 32,500 street sections of which approximately 25000 can be parked on. Of those 25000, less than 700 have the meter sensors (under 3%).

Some of the consequences include that the displaced old meters were not scrapped, but were instead shifted outward - so the city of SF effectively gained 8000 more revenue generating parking meter spots. The new meters also are dynamic pricing - with the double benefit of customers no longer knowing how much a meter might cost before parking, and meter costs now ranging (non-special event) to $5.50 per hour. The only trick missed thus far (which is already employed elsewhere) is the zeroing out of meters when a car leaves - the sensors enable this functionality as well.

4) Most importantly - in line with EJ's comments on mapping: there is no data set. My company is literally the only one which actually goes out and gets the data, then puts it in a format which is then usable. Everyone else scrapes databases. Scraping is problematic because the City of SF itself - while it has all the data - does not have it in any usable electronic form. There are over a dozen different data formats ranging from Excel spreadsheets to shapefiles, and this data is scattered between dozens of agencies/locations ranging from city planning, to the SFMTA (transit and parking enforcement), to literally the police substation level. As I have an independent data set - I can tell you also that the public data sets being scraped have error rates higher than 3%. I know because I use the public data to check vs. what we gather, and so investigate anomalies assiduously. The irony is that the error rate is fairly uniform even amongst the SFPark data - the newest.

So the autodriving car - even were it a 100% fully functioning product, would not have the parking availability or parking legality available.

Parking legality is a common issue in dense parking areas: you see an open spot, but you wonder why - is there a tow away zone about to start? Street sweeping? Fire hydrant? Driveway? Handicap? white curb? commercial zone? Penalties for the above: $500+/$62/$98/$80 + possible tow/$966/$98 + possible tow/$83.

Another favorite is incline parking - more than 40% of San Francisco is technically over the 3% grade, for which you are supposed to incline your wheels. Unfortunately there is no way to know what streets violate this before I had put this data together.

I view the job market as a ladder, standing on the ground, and reaching very high up, almost to the moon. The higher you get, the less competition you face, and the higher your salary. As you prove competency on any rung, you may get promoted to the next one.

Sadly, my experience is the opposite. The less competent you are - at a managerial level - the faster you are promoted to get you out of that tier ASAP to become someone else's problem.

prototype...

Micro Mouse competitions have been producing this type of mobility and control for years now. The problem isn't the movement or even the squeezing of the bottle, the problem is installing the bottle, knowing when the bottle is empty, and refilling the bottle. A likely other problem is the work environment - a non-moving object on a nice flat table is very different than even a conveyor belt.

Look at the way a recent Android phone process voice input. The first gen Androids processed sound on the phone and tried to convert it into text. It didn't work that well. On my new Android, the voice is recorded, compressed, sent to a server and the results come back instantly.

I installed voice recognition into the Android version of my app. By itself, it is utterly worthless - because the error rates are really high and my data requires some degree of precision. However, coupled with a trie of street names, it becomes more useful - the app can now complete street names as well as present lists of possible choices while typing or with voice input.

However, there are huge fundamental limitations still - which exemplify EJ's comment.

For example: San Francisco has numbered street and avenues. They are far apart. Thus users must distinguish between 2nd street and 2nd avenue. However, Google's voice output assumes phonetic vs. numerical for 1 through 9, thus '1' becomes 'one', etc. Our data, as well as the street names themselves, are '1'. Thus I have to put in an intermediate processing step to convert 'one' into '1'.

Other examples: Any and every non-American English street name has a very high chance of getting mangled. I have yet to be able to get Google Voice to correctly interpret Divisadero, for example - one of the main streets in San Francisco. Cabrillo - will or will not work depending on if you use the American or Spanish pronunciation.

I shudder to imagine what an accent will do.

[pianodoctor]

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

Re the fastest growing occupations list, I can't help but notice that so many of these are, relative to cost of living, essentially poverty jobs, at least here in So Cal. Housing, energy, transportation, food, health & car insurance, & other necessities at those salaries? Forget it. As far as the better paying jobs go, the expense of achieving the needed degrees and designations, plus the living expenses put out during the years of study, I believe will be multiples of these better annual salaries. How can most Americans realistically afford this (without becoming debt serfs which is yet another problem)? I'm having a difficult time envisioning optimistic scenarios out of this. Thinking more along the lines of "Eastern Europe with American characteristics".

[flintlock]

Re: Robots are replacing humans

Well, much of what you say is just the opposite here in Hickory NC. It is true that people are not outside as much as they once were, but most of the rest of what you say is not true here.

Unfortunately I'm not in Hickory, NC!

[flintlock]

Re: Robots are replacing humans

Nah. It'll all be fixed with the "services economy".

Back when I was a kid my father made me cut the grass. Now we hire a "lawn service". My oldest brother taught me how to mess around with cars...the first lesson was how to change the oil. Now I just drive up to a Jiffy-Lube and don't get my hands dirty (most of the time). Used to be we worked off the stress of the day with a stroll in the evening, or some gardening, but now we hire a yoga instructor (after purchasing the obligatory Lululemon outfit). And how about all those dog-walking services that seem to be springing up everywhere.

Hell, we can't even make our own java any more...now we need a "trained Barista" to serve us the morning designer-coffee jolt at a Starbucks counter.

The economy is in no trouble whatsoever. We just need to continue to get creatively lazy and there should be no shortage of new jobs to do all the things we are seemingly incapable of doing for ourselves any longer. :-)

Good point. Creatively lazy. I'm going to use that.

[flintlock]

Re: Robots are replacing humans

That is the thinking of Peter Diamond, Nobel winner, etc. He was interviewed briefly in the atlantic monthly article.

However, we will be paying people to provide non-essential services. So I suspect the salaries and social status of these people will not be very high. There will be a lot of people dog piling on the lower rungs of the job market ladder.

Yes, you certainly need disposable income to pay for that stuff. A dog walking job won't replace a machinist job in terms of pay. I'm not trying to be pessimistic, just realistic. There's a reason families aren't as large as they used to be. Children were seen as an asset. Hands to work the fields, perform chores. Technology changed that. Something similar is going on today in terms of technology. Its not that there won't be pluses and minuses to the equation. But it's the net change I'm talking about. Its not all negative. People, even with "bad" jobs, are better off. If you goal is simply to be more "comfortable", the poor of today are better off than the middle class of 1900. Now if your goal is to be productive, or seen as invaluable, worthy, special, perhaps not.