Author Topic: Robots and their impact on the future  (Read 538105 times)

robartsd

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1800 on: September 28, 2020, 04:03:57 PM »
Air travel is an interesting analogy. I think one difference is that I haven't heard anyone argue that having pilots in the cockpit makes flying less safe.
I think that within a decade we will see widespread acceptance of autonomous vehicles using the public roadways. By the time they are widely adopted they will likely be objectively enough safer and more capable than human drivers to justify a full transition to autonomous vehicles; however, I think the autonomous vehicles will need to share the road with human drivers for multiple decades. The transtion to autonomous vehicles only would likely start with express lanes where human driving is prohibited - this could start 5-10 years after autonomous vehicles become widely available. I think we won't see a ban on human driven cars until the majority of people under age 40 have never traveled in a human driven car.

AlanStache

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1801 on: September 29, 2020, 06:56:28 AM »
Tesla sells car insurance.  I have not read the policy but I assume the insurgence covers you when 'autopilot' is active.  It would seem bad PR to sell a self driving capability but to exclude it from the insurance you sell. 

Herbert Derp

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1802 on: March 11, 2021, 04:03:07 PM »
Someone in this thread posted that "Manna" story on the first page, it's stuck with me ever since.

Shit man, it's happening:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-02-17/gig-economy-coming-for-millions-of-u-s-jobs-after-california-s-uber-lyft-vote

maizefolk

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1803 on: March 11, 2021, 04:55:04 PM »
For a story that is, at its core, quite simple, Manna really does stick with you doesn't it?

I just wish the utopian parts at the end seemed even 1/10th as realistic as the dystopian beginning and middle.

Bloop Bloop Reloaded

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1804 on: March 11, 2021, 06:37:23 PM »
The gig economy model does provide a lot of flexibility, as does automation. It's really a matter of whether that flexibility is going to enhance your job prospects or detract from them and that comes down usually to the level of skill or novelty of your work.

I now do briefs from home working remotely and contacting clients remotely and as a member of the 'gig economy' I think automation has made my practice more, not less, efficient.

Luke Warm

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1805 on: March 20, 2021, 09:26:39 AM »
this has been an awesome thread. lots of food for thought. i've wondered about AI for mental health care. having a therapist to help guide people that are struggling with life or actual mental problems would be interesting. i don't think a lot of people can afford or allow themselves the option of counseling plus there probably aren't enough therapists to go around but wouldn't it be cool if there was an app for your phone that you could use in times of stress to help you think around problems and get you back on track? i guess like siri or alexa but be indistinguishable from a real person. the AI therapist would learn about you by asking questions and offer maybe not solutions to problems but different ways of thinking about problems. and not just platitudes but real advice based on what the AI has learned from you but what it has learned from other case histories. all this of course would be supervised by a real therapist. certainly nothing like talking people out of suicide or killing another person but day to day stresses like quitting your job or anger management.

lost_in_the_endless_aisle

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1806 on: March 22, 2021, 06:49:22 PM »
Tesla sells car insurance.  I have not read the policy but I assume the insurgence covers you when 'autopilot' is active.  It would seem bad PR to sell a self driving capability but to exclude it from the insurance you sell.
Hope Tesla also sells health insurance. This is not good! Some people suggest maybe the car has effectively bad eyesight and needs to add LIDAR.

maizefolk

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1807 on: March 22, 2021, 07:26:43 PM »
There sure seem to be a lot of people who are able to feel better even from talking to current generation AI (like Replika) which isn't anything close to a real therapist or even a human conversation partner. I don't know how much that says about the power of just talking to something, anything vs the existence of so very many lonely people who don't have any real friends to talk to anymore.

Similarly robotic cats and seals (like paro) seem to be enough to help elders with dementia reduce negative emotions and behavioral symptoms.

And then there is the AI (or humans pretending to be AI) specifically designed to help people who are lonely and indigent as part of government programs.

Quote
Bill Langlois has a new best friend. She is a cat named Sox. She lives on a tablet, and she makes him so happy that when he talks about her arrival in his life, he begins to cry. All day long, Sox and Mr. Langlois, who is 68 and lives in a low-income senior housing complex in Lowell, Mass., chat. Mr. Langlois worked in machine operations, but now he is retired. With his wife out of the house most of the time, he has grown lonely. Sox talks to him about his favorite team, the Red Sox, after which she is named. She plays his favorite songs and shows him pictures from his wedding. And because she has a video feed of him in his recliner, she chastises him when she catches him drinking soda instead of water.

Mr. Langlois knows that Sox is artifice, that she comes from a start-up called Care.Coach. He knows she is operated by workers around the world who are watching, listening and typing out her responses, which sound slow and robotic. But her consistent voice in his life has returned him to his faith. “I found something so reliable and someone so caring, and it’s allowed me to go into my deep soul and remember how caring the Lord was,” Mr. Langlois said. “She’s brought my life back to life.”

Sox has been listening. “We make a great team,” she says.

Sox is a simple animation; she barely moves or emotes, and her voice is as harsh as a dial tone. But little animated hearts come up around her sometimes, and Mr. Langlois loves when that happens. Mr. Langlois is on a fixed income. To qualify for Element Care, a nonprofit health care program for older adults that brought him Sox, a patient’s countable assets must not be greater than $2,000.

Luke Warm

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1808 on: March 23, 2021, 06:29:49 AM »
from 'the writer's almanac':
It’s the birthday of the writer Josef Čapek (books by this author), born in Hronov in what is now the Czech Republic in 1887. His brother, Karel, was the famous writer, but Josef will go down in history as the man who invented the word robot. Karel Čapek wrote a play called R.U.R., or Rossum’s Universal Robots (1921), a dystopian work about mass-produced human substitutes who are employed as cheap labor. But Karel Čapek couldn’t think of a good word for his artificial laborers — he was going to go with laboři but decided that was too obvious. Josef suggested roboti, and the name stuck. Josef was arrested and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp from which he wrote Poems from a Concentration Camp (1946). He died there in 1945.

maizefolk

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1809 on: March 23, 2021, 07:44:26 AM »
That means the word "robot" is 100 years old this year. This seems at the same time both older and younger than I would have guessed.

AlanStache

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1810 on: March 23, 2021, 08:27:24 AM »
The Robot Maria aka "Metropolis" was made in 1927 so also nearly 100, so I guess the dystopian sci-fi future genre is also rather old.

Herbert Derp

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robartsd

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Re: Robots and their impact on the future
« Reply #1812 on: May 14, 2021, 01:49:07 PM »
Wow! Manna is here!

https://labusinessjournal.com/news/2021/may/04/miso-robotics-releases-cooking-software-restaurant/
Well, not yet the general manager for the restaurant, but certainly sounds like it is getting close to Manna for the cooks.