Are you Ready for the future?

[kamanersh]

Have you ever watched the movie 2040? Well not really movie but you know what i mean. If you haven't got by watching it then you should, it is really a piece of Asfr art. Anyway not only does the movie present itself with the positive side of our future but also the negative too. For example remember the part where Brad Armstrong is told by the fembotdealer that He too might be replaced by these self thinking machines? "If they made the male model" The point I want to get to here is that im sure you've all watched terminator movies and thought whoa thats not going to happen for along time, that may be true but "we" ie. the perfect woman comsumer, have not thought about the near implications for wanting our dreams to come true. It is bound to happen since the consumer base is so vast but just like Brad our fantasies will become realities some day. Besides using fembots for our pleasure eventually corporations will use them for other things like desk reception and people interactions, and thats only the start. This is already happening in Japan and is bound to spread to the west "after they find a way around the uncanny valley". So imagine one day in the future "maby not ours but our children and grandchildren" "-_- too bad i was born not in the future ;p" after having a "Good time" with their artificially intelligent maidbot they go to work and find out they have been replaced by a sexy fembot worker. Poor billy didn't think that his fantasies would replace him! He asks his boss why, and it all comes down to money and expenditures. So what do you think about it? Are we ready to accept our fantasies with its implications? And in the end truthfully arn't we all "billys"?

[PsychoKirby]

Every new technology is met with paranoia, especially in regard to that technology eliminating jobs. Publishers thought that movies would eliminate the need for books. Why read when you can watch? Movie studios in turn thought television would cripple the movie industry. Why drive to a special theater to watch a moving picture when you can see all you want from the comfort of your own home for free? And books, movies, and television all thought the Internet would ruin them. Everybody is doing fine.

And even when the paranoia isn't unfounded and jobs are eliminated, new jobs are created to compensate for them. As computers became more and more commonplace, many once-ubiquitous jobs started shrinking. For example, less and less courts are using stenographers in favor of computers that can record speech and translate it to text. (Though this still isn't quite common as the technology has yet to be perfected.) But somebody has to manufacture the computers. Somebody has to repair the computers. Somebody has to sell the computers. And of course, usually somebody still has to operate the computers.

Robots likely won't completely eliminate the demand for human labor. And if they do, just think of it as humanity now being fully devoted to leisure time.

Oh yeah, and we'll get fembots. That's always a plus.

[kamanersh]

You have a good point Psycho, ive noticed that as the 20th century progressed education became an integral part of getting a job. In the 1920's you could get a factory job with no education. In the 1960's you could have a Job with a HS diploma, but today even an AA degree is not enough. Part of that technology evolution thing I guess. Thanks to the movies, the Internet, and television among other things caused each field to develop more rapidly in competition to the other. "Which is better for us the Consumer" And Tis true that leisure time increases with time. During the 30's after your job you would go home and do home chores + driving "Or walking" to the bank, grocery ect. Now you can just order that stuff over the internet to your door. But we forget who is left out in this technology conundrum, the poor and uneducated. Anyone could get a well paying job before the 50's but now its a different story. As you've said, technology advances and more advance fields replace old fields. Let me state a good example. Ice was used in the early 20th century to keep foods cold so you had people who made ice and transported it. Not so advanced scientifically, but then came the advent of the refrigerator, poor ice makers and transporters went out of business. Now these chaps had to Learn how to manufacture refrigerator parts. And not all people at the time had the knowledge to join the "Refrigerator Inventors Club". "If you know what I mean". The point is that woulden't that mean in the future that Gap between the Uneducated and Educated become bigger and thus they are the loser because future jobs require advanced skills? "But that does give them more leisure time heh"

[Svengli]

Excellent topic.

I voted no. I'm not ready for the future. No one is ready for the future that's shaping up. No one has thought through all the implications. Even The scientists who are producing this stuff probably aren't fully extrapolating the consequences of change at an accelerating rate.

I strong recommend "The Singularity Is Near" by Ray Kurzweil.

He points out that technological progress is increasing at an increasing rate. And that the human impulse is to extrapolate change at a linear rate.

He mentions the human genome project. In the first two years, they had sequence only 2% of the genome and various folks were saying it was likely to fail. But an increase in the underlying technology allowed the project to actually finish early - they are now able to sequence a genome in (I think) weeks and will soon go to days and then minutes.

So, the various robots we see now, many of which are amazing, are nothing compared to what we'll see in a few years. A random headline from Slashdot today: New Optomechanical Crystal Allows Confinement of Light and Sound. Progress on nano tech is continuing and nano-engineered devices of one sort or another will certainly be appearing. Rather, nano-engineered devices besides the nano-engineered chips that we've already become accustomed to will appear. Of course, there's more obvious progress like the two-legged walking robot from the Big Dog people.

And yes, the more intelligent robots exist, the more the question of replacing humans, *any* humans, will appear. Sorry - I'm skeptical whether the boundary of intelligent robotics will be shared widely. I hope it will be but...

Still, I think it can be argued that the demand for intelligent sex dolls is a good thing. It is much better if robots develop as widely available consumer product to satisfy people rather than if they develop only as soldiers and workers (whose function is to, respectively, remove and replace people).

[Grendizer]

Yobotics has produced a remarkable machine with brilliant balancing abilities. Watch it here.

This year they shall give it arms. Balance isn't really a problem anymore. The chief obstacles (leaving aside AI for a moment), are vision and energy. Both are advancing apace, although I believe vision will out-pace energy. Regarding sexbots, distinct from any other robotics regime, I had thought that touch would be the ultimate impediment to fully functional systems, but then I saw this: Quantum tunneling for synthetic skin.

Everyone here should probably read Marshall Brains' site. I don't see how to avoid his ultimatum concerning our future. The robots are definitely coming. I don't think it will be precisely as Brain speculates, but there is reason to mitigate against his warnings. Take the time, especially, to read the articles on the left which start with "Robotic." Very intriguing, and worrying. But there is definitely a great deal of hope to be had.

Personally, I can't wait for the robots to come. If I can manage to survive long enough for AI androids to become accessible, they will become a source of ultra-cheap labor (not free, exactly, but hugely better than breaking the bricks yourself). The days when hanging your own shingle required superhuman hours and unswerving attention to detail will be over, and all of us may get the chance to become the idle rich. Yeah. I can't wait.

In a very simple example, many of us have too little time and too many comics to go through with enough thoroughness to squeeze every ounce of profit out of them on, say, Ebay. Let your robot do it, then watch the money tumble in. The whole while you are only paying for energy (maybe not even that), while you can spend time working as you usually do and not lose any leisure time concerning the organization and sale of your collection. Some portion of us could quickly retire with that sort of efficiency at hand.

[andoroido]

Technology may advance at exponential rates, but politicians, lawyers and money problems seem to do a pretty good job of limiting it to a more linear or sometimes stagnant level.

I hope androids come soon, because that technology would also allow mechancial replacements for body parts as we age. Cyborgtization will hopefully progress fast enough.

[TW]

In my opinion, human evolution and progress has been largely augmented (if not determined) by the design and proliferation of machines. What allowed Homo Habilis to out compete its lesser evolved brethren was the use of basic tools, while the next phase of human evolution spurred the development of bigger brains to design and make better use of these tools. As Homo Sapiens Sapiens, our development and advancement on species has been pioneered by invention and creation of new technologies. The Romans used it for military might to conquer much of the (then) known world, The English used their technology and ingenuity to transform from a tiny island nation into the world's largest empire, and the United States has used it to become the world's most significant cultural force. Of course, I'm generalizing here and the technology was used for other things, but these are all massive feats accomplished by the use of technology.

In terms of people concerned about being replaced by machines, sentient or otherwise, I say look no further than the industrial revolution for a case study. The power loom, the steam generator, the Bessemer steel process etc. all put countless skilled laborers out of the job. Naturally there was a backlash (the Luddites, for example), but by and large the citizens of industrializing countries were happier more than anything. Standards of living went up, and more consumer goods were available for less in an increasingly accessible market. An entirely new economic system was created as a result that persists to this day. Institutions such as the corporation, marketing, and private sector research and development were all born out of that era, which created an entirely new market for jobs and an entirely new class of professionals.

I believe the same thing is likely to happen with the introduction of sentient machines into our daily lives. There will be a backlash (and many of us have theorized what that would be like on this forum), but mostly people will be happy, and the standard of living will raise once more as worker efficiency increases and the trend of technology augmenting human efforts continues. Once more, a new class of professionals will be created (as PsychoKirby so astutely suggests, "somebody has to manufacture the computers. Somebody has to repair the computers. Somebody has to sell the computers. And of course, usually somebody still has to operate the computers.") and the course of human events will continue into the next iteration ad infinitum until an external factor or a next level evolution takes place (like Svengli says, check out that book by Kuzweil for my opinion on the likely next evolutionary step) that destabilizes the cycle.

Let me close by saying that I didn't vote on this topic for one very important reason. In my opinion, nobody is ever "ready" for the future, but rather we must be ready to adapt to whatever the future holds. People like the Luddites failed to adapt, and were ultimately destroyed in a sad example of "social Darwinism". If we are to avoid sharing their fate, we have to remain positive and forward looking to better adapt for the world of tomorrow.

As a disclaimer, I'll state that these thoughts are merely nothing more than the opinions of a sleep-deprived young man who (falsely or otherwise) considers himself important enough to share his philosophical flights of fancy with the world. Feel free to disagree with me and to try to change my mind. After all, I'm only human

Wow. GREAT topic!

[D.Olivaw]

As another sleep-deprived young man with a love of philosophical meanderings, I wholeheartedly endorse TW's post

I think it is likely that as automation technology progresses, we will see more and more unskilled labor jobs filled by machines. Industrial jobs were first (easiest to automate) because they are usually composed of a series of purely mechanical (ha!) tasks that involved only the manipulation of an ordered environment. Even then, building robots to be able to do things like, say, produce a good weld has been harder than most people seem to think. They are also still far from ubiquitous due to cost (but also labor politics).

The next frontier for robotics, then, is likely the service-industries. These are jobs which, like industrial tasks, are usually simple and repetitive, but require the worker to interface with people on a regular basis. Think waiter/waitress, airline attendant, retail worker, etc. Some jobs like this have already been automated, usually those that involve an artificially simplified environment. The common computerized telephone operator is a good example of this phenomenon, as is the self-checkout at the supermarket.

Jobs in this domain that cannot be so simply automated (waitress, etc) are out of the reach of all but perhaps the most advanced (read: expensive) current technologies, and if the robot waitress does appear in the near future it is more likely to be a trundling wheeled tray with an LCD screen displaying a smiley than a pretty fembot.

That said, it does seem likely that the future will see a spread of automation to the service sector as (or if) computer technology continues to both increase in power and decrease in cost. Facial recognition software will be a must for these kinds of platforms, as will some very clever programming so that they can interact with us complex, messy, variable human beings. This poses some interesting questions for the future. If automated platforms do end up taking up many low-end service jobs, what sort of jobs are left at the entry, or minimum wage level? Intelligence falling as it does along a spectrum, what happens to people who aren't able to succeed in higher education and get thinking-jobs? I also imagine that in countries with above replacement-rate birthrates and large labor pools it will take longer for such systems to become commonplace, all else being equal (the else being politics). So we would be more likely to see such automation in Japan than in the US, as an example.

As the physical technology and software development reach the point where something like an android secretary/flight-attendant(/sex-toy) becomes both feasible and marketable, there will likely be a more vehement backlash than against the trundling waiter-bot I mentioned above. It's hard to get people who are not being directly affected riled up against a glorified dessert tray, but give the machine a humanoid form (and especially human behaviors) and peoples' creep-out sensors start going crazy. It'll be easy for the usual characters to bloviate with rage about how the machines are "taking over" and how "in a few years we'll be serving them" when the machines they are talking about will have all the will to power of a paperweight.

Assuming we ever do develop AI that is capable of actually interacting with and learning from its environment, all bets are off, really. If they are not prohibitively large or power-hungry or expensive, then there will likely be great demand for them for all sorts of applications, from military applications to spaceflight to... well, anything it would normally take a human to do but which humans don't want to do. Give such machines sentience and, depending on the circumstances, any number of scenarios become possible.

One thing I note in a lot of conversations about such machines is that the people discussing tend to assume they have a whole lot in common (psychologically) with humans. Things like the will to power, emotions anything like the ones we have, etc. Hence we get statements all the time that follow the pattern of "well if the machines are sentient then they might decide that we aren't necessary and that they should just get rid of us of use us as servants..." These sorts of statements basically assume that the machine is psychologically just a human in a metal body.

If we were to develop such AI from the top down, that is, from first having an understanding of how human consciousness works and then replicating it in the AI, that is not necessarily an unreasonable assumption. If (probably more likely) we do it from the bottom up by just incrementally adding intelligence and awareness then the end result would likely be very different from us. Likely the closest thing to an alien we could meet without... you know... meeting an alien. I don't mean "cold and unfeeling," or any of the other naive assertions that get tossed around, I mean alien, different with a capital D. We might very well be able to communicate with each other on the plane of logic and basic description of the environment, but discussions about feelings and philosophy would likely be very interesting (I'd love to get the chance to converse with such a being).

One way to get even a being with different mental underpinnings to fit more smoothly into human society would be to socialize them from inception with humans. A sentient machine raised by humans in New New York would likely get along with us much more smoothly than an entity from that machine colony we sent to terraform mars 300 years ago, for instance.

Understanding the philosophical and scientific hurdles standing between us and any understanding of consciousness, not to mention the difficulty of just making machines able to interact with their environment on even the level of insects, makes me very skeptical that we'll see sentient machines in even the next few centuries. Before I get jumped on, I would like to say that I am quite familiar with Kurzweil and the singularity (my roommate is just about the biggest singularitarian you'll ever meet). Being trained in the sciences, though, I am also very wary about linear projection of trends. I see nothing impossible or even unlikely with a scenario in which even given optimal conditions, the technologies we expect to continue their exponential advance instead go linear or even static. I am reminded of a graph in an aeronautics textbook plotting the top speed of aircraft over the course of the twentieth century. The curve was beautifully exponential from before World-War II up until the late seventies when it abruptly leveled out and remained constant up to today. People living back when that curve was exponential might easily have made predictions about having cheap, reusable spaceplanes by our time. They did, in fact. They could not have foreseen the huge barriers, technological and other, that would spring up in their path.

To end on a more pleasant note, I would like to say that the future remains nearly infinitely mutable, and it is always possible that future discoveries will prove me wrong (I very much hope they do, in fact). It is also more than likely that technologies that are not currently buzzwords will spring up and amaze us with their wonders, as nanotechnology and biotechnology are doing now.