The rise of the robots.

[NomoneyNohoney]

Well, I do my best.
As a matter of principle, I will not use hand-held scanners, nor self-service checkouts at supermarkets. I'd rather try and keep low-paid jobs in existence.
Same with my bank which has do-it-yourself terminals - I always ask for help, to reinforce that human intervention is necessary.

If enough people did the same, I like to think that it will have an effect on keeping human workers' jobs. If we all shuffle along dutifully as requested, then we're being herded...

[csearle]

Perhaps robots* should, by law, be paid set wages into a central pot. All humans would then be paid their share of the pot. In time as robots became (even) more ubiquitous the income would rise. The poorer the recipient is the more their standard of life would be improved. If it tips the balance from robots to human workers in some cases then so much the better.

Let's start this scheme tomorrow and see if it works.

Chris
* definition to be decided

[Biggles]

They're even catching you out when you carry out your harmless little hobbies at home now
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38450658

I wonder if that will cause people who are keen on 'smart homes' to pause for a moment?

[Clitheroekid]

Another way in which robots are predicted to play a much greater part is human life is that of providing companionship – including sex.

There was a very interesting programme on R4 a couple of days ago, exploring the way that the modern urge to tell the world everything we're doing and share the most private aspects of our personal lives is destroying the very concept of intimacy - http://bbc.in/2izKSao

One of the themes of the programme - and one that I've seen reported elsewhere - is that in some societies (especially those in Japan and South Korea) both men and women are increasingly shunning traditional male female (or even same sex) relationships and opting to live single lives. One explanation that's offered for this is that they actually prefer interacting with machines to other people.

This is presumably because machines will always give you the responses you want, having been instructed to do so, whereas human beings have an irritating tendency to do the opposite!

This may sound somewhat sci-fi, but one of the people interviewed from Japan / Korea said that such is the pace of development that robots will soon be able to determine our emotions and moods by reading various chemical levels in our bodies, and that not only can they interpret the mood we're in but they can also make an informed guess as to the reason we're sad / happy / angry and react accordingly.

So if we’re feeling depressed about work they would know what to say and how to act to make us feel better. Again, I presume that by constant monitoring of our physiology they would quickly learn which responses had the desired effect and which didn't and modify their future response patterns accordingly – again, something at which human beings are all too fallible!

Thinking about this aspect of robots, combined with the possibility raised by Snorvey of all our worldly needs being provided, it would seem quite possible that people could choose to live a life entirely in a virtual world, with little or no contact with other human beings.

Bizarre as this may sound I actually think there are many people who might choose such a life. Already, many young people seem to prefer interacting with their `friends' electronically rather than physically, and it's perfectly possible to envisage a network like Facebook creating virtual people who would be ideally matched to the real FB account holder. After all, FB and their like know a vast amount about their account holders, and could probably predict quite accurately what sort of person would be an ideal `friend'.

Can we really be sure that many young people wouldn't actually prefer a virtual friend who would always be kind to them and supportive in a way that real friends often aren't?

I think that most people have seriously underestimated the rate at which artificial intelligence is developing, and the degree to which human behaviour can in the relatively near future be both interpreted and imitated.

At the rate AI is developing I can envisage a time when robots will be virtually indistinguishable from human beings, and the big question then is will people actually choose to spend time with them in preference to real human beings (who in any event may themselves prefer the company of a robot to you). I can all too easily anticipate the first divorce petition naming a robot as the co-respondent!

Interesting times.

[bionichamster]

Perhaps robots* should, by law, be paid set wages into a central pot. All humans would then be paid their share of the pot. In time as robots became (even) more ubiquitous the income would rise. The poorer the recipient is the more their standard of life would be improved. If it tips the balance from robots to human workers in some cases then so much the better.

That's an interesting idea; however several potential problems immediately spring to mind, i.e. defining a robot as opposed to a bit of machinery that is slightly more 'efficient'/'productive', or a mechanised tool that makes humans a little bit more efficient (e.g.powered wrench vs a spanner) and the slightly more outlandish problem of what happens if the robots or computers get smart enough to ask why they don't get to keep their own wages.....

The main problem is however obvious, effectively what you've described is a tax on businesses that use technology to run 'efficiently' (in this case that means with minimal workers) and as we know there are a fair number of wealthy individuals and or corporations who think it is their duty to do all they legally can to avoid paying more tax than they deem legally neccesary, many of them object to their taxes paying for others who don't 'work' as hard as them, if they work at all, so one can easily imagine how they will view a system set up explicitly to take the money that their business produces and hand it to people who do nothing. However as a concept it is a reasonable approach to dealing with the fact we will increasingly produce what we need and run the infrastructure we require on far fewer human workers than are available and wanting to work and earn their keep, but wether it's workable or not is an entirely different question...

BH

[ThirdWay]

How much can robots do really?

If my bin needs putting out or my toilet needs cleaning, it's a case of do it myself like it has always been. Despite all the hype, with most useful tasks we are still nowhere near this robot utopia.

Even that great innovator, James Dyson, what has he really achieved? A variation on a hoover and a fan!

[sg31]

If there is no way of remunerating the general population there will be no market for all the goods manufactured by our robotic friends.

[redsturgeon]

A fascinating topic and one which will have many repercussions that we can only guess at...plus some that we may not even have imagined.

I find the Black Mirror series very interesting in its depiction of near future dystopias in which the increasing use of technology and AI has changed our society in strange and unexpected ways. Available to view on Netflix.

John

[shinygoldcar]

Just thinking aloud here:
Didn't "robots" (or rather their early predecessors: washing machines, hoovers etc.) enable half the population to go into paid work? However, those labour-saving devices helped out at home, not at the workplace, so they only eliminated unpaid jobs: scrubbing, washing clothes etc.

[Ashfordian]

There's a fair amount of unnecessary claptrap on show here...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38403944

I mean fridge monitors..?

And for those who would prefer to retrofit their existing equipment, UK start-up Smarter Applications has Fridgecam: a device that keeps track of what its owners have in stock and when it expires, sending alerts to buy new items when necessary.

I tend to find opening the fridge door and looking inside negates the need for this. Plus, you don't always buy the same stuff for your fridge every week do you?

I agree with you on fridge monitors being OTT but the following scenario will be technologically achievable by 2020 and only not available due to the slow speed of regulations to keep up with technology.
(basing on Amazon technology)

- You go to your fridge, take out and use the last of your milk while making an afternoon tea at 3:30pm.
- You say to your Amazon virtual assistant "Alexa, buy milk and deliver at 5pm this evening"
- At 4:59pm, Alexa interupts the music playlist being streamed declaring "Your milk will arrive at your delivery point in 1 minute"
- At 5pm on the dot, an Amazon drone will deliver the milk which you will collect and put in your fridge.

The Amazon Prime subscription will become as standard as paying for house insurance

The way we live our lives is going to change immensely over the next 10 years

[Slarti]

I agree with you on fridge monitors being OTT but the following scenario will be technologically achievable by 2020 and only not available due to the slow speed of regulations to keep up with technology.
(basing on Amazon technology)

- You go to your fridge, take out and use the last of your milk while making an afternoon tea at 3:30pm.
- You say to your Amazon virtual assistant "Alexa, buy milk and deliver at 5pm this evening"
- At 4:59pm, Alexa interupts the music playlist being streamed declaring "Your milk will arrive at your delivery point in 1 minute"
- At 5pm on the dot, an Amazon drone will deliver the milk which you will collect and put in your fridge.

The Amazon Prime subscription will become as standard as paying for house insurance

The way we live our lives is going to change immensely over the next 10 years

I would argue with your last sentence and change would to could.

And I for one would not want drones flying anywhere near my property when delivering to others, certainly not ones big enough to carry a couple of litres of milk. There is enough annoyance from air traffic as it is.

Oh, and I have no intention of bugging my own home.

Slarti

[bungeejumper]

Britain's laws are already more liberal than anywhere else's, and at present the yanks are just watching to see which way it goes. But I reckon widespread drone delivery won't happen.

Baby in pushchair gets mangled by a drone delivering beer to the neighbours. Out-of-battery drone crash-lands in heavy traffic, causing mayhem and casualties. Islamic State spots the opportunity for biological warfare drops, possibly down the chimney. Heathrow flightpaths over London are forced to close by the sheer volume of stuff up there. But the clincher comes when those through-the-bedroom-window shots of Wills and Kate/Elton and David hit the internet.

BJ

[Ashfordian]

I agree with you on fridge monitors being OTT but the following scenario will be technologically achievable by 2020 and only not available due to the slow speed of regulations to keep up with technology.
(basing on Amazon technology)

- You go to your fridge, take out and use the last of your milk while making an afternoon tea at 3:30pm.
- You say to your Amazon virtual assistant "Alexa, buy milk and deliver at 5pm this evening"
- At 4:59pm, Alexa interupts the music playlist being streamed declaring "Your milk will arrive at your delivery point in 1 minute"
- At 5pm on the dot, an Amazon drone will deliver the milk which you will collect and put in your fridge.

The Amazon Prime subscription will become as standard as paying for house insurance

The way we live our lives is going to change immensely over the next 10 years

I would argue with your last sentence and change would to could.

And I for one would not want drones flying anywhere near my property when delivering to others, certainly not ones big enough to carry a couple of litres of milk. There is enough annoyance from air traffic as it is.

Oh, and I have no intention of bugging my own home.

Slarti

Yeah, I'm not bugging my own home either. But many already have(Smart TV's, personal assistants, etc) and more are doing so every year...

There is definitely a could in how we adopt this progress but I feel there will be a point where the price point makes it cheaper to adopt than to maintain how we currently do things.

Will we get a choice if a drone flies over our homes? There is no restriction on other aircraft flying over us. Maybe they will be restricted to a certain height except for when performing the delivery?!?

This was my point about regulations holding up the technological progress

[panamagold]

Will we get a choice if a drone flies over our homes? There is no restriction on other aircraft flying over us. Maybe they will be restricted to a certain height except for when performing the delivery?!?

Lob up a couple of satellites and that should to take care of global flight paths and height restrictions.

[Clitheroekid]

There is no restriction on other aircraft flying over us.

That's not actually the case. As a property owner one of the few Latin maxims that is still used by lawyers applies, that being “Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos”.

For the benefit of the few Lemon Fools who can't immediately translate this it can be loosely translated as “Whoever owns the soil, holds title all the way up to the heavens and down to Hell". On the face of it any aircraft that flies over your garden, even at 30,000 feet, is trespassing, and you could sue the airline for damages.

Of course in the real world this ancient maxim has been massively modified and restricted. For example, the aviation problem is covered by section 76(1) Civil Aviation Act 1982, which provides that:

"No action shall lie in respect of trespass or in respect of nuisance, by reason only of the flight of an aircraft over any property at a height above the ground which, having regard to wind, weather and all the circumstances of the case is reasonable, or the ordinary incidents of such flight, so long as the provisions of any Air Navigation Order and of any orders under section 62 above have been duly complied with"

The "provisions" referred to are now contained in The Standardised European Rules of the Air ("SERA") which came into force in December 2014. In simple terms they say that aircraft are not permitted to fly within 500 feet of persons, vessels, vehicles or structures. The height restriction is increased to 1,000 feet over built up areas.

But I would expect the vast majority of drones to be flying at far lower heights than these, so on the face of it they would not be protected by section 76, and it would therefore be open to any landowner to sue Amazon or any other commercial operator.

Of course the damages may only be fairly nominal in the absence of any real harm or nuisance, but the claimant would usually be entitled to their legal costs as well.

Furthermore, and far more importantly from a commercial point of view, the landowner would normally be entitled to an injunction stopping any repetition of the trespass. A breach of an injunction is contempt of court, and I can't see Amazon being too chuffed at Mr Bezos being banged up by a judge at the local County Court!

It therefore seems to me that there will have to be specific legislation passed to change the existing rules and allow drones to operate without fear of litigation. But I can see such legislation meeting strong opposition on nuisance / privacy grounds, and the lower the proposed height restriction the stronger such opposition will become.

It should be an entertaining battle!

Incidentally, and as an aside, the task of disentangling the UK from EU legislation is so unbelievably massive after 40 odd years of incorporating it that it must be near to impossible. By way of illustration, this is the text of SERA - https://www.caa.co.uk/WorkArea/Download ... 4294975756.

Can you imagine the sheer number of man hours required to dismantle this and recreate new legislation that just applies to the UK? And this is just one tiny area of legislation - there are literally thousands more, some even more complicated.

Bearing in mind that drafting such legislation is highly skilled work, with a very limited number of people able to do it I could easily see it taking 20 years or more to complete the job, so the prospect of having to complete it within just 2 years is a complete nightmare, and, I would say, effectively impossible.

[bungeejumper]

On a tech related note, I see SpaceX are conducting the first of the invitation only Hyperloop pod tests at the end of this month..: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop_pod_competition

Assuming it works, this could be the future of automated mass transit for both freight and humans (as long as people aren't totally freaked out by it).

On the clear understanding that I was thrown out of school physics classes (for fighting in the lab, since you ask), and that therefore I have zero understanding of these matters:

The hyperloop looks to me like it's reinventing the railway, but with less friction. Maglev style, but with sealed tubes, a bit like those vacuum things that big shops used to use to shoot packages of cash around the building. (Anyone remember those?) Fine if you want to get stuff (or people) from one major distribution centre to another at 700 mph, but it still won't get you through Oxford Circus on a Monday morning. Never mind Oxford.

The Indy says it'll put HS2 out of business (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 12866.html). All you have to do is bury the tubes under London, assuming you can still find room in the ground for any more, of course - and then force the rest of the country to accept huge above-ground pipes that go on and on across the Chilterns etc for hundreds of miles. Good luck with that one.

On a more sensible note, are there any projections as to how much energy these things will use? And how does the energy requirement of a propeller-driven drone compare with the needs of an electrically-driven van, for example? My zero-grade physics says it's not terrifically efficient to use anti-gravity wind power just to move a pizza and a coke out to the suburbs, when you could cart 500 kilos of stuff in a rolling vehicle that might take a little longer to get there. But maybe I'm missing the point?

BJ

[gryffron]

Can you imagine the sheer number of man hours required to dismantle this and recreate new legislation that just applies to the UK? And this is just one tiny area of legislation - there are literally thousands more, some even more complicated.

Bearing in mind that drafting such legislation is highly skilled work, with a very limited number of people able to do it I could easily see it taking 20 years or more to complete the job, so the prospect of having to complete it within just 2 years is a complete nightmare, and, I would say, effectively impossible.

British Something Act 2020
"EU legislation E123456 shall apply in full to the UK"

See, that was easy. One doesn't have to be a member of the club to apply the club's rules if one chooses. Most small countries in Africa and Central America already do this. They just pick the best foreign rules that work and apply them. Which also helps trade as you have the same standards.

It is only lawyers who think you have to reinvent the wheel from scratch every time you do something. E.g. Why can't every lawyer in the country use the same standard contract for conveyancing? it would surely work for 99.9% of properties.

[Clitheroekid]

E.g. Why can't every lawyer in the country use the same standard contract for conveyancing? it would surely work for 99.9% of properties.

They do! This is an example, and as you can see it's just the variables that need to be filled in - http://sherwood-solicitors.co.uk/wp-con ... ntract.pdf

[Clitheroekid]

An interesting article on the general theme - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... -insurance

I suspect this type of story will very soon stop being a news item.

[Clitheroekid]

Quotes from the BBC article:

There are also more subtle questions about online help from a robot. Would you feel the same about positive feedback if it came from a machine rather than a person?

I think most students would be perfectly happy with that. Human tutors are far more likely to let subjective issues affect their assessment of their pupils’ work - such factors as whether they like them as an individual, whether the style in which they answer questions matches the tutor's own style, or, God forbid these days, whether the tutor wants to jump into bed with them!

At least the student could be sure that they were receiving an entirely objective assessment, or at least that their work was being assessed in exactly the same way as that of their fellow students.

What about the pastoral side of teaching? Could a robot offer empathy as well as factual insights?

The answer is that although this may not be possible to any great extent yet it certainly will be in the future, as AI becomes more sophisticated. In any case, many teachers are useless at the pastoral side of teaching or simply ignore it altogether.

And academic instruction is often not about "right" or "wrong" answers, but teaching how to think and investigate.

This raises a major issue, namely that much academic instruction is frankly rubbish. I've experienced it myself, both at school and university, and I'm sure a lot of other readers will have done so, as well.

For example I recall a number of lecturers at university who simply stood in front of the class and dictated their lecture notes, which we religiously copied down. They didn't generally welcome questions, and the whole exercise was an absurd waste of time.

A few people, including myself, had the temerity to suggest that it might make more sense for the notes to be copied and handed out, so that we could spend the hour discussing the content of the notes, but not one of them would agree. It was quite clear that they heartily disliked teaching, and saw it as a necessary evil that enabled them to potter about with their research work.

It’s also the case that the iconic teacher of legend who inspires children to do great things is unfortunately very much the exception rather than the rule, and many teachers are about as inspirational as a wet lettuce. Although AI may not be able to replace the very best teachers - at least not yet - it may well even at this stage of its development represent a significant improvement over many mediocre or poor teachers.

And whilst it may be a cause for regret, the fact is that many children nowadays, given the choice, would rather interact with a machine than a human. It's also a fact that for many, if not most children a machine is now their primary source of information, and not, as was until recently the case, their parent or a teacher.

It therefore seems to me that teaching will be one of the first professions to be severely hit by AI. The cost savings would, on the face of it, be enormous, though to what extent redundant teachers could find alternative employment is a moot question.

It may even reach the stage where the very need for schools at all would be questioned, as children could probably learn quite adequately at home, and again the costs savings of closing schools would be huge. However, I personally think that this would be a step too far, as schools have very valuable functions as social institutions.

However, I would confidently predict that at least half of teachers will be gone within a very few years, though no doubt the unions will do their best to delay the process for as long as possible.