Unless the robot is indistinguishable from a pretty waitress with a cute smile, a lot of people aren't going to be happy being served by a robot.

You can already see the backlash in communication with support over the phone.  People get pissed off talking to the damned machines, not using the infernal things is actually advertised as a bonus for various companies.  The day machines take over operation of restaurants is the day I never eat out again.  There are many activities where I will not tolerate putting up with some damned computer, and I don't even like people.

Automation is definitely the future, but don't be surprised if people wont even accept humanoid androids in many circumstances.  There will always be a market for the personal touch, even if it costs more.

If we do all end up golfing and playing video games for a living, I wont be particularly unhappy about it, but automation hasn't just destroyed jobs, it's created new ones.  You couldn't have the level of commercialism we have today before farming became a highly automated process, pre-industrialization, 90% of the population had to farm to eat.  Books, movies, video games, pretty much everything you use simply can't exist in an economy where only one out of ten people aren't literally eating the fruits of their labor.  If we actually get to the point where serious AI is even doing the creation aspect of production, then we've either achieved a post materialist utopia where everyone loafs around like they do in Wall-e, or become slaves to our robot overlords.

I'm betting on that.

There's a company that is working on self driving 18 wheelers. Kind of scary?

Considering how bad people are at driving, not much more so than now...

actually yes, it's probably a lot further along than you think; not only that, but it wont need a new truck either

You are missing the forest.  Yes there will absolutely be people who prefer a "pretty waitress w/ a cute smile" simply because of the pretty/cute/flirty, but there are only so many of those needed... even if every restaurant was a hooters.    The problem is not just that ai & automation could replace most everyone in many restaurants.  The problem is that it's making baby steps towards doing the same to all of these tooL

• the offices across the street from said hooters.
• the bus & taxi drivers  that drive many of those workers.
• The truck drivers who drive products from point a to point b (ie mfg - warehouse - local store)
• the folks who move things around in those warehouses.
• the folks who make clothes & shoes worn by those workers
• The people who harvest the strawberries, grapes lemons, raddish, olives, & many more eaten by those office workers.
• all of those could be made self driving & the strawberry pickers already use ai to selectively pick only ripe berries

I agree.  Was my point about the successive waves of displaced workers tied to metropolis/ view of citues undimmed by tears.  Just too many greedy uber rich owner who want to squeeze the less well off folks. A guarenteed income at a level to have a fulfilled life is the birthright of every citizen.  All the natural reources of the nation belong to the people, not the Greedy Ol' Plutarchs.  Oh, I did  not know the swiss had a voting pattern like that.  Always happy to learn, thanks 

Alaska has, in principle, already adopted a portion of this.  Every citizen of alaska get a portion of the revnue from the oil business.  Just expand this principle to all natural resources and most of us would be a lot better off.  And thats Sarah Palin's state, LOL!

The history of such predictions being what it is, we should always take them with at least a small grain of salt.

Well what happens when everyone is making $2500 a month 13 times a year depends on people. We could turn to looting out of boredom which is not historically accurate, but would be more fun to imagine, but according to history it is greater specialization. Can we put that on the ballot in Arizona I would vote for that.

I not changing my stance. If we treat sentience like we done before, and make them slaves which probably will happen which if they don't revolt then we will do it for them. This in turn teaches them oppression. In slavery there are two kinds the one that has no promotion, and one that allows for promotion.

In history there is another way things calmed down when we offered native Americans citizenship. We made it illegal to segregate blacks. 

Again I'm still saying we will get what we teach. If the superior logic is true why does anyone have pets that are not human since they are inferior. 

The only that increases on a machine is computational ability which has none thing to do with sentience which is not increasing. Caprica was wrong with the premise that if you gathered all the information on a person and put that in a avatar that would create a person. It's not the information it's how we think which is wat artificial intelligence programmers have missed all these years. Our human bodies stores 10 trillion copies of 150 kilobytes of information. By the way I looked it up awhile back the only difference between a molecule and a cell is one is alive. Molecules can be made up of atoms or other molecules. Some molecules are bigger than some cells. So I spent this point to point out that this machine probably have as many molecules as we have cells. What I'm saying it's not the hardware that is keeping us back it's the firmware. 

or we could give them a little money (just enough to get by) and let them pay for batteries, oil, spare parts, etc. by themselves. works pretty well to keep humans under control.

Except people said the same thing about past leaps in automation.  This is a common flaw in many areas, we fight the last war for instance.  People are notoriously bad at judging a current change based on an understanding of a past circumstance, and being terribly surprised when a new technology doesn't fit inside their existing mindset.

From an 18th century viewpoint, the modern economy has already long since completely destroyed civilization.  The idea that almost no one would be doing any serious work would have been incomprehensible.  An economy built around a massive service industry, with heavily automated factories mass producing goods with minimal labor, and farming on a massive scale with 40 foot tractor driven equipment.  The modern labor market is an entirely foreign concept to even the world of fifty years ago, and fifty years from now, it is only our own inflated ego painting a vision of doom as most of our working population loses it's job.

Where you see a new facet of our job destruction, I see a pattern.  Machining modern car parts would have been an extremely skilled job a hundred years ago, but all of that is done by machine today.  It's not just unskilled labor that has disappeared over the years.  People who were at the peak of technology, growing wealthy on highly prized skills they spent years, even decades developing, are long since replaced by some stupid machine that does their job for them.  We're way past starting the total destruction of entire sectors of what used to be the kinds of jobs programmers are now.

The future of automation is not a guaranteed problem.  We could just discover new ways of entertaining ourselves.

And there are no guarantees that there won't be problems.  There will always be an element that will turn to nefarious means when their hands become idle through unemployment and the poverty that goes with it.  They will never get enough to live comfortably, so crime to survive/make ends meet is better than going without.  The thing is, we're not just talking about just one industry or sector being made redundant, it's an across the board thing that would see widespread job losses all at once, meaning that people will be struggling enmasse... fighting each other just to survive.  Historically, mankind can devolve to the lowest common denominator when times are tough, and that is unlikely to change simply because we have supposedly become more sophisticated and civilised.

Just 50 years ago there was no such thing as hackers or cybercrime... but with computerisation, machination came a whole new raft of criminals... sophisticated ones with a whole new world to exploit.  Yup, that's how many will entertain themselves... performing 'new tech' dirty deeds purely for the entertainment value.  The old saying that the devil makes light work of idle hands was true when Adam was a boy and is still true today, so one would not expect it to be too much different in the future.  While new tech can provide opportunity for good, the opposite is also true, and the criminally minded will find new methods of exploitation as the tech evolves.

On the other hand, those who are not morally corrupt may just become bored and depressed, finding solace in drugs or the bottom of a bottle, thus creating another social problem among formerly hard working souls simply not coping with unemployment.

50 years ago it was all check fraud instead of cybercrime.

Criminals will always keep up with technology, it's sort of a prerequisite of being a good thief that you can actually steal using modern technology.  Otherwise you're stuck with mugging people.

Yes, God forbid having to resort to manual labour...;)

Anyone worrying about robots and automation should chase up the comic I used to subscribe to when I was 10 [51 years ago] .... Magnus The Robot Fighter ...;)

Edition No.1 .....

We are not replacing tools or labor here.  We are actually replacing the PEOPLE and their entire skill sets.

When Joe is replaced by a machine, Joe will need to be cross-trained.  But Joe's skill sets, his genetic maximum capability, is going to be lower than what the machine can do.  And the machine can be cross-trained and upgraded faster than Joe can learn a new job.

Joe is not just unemployed.  He has become UNEMPLOYABLE.

To put this in the simplest terms:

The horseless carriage is coming.  And we are the horses.

The Basic Income Guarantee is indeed the solution.

We invented the machines to work.  Let them.  It's time the human race moved forward.

To what?  A basic income guarantee to those displaced workers would be no guarantee of preventing civil unrest, etc.  As always, the powers that be [both corporate and government] would set it a just on on just below the poverty line, thus creating a new group of have nots who are accustomed to a much better standard of living.  While many may not resort to a life of crime to help make ends meet, the crime rate would still soar because crime always rises as more and more people become impoverished and are forced into desperate circumstances.  That's how ghettos form, further separating the haves from the have nots and placing even greater strain on law enforcement and the judicial system.

The answer is not to displace millions upon millions of workers, but sadly that's not how the corporate world would play it, reaping even greater profits by employing a mechanised workforce it doesn't have to pay.  Thankfully, I'll be long gone by the time this AI threat comes to pass, as will my children and their children's children, though I do mourn those future generations whose lives will be adversely affected by 'progress'.

It's probably wishful thinking anyway.  90% of what used to be the workforce is now 15% and the other 75% are providing goods and services people couldn't even dream of.  For all we know, all the unemployable duds who can't keep up with robots will end up playing video games for a living to teach learning AI strategy and tactics for military applications, or efficiency optimization for economic functions.  The great unknown is the great unknown, our hubris can't dictate it.

Very Rumsfeldian, there, psycho...

Great, millions of fat, slovenly 'former' workers playing games all day everyday, just what the future needs  Instead of evolving, the human race would devolve and become an economic drain just eating up resources. 

It would only end badly.

Eloi.

Quoting Daiwa, reply 44

Very Rumsfeldian, there, psycho...

End of Daiwa's quote

He may sound Rumsfeldian, but to me he's channeling Bastiat.

High praise.

Another reason AI should not be replacing the workforce is hookers.  Venting one's frustrations with a flesh and blood hooker is natural and would feel that way, whereas going to a robotic AI one would not be natural.  Moreover, it wouldn't be right for a machine to be saying: "That'll be a 100 bucks, please."

Not only that, the rich and wealthy would get models that look like the female terminator in Terminator 3 and feel natural, while the poor get Arnie look-a-likes with all that chrome and tungsten underneath a synthetic skin.... and feeling like a bucket of bolts.  Nope, it wouldn't pay to be poor in the future

Shoot, given that scenario, and needing to get some dirty water off my chest, I dunno that I'd wanna be rich, either.

The real problem with robotic hookers is that pretty girls would actually have to work their way through college, instead of "working" through it.