# Robots and their possible effect on society



## Aquilonian (Aug 15, 2014)

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...-and-bored-thanks-to-robots-stealing-our-jobsBy  2025, ‘sexbots will be commonplace’ – which is just fine, as we’ll all  be unemployed and bored thanks to robots stealing our jobs | ExtremeTech

This may have featured here before though I'd not seen it. What most  horrified me was the naive optimism of the people commenting below the  article. "Robots will free us from drudgery so we can all do craftwork."  Yeah, right! Who's going to buy your craftwork when no one has any  money cos they're all out of work?

AS for sexbots, I think this highly unlikely, no matter how far  technology advances. The impoverished majority will not be able to  afford them. The unimaginably wealthy minority will be able to afford  real women, and thus buy the pleasure of knowing that their wealth gives  them power over a real person who is compelled to serve them rather than merely being programmed to do so. 

The bit about "it will take a while before sexbots have human-level  intelligence" also amused me. Surely "human-level intelligence" is the  last thing that would be desired by the potential purchasers of these  products?

Seriously though, it did set me thinking. 

In the sixties, futurologists pontificated about "the problem of leisure", predicting that due to automation we'd only work ten hours a week and wouldn't know what to do with all that free time. What's actually happened is that (in the UK at least) people work longer hours, and there are much fewer full time mothers/homemakers. Well paid factory work has been replaced by low paid unskilled "service" and office jobs. But these jobs are now threatened by robotics. 

It's already clear that millions of people are simply "surplus to  requirements" in modern society. As robots take over the remaining skilled manual jobs, and  encroach upon service and office jobs, and even the professions, the proportion of  "unnecessary" people will greatly increase.


----------



## Ray McCarthy (Aug 16, 2014)

Most stuff about Robots in the News or Internet makes less sense than science fiction and most of it is less informed. "Sex bots" of various kinds have existed for a while. Perhaps for very lonely people they become more a human shaped teddy bear than a sex toy.
AI is still fantasy and will remain so until we figure out what natural intelligence is. The recent kilobot (not Killer Bot) press release is an example. It's not AI at all. Just an algorithm that poorly mimics flock behaviour.
So far robots industrially are just more advanced version of the effect of Jacquard card programmed weaving loom. It's impossible to say what the future will bring, except civilisations in general seem to eventually decline. China perhaps has had the longest but has had severe upheaval since 1912 (Mandarins. Japanese War, Civil War, "communism" (in a sense), the dreadful "cultural revolution")


----------



## BAYLOR (Nov 9, 2014)

Further job displacement . Eventually Robots will be running the world.  It's just thought.


----------



## tinkerdan (Nov 9, 2014)

I'm not so sure that robots would necessarily take away all the jobs and we'd have to really go there in order to see.

As an analogy remember how everyone was so certain that computers would lead to a paperless office. I know that our office still has all the paper because sometimes it's just as easy to get the paper copy as it is to look up the electronic one and when you need to go somewhere where you can't take the tablet those paper copies come in handy and if you don't have them then you have to print them out. Ultimately the computer has led to a time when paper copies are so much easier to generate that we use more paper than before.

So maybe we'll use more people.

But the other side of it is that this scenario in the OP means we make something that looks human. I know that's everyone's dream. Seriously though the ones that have been taking jobs take stranger forms. You could almost include traffic lights which replace the need for a person to stand at an intersection and direct traffic. Even the stop sign would be the most rudimentary of single use immobile robot ensuring that people stop. One of the main reasons to make a robot look human[at least as human as the picture there] would be that they interact with humans. It could be that they are servicing humans or it could be that they work with humans. The latter might be the most likely since we haven't made ATM machines that look too human:yet.

But the sex-bot opens a can of worms that need to be addressed; not including that on a very primitive yet aesthetically pleasing way we've already got those and they are often frowned upon or laughed at and have led to neighbors reporting that so and so down the street has been dragging something that looks like a woman's body in or out of their house.

I for one have a bit of perhaps over optimistic notion that we are just a bit better than going that far for a number of reasons that don't always stay within the realm of good reasons. In a way these sex toys and proposed sex-bots really are just glorified versions a the J-rabbit vibrator and I would certainly be the last to take that away from anyone. But I strongly believe that most people need more than that or they could get the same without the fancy mechanical devices and the result would similar in being safe, convenient, and lead to serious moments of companionable silence.

We enjoy the companionship and some even value that above anything else so the sex-bot would have to fill that need eventually and it might be a long time before we get that far because we have enough problems finding 'people' who might meet that requirement[especially because everyone might view this differently]. We would have to come up with a formula that could fill that need on a broad enough range for this to work to an extent that it would likely be a while.

On the other hand when I see articles like this I might be too optimistic about mans intelligence and companionable needs and it might be that there is a market for it and in that case there is no need to sweat about the--future; because you can already order something comparable that will be like putty in your hands.


----------



## J Riff (Nov 9, 2014)

How about using robot tune-machines to put those dreadful musicians out of work for starters. ) Then, a hardwired cellphone to replace one's brain...
and vacuum cleaners with an IQ equal to their owners, allowing free time for phone calls.


----------



## tinkerdan (Nov 9, 2014)

Sorry::


J Riff said:


> How about using robot tune-machines to put those dreadful musicians out of work for starters. ) Then, a hardwired cellphone to replace one's brain...
> and vacuum cleaners with an IQ equal to their owners, allowing free time for phone calls.


:: I'm certain that someone already wrote this book.


----------



## Ray McCarthy (Nov 10, 2014)

Robots have pretty much replaced many repetitive manufacturing jobs, starting with Pick & Place PCB assembly in 1950s and then in 1980s/1990s increasing in car industry.
Some factories only have many humans for maintenance and inspection.
It's a gradual process and absolutely none have "real" AI. 

Mindless  slaves. More Golem than Star Trek's Data.


----------



## tinkerdan (Nov 10, 2014)

Of course today::



Ray McCarthy said:


> Robots have pretty much replaced many repetitive manufacturing jobs, starting with Pick & Place PCB assembly in 1950s and then in 1980s/1990s increasing in car industry.
> Some factories only have many humans for maintenance and inspection.
> It's a gradual process and absolutely none have "real" AI.
> 
> Mindless  slaves. More Golem than Star Trek's Data.



::Most of life seems repetitive--so...


----------



## BAYLOR (Nov 10, 2014)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Robots have pretty much replaced many repetitive manufacturing jobs, starting with Pick & Place PCB assembly in 1950s and then in 1980s/1990s increasing in car industry.
> Some factories only have many humans for maintenance and inspection.
> It's a gradual process and absolutely none have "real" AI.
> 
> Mindless  slaves. More Golem than Star Trek's Data.




Sooner or later they are going to come with AI(s). When machines can think for themselves,  Pandora's box .


----------



## Ray McCarthy (Nov 10, 2014)

They may replace ALL workers, but AI so far is purely totally SF.


----------



## BAYLOR (Nov 10, 2014)

Ray McCarthy said:


> They may replace ALL workers, but AI so far is purely totally SF.



Science has made alot of things possible.  Why not AI(s)?


----------



## Ray McCarthy (Nov 10, 2014)

Things are either possible or not. Through science and mathematics we discover which. As there is no useful definition of Intelligence yet, a program can't be written. Programs are textual representations of logic. They can't do anything, only what can be logically defined, and ultimately any computer program can be executed by sufficient quantity of logic gates implemented as ICs, transistors, valves, relays or even cogwheels.
After 60 years there is no progress except to do things we thought needed intelligence without it and like George Orwell's _1984_ or Lewis Carroll's _Alice Through the Looking Glass_ (Humpty Dumpty) to redefine terms so it *seems* as if there is progress.  There has been zero progress.

It seems likely we can build robots to to all that is required more by advances in power,  mechanics, materials and sensors than any particularly clever software. Even if AI *WAS *possible do you really want the scene in Dark Star were he argues with the bomb? I think so much better SF AI scene than HAL in 2001, which is certainly a glossy polished film.

Most of the things (all?) that AI is desired for are things we our selves can do that actually we don't understand how we do. Likely we will discover for example how to write a program so a chair can be recognised as a chair. We don't know how we do it. You can see a design of a chair you never saw before and know it's a chair from almost any angle. The arbitrary angle bit is very hard to program. Programming a few chairs and then identifying ANY chair is baffling.


----------



## Ray McCarthy (Nov 10, 2014)

Appropriately  ...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/10/rise_of_the_robot_workforce_theyre_after_your_job/

Interesting suggestion:


> * Here we go again. *
> 95% of historical jobs were eliminated by advances in technology. We don't have 95% unemployment, we have boybands and other tat instead.
> 
> All this study proves is that things in the future will be lamer.


----------



## Dave (Nov 10, 2014)

I can't predict the future, but I think a better analogy would not be the paperless electronic office* but rather the automated household. Vacuum cleaners, washing machines, dryers, microwave ovens and assorted electric gadgets all mean that you don't need servants, a maid or a wife to wash clothes, clean, cook and run a house. So, wives didn't paint their nails and do their hair, but they went out to work as well as the husbands, and we now cook for leisure. Some people even iron clothes as a leisure pursuit.

I would also dispute that everyone is working longer hours now. There are more working hours in total, but many of those are in service industries created to fill in the spare time of other people now working less hours. Many full-time jobs have been replaced by part-time. The problem is with the disparity between the lowest waged jobs and the highest, but I'm not sure that is totally as a result automation or computers but more out of greed. Unfortunately, I can't see a fair system where people no longer working can benefit from the work now done from a machine in their place. The machine has a capital cost which needs to be paid back. Paying people not to work leads to many of the social problems we experience. We certainly enjoy a much better standard of living due to automation. Many people may work in boring, mind-numbing jobs, but they are healthy, they are safe and secure, and they have experiences and foods, travel and labour-saving gadgets that their great-grandfathers could only dream of.

Another thing - people are social animals and we need contact with other humans. We also need contact with natural environments and with other animals.** If we don't then our well-being and our mental health suffers. This is already well known but I think it will become more important as urbanisation continues*** Anyone without a social network (the total number of close relatives and friends) of three or less predicts the probability of common mental health disorders. It would therefore be totally unhealthy for us to surround ourselves with machines and have no human contact - we'd be like the people seen in _Wall-E_.

*What the electronic office did do is to get rid of the typing pool.
**Biophilia Hypothesis - an instinctive bond exists between human beings & other living systems; an urge to affiliate with other forms of life.
***By 2030, 6 out of every 10 people will live in a city, & by 2050, this proportion will increase to 7 out of 10 people.


----------



## Ray McCarthy (Nov 11, 2014)

_The Machine Stops_ EM Forster, seriously predates Wall-E


----------



## Nick B (Nov 11, 2014)

Google The Venus Project.


----------



## psikeyhackr (Nov 11, 2014)

Employment has been artificially created for decades.  I have not been to an auto show for more than 30 years and have never purchased a new car.  I am sorry but the Laws of Physics do not change style every year.  Years ago a man told me he loved cars.  I asked him what a cam shaft was.  He didn't know.  All I could think was , "Idiot!"

The economy is a farce.  It is mostly a useless work machine keeping the peons running on a consumer treadmill.

So robots will just help crash a system faster that had to crash anyway.

We talk about education but cannot make 700 year old double-entry accounting mandatory in the schools.

Subversive, by Dallas McCord Reynolds
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23197/23197-h/23197-h.htm

psik


----------



## Nick B (Nov 11, 2014)

And if you really want to upset yourself ( and the more people that do, the better) google the fractional reserve system. You may have to read it several times to undestand how truly insane it is.


----------



## AlexanderSen (Dec 25, 2014)

I wonder, do people get the same satisfaction from sexbot as they do real people? I don't know if it could complete subsitute humans beings, but as mention before, humans have many complex social needs. So we are not dead yet! The interesting thing is it might even become a trend like iPhones and smart devices. Sexbot both a benefit and warning, show humans need to treat each other better and work harder in fulfilling the needs of others, or else we might get replaced by robots/sexbots some day.


----------



## scientia (Dec 25, 2014)

Aquilonian said:


> By  2025, ‘sexbots will be commonplace’ – which is just fine, as we’ll all  be unemployed and bored thanks to robots stealing our jobs | ExtremeTech


There is currently no possibility of sexbots in 2025.


----------



## Dave (Dec 26, 2014)

scientia said:


> There is currently no possibility of sexbots in 2025.


And your own qualification for determining this conjecture is?


----------



## Ray McCarthy (Dec 26, 2014)

There are "sexbots" now, have been for a while.


----------



## Nick B (Jan 3, 2015)

The concept is simple really, there are reasonable robotics available now and making a fairly realistic body is practical right now. It wouldn't be very sophisticated, wouldn't think or act of it's own accord but could easily respond to sound or touch. Even childrens toys do that.
It would be expensive now, but in ten years? A decade is a long time when it comes to technology.

I think ten years from now, they'd be easily possible and realisticaly affordable. Think i'll keep the wife though, she's quite nice really


----------



## Deep Space Nina (Jan 3, 2015)

About sex robots: If you just want and not anything else like some sort of relationship, it would perfectly make sense. Like an advanced dildo with human shape. (Or anything like that for people who seek a male sex partner.) I am quite not sure if it would be so hard to come to the level of a prostitute. I am not of a geisha-like person, but probably of a person who can hardly speak the language of the costumer and just has a quick ... you know what. Cabin sex is of course something that could be replaced immidiatly.

Affording of a robot that is like a boy- or girl-friend? - Well, relationship is ofter no matter of being able to afford. The poorest guys buy their ladies a diamond ring and the poorest women lend their boy-friend money in an amout that would ruin their lives if not paid back. I could imagine that if you advertise robots well enough, like showing them in a way of a star on TV, even people who cannot afford would like to have a boy- or girl-friend robot.


----------



## tinkerdan (Jan 3, 2015)

Yes for a few hundred to several thousands of dollars you can buy something quite life like but use some discretion or you might be visited by the local homicide detectives.
http://www.inquisitr.com/12739/sex-...can-get-off-and-spark-a-murder-investigation/

https://books.google.com/books?id=q...epage&q=sex doll murder investigation&f=false


----------

