19 replies to this topic

[inverse_bloom]

As the title mentions, what would humans do if we designed capable droids that took our physical jobs away from us? I guess you can form two main ways of seeing it. One is we could give away all the unpleasant jobs which we'd prefer not to do, but how far would we go? The other way would be a concern that we would be voluntarily giving away purpose and meaning in life by assigning our tasks to these droids. 

It raises critical questions, such as how would this affect employment as a whole? In what way would it change the world economy? Who would loose out and who would win? Could we use it to create mostly "positive" outcomes.

The likely hood that we will encounter these issues in the future are high. Do you believe we might innovate these droids into socially beneficial technology for the human race? much like we have the Internet? Would we try to create feeling, conscious robot beings? Or would we try to steer away from these moral issues. 

Lastly, would we ever go to the extent of relying on machines to "think" and learn on "our" behalf ?

Edited by inverse_bloom, 14 November 2009 - 11:02 AM.

[anwiii]

they are already taking our jobs. there's a positive and a negative to it. with the automation and the fact companies wont have to hire workers, prices of product is lower. that's a good thing. the bad part of it all is that the way things are going, the unemployment is sure to continue to rise unless they can use the technology of the internet to their advantage.

people are lazy. this is a fact. people would rather go through the drive through of a fast food joint and stay in their car rather than park and walk in because it takes more time and effort. business are taking advantage of that fact. as you will soon see in the future, walk in businesses will be closing down as all their business and orders will be transfered to the internet knowing people would rather shop from the comfort of their home rather than walk around the stores all day with few exceptions. the operations will be limited to a warehouses and robotic operations that pulls and packages orders automatically.

this is why it is so important that people are able to adapt and change with the times or be left not knowing what to do....jobless and possibly homeless. schools need to start offering more programs that allow people to do this.

this is the least of our worries however. the more unemployment there is, the more crime there will be. the more crime, the more government control which will eventually initiate a silent police state. then we have coning that is just being touched on the surface right now. eventually, there will be a time where creating that perfect person and people and society will be an issue and concern for those against it.....like me.

everything we are doing right now is creating a domino effect for the future. if you are able to see the effects of the domino effect, you are able to foresee what the future holds. for me, i don't see it as anything to brag about unless we train and prepare ourselves today for our future generations

inverse_bloom, on Nov 14 2009, 04:37 AM, said:

As the title mentions, what would humans do if we designed capable droids that took our physical jobs away from us? I guess you can form two main ways of seeing it. One is we could give away all the unpleasant jobs which we'd prefer not to do, but how far would we go? The other way would be a concern that we would be voluntarily giving away purpose and meaning in life by assigning our tasks to these droids. 

It raises critical questions, such as how would this affect employment as a whole? In what way would it change the world economy? Who would loose out and who would win? Could we use it to create mostly "positive" outcomes.

The likely hood that we will encounter these issues in the future are high. Do you believe we might innovate these droids into socially beneficial technology for the human race? much like we have the Internet? Would we try to create feeling, conscious robot beings? Or would we try to steer away from these moral issues. 

Lastly, would we ever go to the extent of relying on machines to "think" and learn on "our" behalf ?

[sheepdog]

As awiii mentioned, that has already happened, especially in the car industry. Robots work the assemply lines, it's great for the companies, no hourly wages, no need for health car benifits, no going on strike. Not all bad for the workers, actually may create some jobs, after all, somebody has to build the robots, program them, and I suppose even robots need the occasional lube job.

Robots can do some jobs that would be of great benifit to human life, the bomb defusing ones spring to mind, who in their right mind would want to take the risk of being blown up if they didn't have to?

I guess this evolution will just continue. Back 100 years or so ago, instead of robots we were worrying about how the manufactoring of cars would cause unemployment to all the buggy whip manufactors. We have to adapt to the changes and learn new skills, there is always some nitch one can find for one's self.

[inverse_bloom]

For sure robots do many things for us already, but technology will advance further to the point where robots (or droids) will quite literally take over "all" the operations of the factory, or the farm, etc. We couldn't work in these situations as we'd just be wasting our time.

That would push society towards more intellectual endeavors and focused on administration tasks (perhaps). Unless AI becomes so advanced that the judgment of a machine can match, or even surpass our own.

Will we have the foresight to get things right? Considering the competitive world we live in, whats "right" doesn't always come into the picture.

Agreed, cloning and genetic modification is gonna be a huge issue in the future. Many people "want" to create improved humans, but seem to disregard the fact that by creating super humans we will make the original people (us) partially redundant to society.

If we went down a path of mass biological warfare, i believe "that" would be a very scary prospect also. Mistakes and unforeseeable affects could easily see results go out of control.

I guess we will eventually "need" to come to an "Age of Wisdom", for the human species to make it to the next millennium. In some areas of human advancement, we will have to decide that we have reached a level where we should go no further.

[Ash-Bash]

Well I would image if such a thing did happen as Robots taking over our jobs the world would come to a full end or we would all be on government benefits which would last about 2 days before they had no money left . So we will all be in the crap XD. I also think a lot of viruses of some sort would go around.

[Spyda]

There are always going to be things that Robots will NEVER be able to do. On the manufacturing side of things, yeah sure they are capable of doing a lot, but on customer relations, ect there are just things that real humans have to be there for it to work.

[rpgsearcherz]

bk2070, on Nov 15 2009, 11:21 AM, said:

There are always going to be things that Robots will NEVER be able to do. On the manufacturing side of things, yeah sure they are capable of doing a lot, but on customer relations, ect there are just things that real humans have to be there for it to work.

Definitely true.

Along with this we can't fully trust robots with other things either. Sometimes they break, sometimes they just malfunction, sometimes something else happens. And when a robot goes out of commission it's not always a 10 second fix. If it's irreparable at the time then other people will be needed to take its position to keep doing whatever the robot was doing.

We won't ever be able to fully rely on robots.. Unless it's like Johnny 5 (from.. I forgot the name of the movie now)... But he was able to fix himself!

[inverse_bloom]

Mmm... not totally sure about that one. Its likely we will have new composite materials to build from. When a robot does go out of commission you could simply take out its memory and place it into another one. Technology has made some large leaps and bounds particularly in the last 150 years, some of it would be unimaginable for people 100 or so years ago. Think about the modern CPU chips we make today the scale which they are made (both the scale in terms of production and size of the internals).

In the future we will come across many other surprises which will result from human innovation. Production processes will become increasingly sophisticated. If we do have a planet temperature shift in the next 50 or so years like some scientists suggest, then that will motivate us to push sophisticated robot technology further.

Edited by inverse_bloom, 16 November 2009 - 04:32 AM.

[rpgsearcherz]

inverse_bloom, on Nov 15 2009, 10:17 PM, said:

Mmm... not totally sure about that one. Its likely we will have new composite materials to build from. When a robot does go out of commission you could simply take out its memory and place it into another one. Technology has made some large leaps and bounds particularly in the last 150 years, some of it would be unimaginable for people 100 or so years ago. Think about the modern CPU chips we make today the scale which they are made (both the scale in terms of production and size of the internals).

In the future we will come across many other surprises which will result from human innovation. Production processes will become increasingly sophisticated. If we do have a temperature shift in the next 50 or so years like some scientists suggest, then that will progress sophisticated robot technology further.

Well I find it hard to believe that even if it were possible people would push that far. Mostly because it would end up starting the destruction of humanity. Therefore those who caused the issue would be the same ones that are punished like the rest of us. Think about all of the "end of the world" videos there are. Where things are so chaotic everyone is killing everyone. If robots were to literally take over the work force we would have no other choice than to kill each other for food or other means of survival. It would be the inevitable end.

This is why I don't believe it would ever go that far.

[inverse_bloom]

I think things will get worse for human society before they get better. You obviously have some more optimism than i do. Human kind have made some big mistakes in the past, issues like Chernobyl come to mind. We become complacent in our ability to progress further in human advancement and thats where some things get overlooked.

Due to forces such as corruption and greed, society as a whole is steered in directions that the vast majority don't always agree with. Movies show what they will for entertainment value, but i think we've really got to wake up to the fact there are some very harsh injustices in this world that don't seem to be getting any better. For society making big mistakes in future will be inevitable. Hopefully anything big can be reversed and hopefully we will become wise as a result of them.

[Ne0n]

Well if that ever does happen in which I can see it will, Well I can see it from two points of views.

1, All the unpleasant jobs will be filled hopefully by them.
2, We will loose out on money, And less jobs for people that don't mind doing the unpleasant jobs.

[Jonnyg]

3 Words: Will Never Happen


Why you ask:

1.If it did happen were would all the companys that were using robots get there customers because no one will be able to buy their products.
2.Robots are not humans and can never take jobs in any customer service role.
3.It would actually cost companys more in the long run to have all robots.

It would just be a disaster.

Can you imagine calling emergency services and getting a robot on the phone. (nuff Said)

[Quatrux]

Well, plenty of jobs Today are robotized, I mean robotics do a lot of work people couldn't do, just look at factories, a lot of things are automatic, even though needs humans to work properly or to do minor things, so with time some jobs might be also taken care by "robots", I saw machines which can be programmed to mow the lawn without the interference of a man..

I also heard that there are such vacuum cleaners, so I guess in lets say 50 years we can see a lot of different jobs be occupied by robots where possible if of course it will be good for business, I mean if it will be cheaper for a company to buy a robot than to hire a man, by parameters of time and money.

Of course, somebody will need to take care of them, like restarting, so I guess several robots will need a manager in a company andmaybe an engineer and a programmer, just to sit and fix it when needed or something like that.

[SoundStorm]

My humble opinion is that we'd all be better off if we would take 100% advantage of the technology the world possesses. I can only imagine a world where menial tasks are performed by machines leaving the human being with the intellectual tasks and a lot more free time.

One thing's for sure... at the rate the world is going right now... we're bound to seriously hit our heads, wake up to reality and see all the mistakes we've made in this world... and I'm talking about global stuff like pollution and ineffective means of obtaining electric power... that sort of things. Just hope we wake up in time...

[Zagubadu·]

This is already sort of happening if you think about it. Sure they are not like Droids I Robot style. But there are factories of just robot like machines that make stuff that people used to once make. They are a lot more efficient and don't call in sick or just plain don't show up to work. I bet people still need to work maintenance on them but for the most part they do the job by themselves. People think jobs are hard to find now if this was to happen I don't know what it would mean for people looking for jobs. I doubt I will live to see the world like that so I'm okay. We will see about my kids kids though.

[Quatrux]

To add another idea, robots as we call them Today and in the future are taking such jobs, people don't want to do or aren't so efficient, so maybe in the future robots might be something like slaves and they might some one day rebel for their rights.. As usually most of the dirty jobs will be theirs, farming, in manufacturing and etc.

A farm tractor/combine/harvester can be called a "robot" looking from one perspective, in the past we used to do it with hands and horse power, still that "robot" needs a human worker to perform well.

[getube]

Hi,
It is a good thing if Robots take our jobs. We will be having a new job of looking after Robots for their proper functioning.
But don't ever let their IQ/AI is more than an average human's IQ.

[nirvaman]

I'm not afraid of robots taking my job , because they can't !
I can't imagine a robot inspecting another robot , because my job is to inspect and supervise machines and personel , and my other job is a veterinarian doctor , so i can't imagine a robot consulting a dof , or a cow and prescripting medication it would be great , but let's face it , Human created robots , to help them with the hard jobs , and the precision jobs , but they can't replace us !
Robots need a human to recharge their batteries , or to solve a problem with their circuits ,so don't worry , they will not take the control of earth !

[iAssistant]

If robots are taking our job, the only job left for us is to make robots Don't worry, the only solution to cope up with the changes is to go with the changes or to create change. Never, ever left behind.