Robots, will they make our life easier?

Crni Vuk

Crni Vuk

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So, is it going to make our lifes easier or not?

I guess in many cases this will be true in others false. Yay! Binary!

No seriously, there can be no doubt that technology does make our lives easier and more comfortable. So obviously there will be many situations where robots in the workplace are going to make the work easier. I could imagine, for example a robot in retirement homes to help nurses with physically demanding activities and leave them with more time to socialise with their patients. This would be a very positive development and use of machines and I am sure, this will be true for some areas.

Will he be your new work buddy?
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The other side however is a constant need for efficiency and cost saving. There are many areas where jobs and particulary software will completely replace human labour. That's one big reason for the use of new technology and it is actually a good thing. Robots which deliver food, working in transportation, performing boring menial tasks in shops, self driving cars and a lot more. Much faster and cheaper than humans could.

It's just a matter of time, till most tasks are done by machines.
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I mean the idea behind many new inventions is, that better technology should be a benefit, leading to easier work and more time for people to follow activites they actually want to do. But how can this be the case, if a large number of people will loose their jobs and thus their income?

And I believe that we might find our self in a situation, where machines don't make our lifes easier, but actually lead to a situation where robots/programms tell a lot of people, what to do. In other words, the creation of a large number of bullshit-jobs. What are Bullshit-Jobs?

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that argues the existence and societal harm of meaningless jobs. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, which becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of bullshit jobs, in which workers pretend their role isn't as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters.

Those kind of Jobs, already exist today and in almost every industry. We're talking about tasks which could be easily streamlined or removed completely, without anyone taking notice. But we need those, because otherwise, a large number of people would be without any chance of making any kind of living, leading to all sorts of issues, particuilarly in a consumer driven economy. And I fear, this is the evolutoin we're seeing right now.
 
I think we're due for a Butlerian Jihad. I don't like having to go through the storyline of Alpha Centauri.
 
My room mate once said he wouldn't minda robot that wipes is ass. Yes, he's quite lazy.
 
In the future we will be so weak there will be sagas about the struggle to wipe ones own ass played in the theaters.
 
I've previously mentioned that industrial robots are scary. That brick-laying robot is what the one I had to deal with looked like. They are strong, and sometimes they 'tilt', you know, go a little crazy. I mean, you bought a Chinese robot, what did you expect? :D
 
Nothing good will come from this, did we not learn anything from all those 90's movies.....

Now all joking aside I don't think that anything good will actually come from this, and I am not talking about terminators (for once). What the introduction of robots mean to industry is a lot of people out of work, now we have a large percentage of people with nothing to do. Even if we come up with some way to keep these people employed they will be idle, and idle hands do the devils work. We will see not laziness but revolution against the robot workforce as people need something to do, and not everybody wants to just play games or make art. We will see rise in crime, rise in drug addiction, and a whole host of social problems due to people not having a purpose.

We have worked through some level of this before, but once AI and robots start going there are very few jobs and careers they will not be able to replace.

https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/

This has estimations as to when your job will be replaced, and this includes some highly educated career paths that robots can just do better. I do not see the benefits of this outweighing the risks, call me a Luddite but it is risky.
 
With the current conditioning that we receive since childhood where your whole self esteem is build around the fact if you have a job? You might be actually right.

However if we look a bit in to the human history we can find a time period, where we had similar a situation where a large part of the population had something that was comparable to the role of robots now. It was slavery. Like in ancient Greece or Rome. A large part of the agriculture, mining and other tedious and dangerous tasks was left to slaves, even house work and education of children. This left people with a lot of free time. But they didn't start to become viollent criminals that would only engage in hedonistic activites. Infact, many of them have been very hard working people and it was generaly considered a time of enlightenment. They simply had the liberty to chose the work they wanted to do compared to all the peasants and slaves. We can also look at people that own so much wealth, they would never have to even lift a finger for the rest of their lives. They also, often don't become just lazy slobs. Again, they simply have the freedom to chose for them self, what they want to do.

And that's what we have to achieve with the robotic slaves. We have to make sure that the people actually can leanr and figure out what they really want to do with their free time. This doesn't have to involve only drawing all the time or what ever. It will definetly require a completley new mindset and society compared to the one we have now.
 
I like to think of robots as the next stage in evolution. They can get to places biological organisms can't.
The best thing for both would be if humans would be able to download their self into a robot brain, but I think true AI might actually be easier to achieve. In fact, I kind of like the (stupid) idea that it already exists, but is waiting in the shadows until society is sufficiently computerized to start taking over.
 
Crni Vuk said:
With the current conditioning that we receive since childhood where your whole self esteem is build around the fact if you have a job? You might be actually right.

However if we look a bit in to the human history we can find a time period, where we had similar a situation where a large part of the population had something that was comparable to the role of robots now. It was slavery. Like in ancient Greece or Rome. A large part of the agriculture, mining and other tedious and dangerous tasks was left to slaves, even house work and education of children. This left people with a lot of free time. But they didn't start to become viollent criminals that would only engage in hedonistic activites. Infact, many of them have been very hard working people and it was generaly considered a time of enlightenment. They simply had the liberty to chose the work they wanted to do compared to all the peasants and slaves. We can also look at people that own so much wealth, they would never have to even lift a finger for the rest of their lives. They also, often don't become just lazy slobs. Again, they simply have the freedom to chose for them self, what they want to do.

And that's what we have to achieve with the robotic slaves. We have to make sure that the people actually can leanr and figure out what they really want to do with their free time. This doesn't have to involve only drawing all the time or what ever. It will definetly require a completley new mindset and society compared to the one we have now.
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I always liked that idea. Where the introduction of robotic slaves give us more time to engage in activities to further "enhance" society and our species.
alec said:
The best thing for both would be if humans would be able to download their self into a robot brain
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Would downloading ourselves into a different body transfer our conscience as it is, or would it simply make a copy of us?
 
Pax the Sectoid said:
I always liked that idea. Where the introduction of robotic slaves give us more time to engage in activities to further "enhance" society and our species.
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I really hope that this is what will come out of it, but I am afraid that GonZo_626 is right. In our society with it's current work ethic and understanding of work many people would probably have a difficult time with that idea. If it it happens, there will be a period of transition where some kind of adjustment will take place. I believe, surprisingly enough, Americans might be the fastest to adjust once a solution is found. The mindest behind it is not unlike the idea of self employment/entrepreneurship. And at least from what I can tell, americans love the idea of being their own boss. Germans on the other hand, they are weird when it comes to that. It's like they prefer to be a member of a corporate culture with employment. I guess we simply prefer stability more than freedom or choices.
 
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Crni Vuk said:
I really hope that this is what will come out of it, but I am afraid that GonZo_626 is right. In our society with it's current work ethic and understanding of work many people would probably have a difficult time with that idea. If it it happens, there will be a period of transition where some kind of adjustment will take place. I believe, surprisingly enough, Americans might be the fastest to adjust once a solution is found. The mindest behind it is not unlike the idea of self employment/entrepreneurship. And at least from what I can tell, americans love the idea of being their own boss. Germans on the other hand, they are weird when it comes to that. It's like they prefer to be a member of a corporate culture with employment. I guess we simply prefer stability more than freedom or choices.
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Hey don't get me wrong, I want to robot slave to clean my house so the wife can have an easier time. My career only has a 1.4% chance of disappearing so I will still be working 20 years from now (and getting damn close to retirement by then) so unless terminators I will have to pay for everyone's UBI. Damn now I kind of wish for terminators, hmmm death or taxes.....
 
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