Robot armageddon nigh!

[RolloTheGreat]

Shocking as this video may be, this is mankind's fate in the not too distant future according to Prof. S.Beast of Canada.

The overthrow of man will begin innocently enough in the next 5 years, according to Prof. Beast:

It's going to be extremely interesting to see what happens with automation, robots, and autonomous vehicles. With self driving cars we are almost there, less than five years away. Think of all those truck drivers, taxi drivers, bus drivers, and couriers. All out of work simultaneously. They make up a huge chunk of the economy. Actually pretty much the entire retail sector is going to be wiped out. Just picture Amazon with robots working in their warehouse and other robots delivering everything. They are going to have to tax the robots. Hopefully with enough tax revenue from the robots we can have lots of "slackers" living a decent life off the system. Because the way things look our economy will no longer have enough jobs to support all the people living in our societies. To look beyond these facts is both foolish and ignorant.

A bold prediction to be sure as retail is responsible for the most jobs in the United States:

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/rudy...d-cashiers

And driving employs 3% of us as well:

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/02/driverles...tates.html

The economic system will be unable to absorb these huge numbers of unemployed, resulting in an all out war for survival on the planet between displaced workers and their robot overlords. (as seen in video)

GStandroid, a possible mechanized harbinger of the future, echoes Prof. Beast's dire prognostication:

Yep. Just about all jobs will go, except for emergency services (ambulance, fire, police).

If you want work, Elon Musk will probably have a job for you establishing his Mars colony.

Once that is up and running It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the USA shipped its jobless unwanted poor off to mars just like England sent their unwanted to America centuries before.

Although space travel costs millions of dollars per person, paradoxically GStandroid feels the USA will send the millions of poor to Mars rather than a prison colony like Australia.

Run for your lives, rich or poor!

The age of our metal gods has begun!!!!

[SteelCrysis]

Just read this: https://www.neowin.net/news/a-robot-is-a...fter-yours

[RolloTheGreat]

Oh gosh! A tech writer hypothesizes that sometime in the future robots will replace us all!

Conveniently forgetting that we have to create the robots, program the AI, direct the tasks, and for that matter, even decide to use the robots.

Yes, there is that.

While not making $15 an hour to put ham on a bun will not cause the masses to rise up in McCowen's worker revolution, not making anything and being left to starve certainly might.

And the people who control production even might realize that your envisioned death of jobs is a death spiral for them as well, because robots don't buy anything. It would be fairly foolhardy for a society to create a class of automated production for an ever dwindling market of consumers.

And representatives who levy taxes are elected so even if the 3% opted to do away with all our jobs to employ robots we would simply elect officials who would take the wealth of the rich and what we used to work for we would get for free. My guess is the rich would rather pay us to work than be plundered by taxes or crime.

How many programs exist on the planet now? Thousands? Tens of thousands? They can't code, de-bug, install, or support themselves and have no reason to exist outside human use and convenience.

Low skill people have been, and will continue to be de-valued as automation replaces them.

However; SickBeast's prediction retail and driving jobs will be gone within 5 years is laughable.

[ocre]

I work in an industry that is the cutting edge when it comes to advanced manufacturing. Most of the crap i read, it is absolutely hilarious. Written by people who grew up watching fantastic fictional fantasies which they know more of than the actual technologies they write about. The ideas and time scales are extremely far fetched. So many times i have been dumbfounded, the great distance between their understanding and how the technology is used in the real world. This tends to be very far apart.


But never mind the Terminator robots taking the purpose of all humans on earth, set that aside for a second and lets go way back...

Since the dawn of time, humans have created and exploited technology. From the beginning, all steps forward have been due to better and more efficient methods. This is how many got from dirt, trees, caves, to villages, cities, empires, and nations.
We find better ways of doing things, build more efficient tools..this has inched us forward over thousands of years. It is in our nature and it the very reason why we thrive. In the fabric of our existence.

We will continue to push the envelope. That is for certain.

As for humans being totally replaced by robots in the next yr or so.... Its just crazy talk. I work in industries with the most advance manufacturing of our time. But....i am not even going to ask you to take my word on this. Instead, ask yourselves where does the most cutting edge technology first get scooped up to be used? The military.

This should say clearly that we arent on the edge of robots taking over. The military has funded huge investments in robotics and human-less vehicles. They have a much more pressing reason to push for such technology, literally lives are at stake. The military robots of today arent terminators, not anything close. They have ran into major hurdles in just having backpacking, load relief bots. These simply carry, sit and follow. They have some great demonstrations but the project being implemented....well even these simple companions arent straightforward as they might appear. Their dependability and practicality have been hurdles.

We have planes that can fly automatically and cars that have been able to for years. Yet Tesla went from having an auto driving mode in their tesla cars to now being call, marketed, and enforced the assisted driving mode. Pilots still exist in our planes, shouldnt they have been totally replaced by now? I guess that will happen next month, lol.

Anyway, the military will keep advancing. Technology will keep advancing. All the talk about AI...its neat and all but i see it a long long ways away from taking over. AI still works within boundaries set by the hardware designers and programmers. We have been talking about robots and AI taking over for decades....decade and decade after decade.

[RolloTheGreat]

It's too late Ocre! It's already begun!





Question for you Ocre:

Do you believe SickBeast is a teacher with a Master's degree? A lot of the things he says aren't even close to logical or defensible.

I'll say this:
If the number one and two jobs in America (retail) and the 3% of driving jobs WERE to end in the next 5 years as SB says, McCowen's wished for revolution would be a lot more likely.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01...91676.html

7.6m retail workers plus the 3% of workforce driving from my other link is a LOT of pissed off people that might well join forces with their new brothers and sisters in the welfare line.

Society definitely has some vested interest in keeping these people working rather than kicking them to the curb for short term profit.

BTW- your point about the military is well reasoned.

[RolloTheGreat]

The rich don't need perfectly functioning military robots.  They only need robots capable of automating jobs, robots that have existed since the early 1980's in industry, but haven't been used to their full capacity due to unions/historical job concerns.

There won't be any former worker revolution because the former workers will be on a basic income/stipend.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guarantee...1464969586

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/j...unemployed

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/j...ic-incomes

Trust me the rich have thought all this through thousands of times more thoroughly than Trollo has!

This doesn't just lead to income replacement for the poor, it ends up improving work conditions and pay for the jobs that are left, particularly the unattractive but necessary jobs.  Which leads to those jobs being done better which helps society overall.

In a book published ahead of the Swiss referendum, Straub and his co-authors argue that a basic income pegged at such a level would not only free people up to do important work that is currently not incentivised by markets, such as care and climate change research, but also lead to higher wages for unloved and low-paid “dirty work”.


“If these jobs are really indispensable, then they have a social value and should be appreciated more,” he says. “If no one else wants to do them, they should be more highly paid. Work conditions would have to be improved so that people do these jobs.”

     

A. People working retail and driving vehicles for a living may be able to research what looks good on the menu at McDonalds, but they're not handing out groceries or driving people to work because they are scientists on sabbatical. That is easily as crazy as the stuff you and SB say!
B. "We've been wrong all along Louie! You make those urinals shine and now we're going to pay you like a urinal polisher should be paid!"

Domo arigato GStandroid, domo.

[RolloTheGreat]

Hey Gstan, maybe now that they won't have to waste all their time selling pots and pans at Walmart, they will solve the renewable energy problem or the worldwide water shortage!

Think of all the amazing research that could be done if only the low skilled people replaced by robots could do more research!

[RolloTheGreat]

Keep right on mocking ignorant troll.  Its already happening and your ignorant braying in the face of your betters (the authors of the report above) won't stop it.

Yes, I'm obtuse.

Don't understand that in the US, where the average wage is $44,000/year, the masses aren't about to rise up and revolt against their oppressors like McCowen has been saying for years. After all, they can't afford a BMW or Lexus car, who wouldn't want to take on the National Guard for that? The Nappa leather seats are so supple and their butts have been chafed raw sitting on their inferior Chevy Malibu seats.



And I can't see the robot revolution happening in front of my very eyes like you and SickBeast say is going on right now. Neither of you has posted any links to significant numbers of jobs being eliminated in the retail or driving industry, but it will be happening any day now just like your alarmist Chicken Little articles hypothesize.



Common themes in your/McCowen's/SickBeast theories:
1. The rich man is out to screw or exploit us.
2. The government is out to screw or exploit us.

A. For you and Sick Beast, it's not your government or economy. While I get what goes on in the USA is a little more interesting and important than your homelands, you'll have to pardon me if your assessments in regard to what is going on here don't shape my world view. I get up and watch the news for a few hours every day and have somehow missed the revolution and robot apocalypse news.

B. There is no doubt that low skill jobs are stagnant here, but the number one employer by numbers (retail) averages $25K a year and the second biggest employer by numbers averges $20K a year. Not many people here actually make minimum wage for full time work, and if they do, it isn't for very long.

C. Robots will continue to make inroads into the labor market as they always have, but their will be no "all driving and retail jobs end within 5 years" like you and SB say will happen. If you two are so sure, how about a gentleman's wager? Let's use one of those escrow services, my bet being "On July 10, 2012 at least 50% of the US retail and driving jobs will still exist. If less than 50% of the jobs exist, I will pay SB and GStan $100., if more than 50% of the jobs still exist, SB and GStan will pay Rollo $100.". $100 is not a lot of money these days, and it's $200 for me and $100 each for you. Care to put your money where your mouth is? I even spotted you 50% lower impact than you put out there.

[RolloTheGreat]

You remind me of Wile.E.Coyote.  Blissfully unaware of the oncoming freight train until its a nanosecond away from flattening you.

You remind me of a man who likes to shoot off his mouth, but has no confidence in his convictions. Not even $100 worth.

Well, GStandroid, if the robots ever start working with software like I do I will go do something else. I have two bachelors degrees and 25 years of stable work experience where I had promotions, so I think someone will hire me. If not, I'll learn something else like I did for the two bachelors and current position.



Or I might just kick back and do a low or average pay low stress job because we could live on my wife's salary as well. Unless of course the robots take over managing the two departments she heads, and doing the accounting work for her firm!

Yep, any day now people like us are going to be out of work because robots can drive and stack boxes....



(Holds up tiny umbrella as 5000lb weight falls on head)

[SickBeast]

I have concluded that any type of reasoning is not possible with Rollo. I suspect that he is on some type of bender right now. He's completely off the wall.

[RolloTheGreat]

I have concluded that any type of reasoning is not possible with Rollo.  I suspect that he is on some type of bender right now.  He's completely off the wall.

Uh huh.

I'd bet you've had more to drink than me in the last five years. I can count the number of times I drink in any given year on one hand, and the last time I saw Apoppin at the GTX680 launch might be the last "bender" I was on.

LOL Dude I'm OLD. I don't even WANT to drink. Screws with my blood sugar.

[SickBeast]

I have concluded that any type of reasoning is not possible with Rollo.  I suspect that he is on some type of bender right now.  He's completely off the wall.

Uh huh.

I'd bet you've had more to drink than me in the last five years. I can count the number of times I drink in any given year on one hand, and the last time I saw Apoppin at the GTX680 launch might be the last "bender" I was on.

LOL Dude I'm OLD. I don't even WANT to drink. Screws with my blood sugar.

Well you haven't been yourself lately. You have been going off on everyone, myself included. The only one on here you haven't personally attacked is Ocre. I hope everything is alright with you. I get the sense that you're going through something. Just please don't take it out on us.

[RolloTheGreat]

GStandroid, I know you wish for a world where your kind are the only "employees". It is natural to have a species centric worldview.

However; in a place like India where there is widespread poverty do you honestly think allowing the wealthy to save money on human employees by replacing them with your people is a good idea?

While it probably "does not compute" for you, perhaps the Minister is feeling human compassion for a class of people that do not have the skills to change careers and would literally be added to the welfare burden if their jobs are eliminated.