Ship of Fools: Are we going to be replaced by a robot or an app?

Thread: Are we going to be replaced by a robot or an app? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

This article about taxis versus Uber, references to automated checkouts at stores in another topic, and a psychotherapy texting app I heard about on CBC a few days ago, all got me thinking. Are we all at risk for being replaced? What will humans actually do in the future when robots can meet all our needs like the TV show Humans suggests, even relationships and sex.

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

The psychotherapy app made me smile and think of a conversation I had with a dad in the playground, who has been working on phone-based automated diagnostic tools to pick up a likelihood of relapse amongst sufferers of schizophrenia.

In that case I think it's all about saving NHS money (less personal support) whilst arse-covering in case of patient violence. He didn't smile when I suggested his routine might phone people and whisper 'do it...do it now' in their ear.

More widely - the cynic in me thinks we'll hear more about this as white-collar folks (who know how to communicate) realise their careers may be under threat. Blue-collar folks made a bit of noise when it was their turn (70s-now in UK) but that's all over - where will us unemployed engineers go next if B&Q doesn't need us to stack automated shelves or drive a newly-robotic white van [Smile]

Doc Tor may come along and give us the Marx angle about capitalism eating itself, in a bit.

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

I think we could have an amusing thread on Heaven in which we list parts of life that we think can never be taken over by robots or computers.

I doubt any robot can do my exercises for me and keep me fit. A robot might prompt me to do so.

I doubt very much that a robot can say my prayers for me in any meaningful way (although there is an interesting challenge here for a sci-fi story).

Posted by lowlands_boy (# 12497) on :

The BBC did quite a lot of stories on this topic recently. You can give your job here and get an analysis of the likelihood of your job being automated.

Will a robot take your job

As a techie, I'm apparently quite a long way down the list of jobs at risk.

However, the question of whether Artificial Intelligence will outflank natural evolution and the machines will make slaves out of us all is an interesting one.

What will we do if we don't have jobs any more? Fight wars, probably....

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lowlands_boy:
However, the question of whether Artificial Intelligence will outflank natural evolution and the machines will make slaves out of us all is an interesting one.

That's where we need some version of Asimov's Laws of Robotics.

quote:
What will we do if we don't have jobs any more? Fight wars, probably....

Over what, though?

Posted by lowlands_boy (# 12497) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by lowlands_boy:
However, the question of whether Artificial Intelligence will outflank natural evolution and the machines will make slaves out of us all is an interesting one.
That's where we need some version of Asimov's Laws of Robotics.

quote:
What will we do if we don't have jobs any more? Fight wars, probably....
Over what, though?

Religion, ethnicity, natural resources, land, energy.... All the same shit as today would be my guess.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

357th of 366 - secondary schoolmaster

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I doubt very much that a robot can say my prayers for me in any meaningful way (although there is an interesting challenge here for a sci-fi story).

Of course, the real question is whether you can say prayers in a meaningful way.....

Interestingly, when I started work, some of the work I did was replacing people with technology (yes, I know, I was a bad, evil person). In truth, technology did replace some of the tedium in workplaces (and some of the tedious jobs), but to a far lesser extent than was feared. Computer systems have, in my lifetime, replaced hundreds and thousands of clerks and typists, but we don't see the roaming hoards of unemployed people that this should have produced. Most of them found other work, adapted to doing other things.

Today, it is very rare for computer systems to replace people - more likely it will reskill people, and may drive more jobs in time. It is still taking the tedious parts away, but this normally means that people can focus on the less tedious parts.

This is an ongoing process. How many of us have a servant to help us with the household chores? Or a wife who has to stay at home because managing the household is a full-time job? So a house that, just to run itself, would have taken 2 people reasonably full time 150 years ago now runs in our spare time. We have washing robots, and washing up robots and drying robots, and heating and cooling robots, so that we even have to have an entertainment robot in the house, such is the level of our free time.

So will robots take all of our jobs? I don't think so, but I think they will continue to fundamentally change out society. I suspect, in 100 years time, our current society will seem very dated and antiquated by comparison (probably less, in fact). I think work will change, but there will be a place for the human interaction.

FYI, I do have a SF piece in progress that addresses some of this. All I need is someone to finish reworking it for me....

Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :

I would pay money to see a robot manage a family throwing things or screaming at each other (I'm a behavioural family therapist who works in the homes of my clients). Funnily enough, I often stress the need for parents to be robotic about consistency.

Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :

I am not an Asimov expert but I have read a book of his short stories many years ago. One of them involved an investigator who is investigating reports of a saint in a sect called something like "Thom" or "Aquin". IF I recall correctly, then it turns out the saint is a robot!

Jengie

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

Holy Machine by Chris Beckett has, from what I recall, an interesting twist on the same type of idea. Maybe, if machines do all of our work for us, we will spend more time in worship of our gods.

The problem is, of course, if nobody works, there is no money to buy the things that the robots make, no money circulating to keep the economy going. So there is a balance to be found - but that is a very difficult and painful balance. You can't make widgets if nobody can afford to buy widgets. So you can't sell widget-making robots - however good and advanced - if nobody can afford to make widgets.

If you need to understand, watch The Man in the White Suit. Despite being older than me, it is still a superb reflection on the problems of producing something that is perfect. If you break the economic cycle, everyone suffers.

It is also hilarious.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

I spend my time raising and training pups for Guide Dogs as a volunteer. It's incredibly hard work and hugely rewarding.

That's what all work would be like in an ideal world.

But other people would find what I do a messy, awful slog!

My job for 40 years was Primary school teacher. I just teach a day a week now. A lot of simple maths/arithmetic is now taught by computer programme - much more interactive and satisfying for the kids than a human teacher, with instant correction and 1000s of ways of practising the same thing if the kids don't 'get it'.

Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
I am not an Asimov expert but I have read a book of his short stories many years ago. One of them involved an investigator who is investigating reports of a saint in a sect called something like "Thom" or "Aquin". IF I recall correctly, then it turns out the saint is a robot!

That was actually Anthony Boucher,
The Quest for Saint Aquin. Asimov's robot stories all tended to boil down to looking for loopholes in the Three Laws, and what happens when they are found. I don't think he touched on religion in his fiction, though it would be fun to see robots short-circuiting themselves over whether aggressive evangelism contravenes the First Law.

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I spend my time raising and training pups for Guide Dogs as a volunteer. It's incredibly hard work and hugely rewarding.

That's what all work would be like in an ideal world.

But other people would find what I do a messy, awful slog!

My job for 40 years was Primary school teacher. I just teach a day a week now. A lot of simple maths/arithmetic is now taught by computer programme - much more interactive and satisfying for the kids than a human teacher, with instant correction and 1000s of ways of practising the same thing if the kids don't 'get it'.

I just don't get it - the brain interprets meaning through the premotor cortex, and if learning - especially at an early age - is not tied into something tactile and/or motor then the level of abstraction can make it a lot harder to return from abstract to concrete. Keyboards are all the same regardless of the task, so access to meaning is encoded as a sequence of movements to produce key strokes, pretty much the same as a sequence of steps to get through a tomb raider game. It is not a way of thinking that suits all brains or that suits many life stituations. If the computers teach the kids how to do mental arithmetic (rather than relying on a keypad), maybe I could buy into that.

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lowlands_boy:
You can give your job here and get an analysis of the likelihood of your job being automated.

...

What will we do if we don't have jobs any more? Fight wars, probably....

When I was a kid in the 1950's there was lots of worrying about how, by 2000, we'd only work two hours a week because robots would do all the work and we wouldn't know what to do with all that spare time.

Now it's coming true - but somehow it doesn't look the same sort of worry.

PS as an old age pensioner, I could be replaced by a robot that can do Sudoku.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

When I was a teenager in the 70s, it was never a problem. We were all going to be melted in a global thermonuclear war very soon.

What has made a difference since the 1950s perception is that we have realised just how important the human part of the process is. Or, to put it differently, just how difficult it is to replace the human aspects of a process. The routine parts are easy to replace, but the thinking (and especially the image processing) are extremely complex, and not well understood, even now.

Which is why even Amazon still use human pickers - a job which seems a natural one for a robot. But there is some crucial parts of the human interaction that are still important.

But I think the job of MP could be replaced by a robot. Very little humanity involved in that. Same for senior bankers. And that would make everyone happy, surely.

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

It's quite likely we will experience something akin to the Industrial Revolution. There is no doubt that a lot of trade and professional jobs will be automated. Just as happened in the Industrial Revolution, this will make those who own the robots (or the patents under which they are made) very, very rich.

What is less clear is whether the jobs losts in professions and trades will be replaced with jobs equally rewarding. The Industrial Revolution suggests probably not.

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