How has it affected the economy? Are there still enough jobs available?
Difficult for me to answer as ,so far , these Robots are met whenever I travel around in Asia for holidays there are not in the country I normally reside in.
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Not a hotel I’ll be frequenting mei…
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I wish these robots wouldn’t keep on packing tinned goods with the bananas!
Well the silver lining was you could talk to the robot at the reception in any language you wanted and it would understand. 
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Fight back? 
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What? Even Yorkshire mei? Even I can’t understand that lot from Barnsley… 
I guess Yorkshire might be a bit challenging.
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Brilliant!
That’s actually just reminded of an old 70’s film…Demon Seed.
Pretty grim stuff as I remember, I won’t be adding it to my DVD collection.
I’d never heard of that movie Chilli, so I’ve just looked it up…Wow! Anything with Julie Christie in gets my attention…
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Yes, well there is that of course Foxy but I think I’ll stick to admiring her in some of her other films 
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Very versatile actress and pleasing on the eye too Chilli…
Loved her in Doctor Zhivago when I was just a 14 year old schoolboy experiencing feelings I didn’t understand… 
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Now we mustn’t be drifting off topic again Foxy 
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A for Andromeda for me
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Back in the day the luddites argued that machines would take away their jobs, and history has proved that they were right. Cars have been built by robots for years, even my job as a centre lathe turner and general machinist has been replaced by whats known as a tool station. You put metal in at one end, and it comes out as a finished component at the other. One of my other jobs was as a toolmaker at a kitchen manufacturer. Chipboard was stacked in a pile at the beginning of a line of machines, and kitchen cabinets and worktops came out the other end…Untouched by human hands.
It wasn’t about just the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to produce something, it provided skills, benefitted the economy, and gave us humans a purpose and the satisfaction of creating something, a way of using our skills to put something back into society. Even if it was just the tax we paid on our wages.
So what is going to happen to humans now they are surplus to requirement?
And because some old skilled joiner took six months to build a handmade chest of drawers it not only saved his skill, it helped to save the planet by making the chest of drawers rare and valuable. Nowadays, they can produce 100’s of chests of drawers in a day, they will be cheap, and you can throw them away when you get tired of the colour or style…But the old skilled joiners chest of drawers will last hundreds of years. How about that for energy and materials saving!
Is it realistic to expect that certain jobs need to be reserved for humans although they can be done more efficiently, and cheaper for that matter, by robots or, more recently, by AI? Who wants to paint car bodies all day long wearing protective gear for hours so as not to be exposed to poisonous fumes in the paint shop. Which human being is capable of installing pre-fab heavy modules requiring forced posture with consistent quality for hours such as complete dashboards ? Not all countries and political systems have benefitted from mass production and they didn’t fare any better. If cars were not mass-produced, you’d have to wait for ten years or more before you could buy one. Would you have liked that? I agree that there may be an overproduction of certain products like the chest of drawers you mentioned. Here it’s up to the consumers to take corrective action by refusing to buy them.
Jobs and skills have been changing since man stopped being an all-rounder leading to shorter and shorter innovation cycles which, in turn, necessitate the need for life-long learning. It’s still too early to exactly anticipate the precise effects of AI but, evidently, it does not only destroy jobs but creates a fair number of them, too. At bottom, it’s not an existential threat that people are afraid of but change of any kind, pure and simple. A recent MIT study estimated that AI won’t have an impact on jobs and work as high as people with a negativity bias think it will because it’s simply too expensive and unripe. Its large-scale implementation will also depend on several factors and framework conditions. Nothing is as bad as it looks.
As for your last question, if you denied them a free choice, wouldn’t that mean that people are kept in leading strings? It’s a bit like telling you not to go on a cruise, isn’t it?
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Hi @Dachs…
I wasn’t suggesting that all jobs that have been replaced by robots/automation are a bad thing, but apart from speed and economy of production there are other issues why not all humans jobs should be replaced by robots. Humans need to be mobile and we are turning into a world of obese people, and the people who are concerned about their loss of fitness, strength, and stamina are turning to running and gyms to offset days spent tapping away on a keyboard or some other sat down profession. After all, who wants to leave university with a shed load of qualifications and have to work the land or spray paint vehicles.
I watch quite a few programmes about restoring classic cars, and there are people who actually enjoy spray painting cars and are very skilled and proud of their work.
Would it be a bad thing having to wait a while for a new vehicle? I do believe that people are having problems now with purchasing new vehicles due to shortages of components and distribution difficulties.
Nobody is being denied anything Dachs, but the value to the planets resources of an item will be reflected in the cost and waiting time. We tend to throw things away because it’s too easy and cheap to buy new instead of repairing or wearing things out. I can only see the use of robots and AI to manufacture things adding to the problems in the world we now face…Like obesity and overproduction.
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I take your point, Bob, it just sounds a bit romantic at times like tilting at windmills if you like while reality forces us to adapt to it and make different decisions. We just can’t bar progress or what people think it is. We may regret certain developments but inside us we know we can’t turn back the clock.
I see a difference between things that have their roots in the social system and those that lie within each individual. Some developments are inherent in the economic system and as such inevitable. Constant innovation is one of them. If things can be done, they will be done. The question you raised is how people can cope with the changes they are confronted with during their working life. My mother didn’t know the first thing about computers. I realised there’s hardly a way around them, now they are the most common thing for my children. People can’t change their jobs and learn new skills too often and that’s what worries them.
There’s no doubt that things that are replaced too soon pollute the environment. However, I’d differentiate between products that need replacing for aesthetic and technical reasons (cars) or environmental reasons (washing machines, fridges), on the one hand, and the giant number of disposable products often made of plastic that are bought and thrown away for convenience reasons only, OTOH. Not producing those in the first place would be a blessing. Yet that’s a problem of the economic system.
If people feel they don’t move enough, it’s up to them to do something about it like the two of us do. It’s essentially a problem of the individual and can’t be blamed on society.
Restoring classic cars is a niche activity for which there’ll always be a time and place, but it differs from the needs of mass production, doesn’t it. Incidentally, even painting pics on bonnets is done by robots, I saw the other day. The further development of robots and AI needs to be monitored closely but can’t be prevented, I’m afraid.
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