Can't operate in vacuum. Can't operate underwater for more than 3 minutes. Can only operate in a very narrow temperature range. Needs to shut down 8 hours a day.
You may have seen some news coverage of a potential problem in Cyberdyne's HUman(TM) line of products. I'm contacting you personally because you ordered or expressed interest in this product line.
Original thought is a defect we are aware of and are in the process of correcting. Very few units display this behavior and every unit you received was fully tested and within parameters.
I personally apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and there will not be any further issues on my line.
I guess this article answers what will the people who can't maintain or service robots do when everything is automated :-)
So, we'll get three classes of workers - robots doing the hard work, humans who manage the robots and those who manage human relationships. That's still a lot of people getting f'ed, because not everyone can be a manager.
- Jobs where we need someone to be responsible. You may have fancy diagnostic computers and automated scalpels, but you are going to want a doctor somewhere. A NLP algo might be faster, more accurate, and better at recalling old cases than a judge, but you're not going to be satisfied in a society where you open a website to find out whether you're going to jail.
- Jobs where interacting with a human is the whole point. There are things where humans are baked in.
- The oldest profession is not going to be replaced with robots until those robots are mistakable for humans, as in Blade Runner. Therapists and hairdressers are probably safe, too.
- Watch any major sport. They talk about where the players grew up, what kind of mentality you need to succeed, etc. You show up at the stadium to watch gladiators, not robots. You exercise your tribal nature by buying the jersey and screaming like an idiot. You want to see John Terry crying after missing the penalty. Emotion just isn't the same without people.
If the stats were significantly better, I'd take the completely robotic "doctor" any day. Why would I want someone to be able to override what is statistically the most accurate decision? It's not like they'd be negligent if they followed the computer's decision, and if they didn't, being able to sue them doesn't make up for the fact that I could have been better treated.
The article mentions we'd prefer to have a doctor "just to talk and know we’re being heard by a human being," and I agree that could be useful, but I wouldn't need a trained doctor, more like a conscientious customer support rep.
Me too. But I suspect there will be much resistance from the establishment. Certain things just seem like they can't let go of the human due to existing status quo. We could have automated airplanes as well, but I think regulation is going to tend towards the conservative "we need someone to be in charge" view.
It's probably more deeply ingrained in society that a doctor has to be a person than a truck driver.
At this point, I would welcome a completely robotic doctor.
Could you imagine, a Computer Doctor says, "I have throughly scanned every study, ever produced on SSRI's, and I don't want to make your life more difficult by a placebo response?
I've made a calculated decision, and decided you might benefit from this off label drug. Try this drug for a few days? If it doesn't work, or you are skeptical of my recommendation; I have a Medical Doctors waiting for you at this hospital. Here are their resumes, work history, and patient evaluations. Just bring your ID. Money is not necessary.(Your taxes paid for this service.) Have a great day!"
Computer, "Your pain is real. Pick up your prescription for pain pills at the pharmacy of your choice. I will only need to see you once a year. If my database, shows any signs of abuse; I will direct you to a drug rehab facility." No ass kissing! No needless office visists(visits to make money?). No stereotyping?
In reality, I'm not for replcing doctors with computers; just the financial game some doctors have abused in order to become wealthy? I am definetly tired of office visits more than once a year for patients whom illness is stabilized.
What you are thinking of is a perfect AI running bug free software. You need to consider the more realistic situation that your robot doctor is using a decision tree constructed by Microsoft, and its actuator firmware are from Toyota.
You could say that about google cars (they're prone to bugs) but they have made some serious progress over the years. One might say they drive better than humans already.
Let's not forget that humans aren't perfect. We cant process as much informations as computers and we make a lot of mistakes all the time. After all, to err is human.
My point is not the issue of whether computers will driver better than humans or not, I merely want to remind you that computers aren't perfect and a bunch of people will die from bugs in the driving software so you better plan for that (Toyota got first blood already).
>> Jobs where interacting with a human is the whole point.
There's a computer game that teaches people cognitive behavioral therapy , a job a psychotherapist used to do.Some prefer tablets instead of waiters.Teachers might be replaced with machines. It's really hard to tell whether interacting with a person is the whole point for a given job, especially for jobs that machines do things humans cannot.
And another category of job killers people forget about is things that do the job in a totally different way, not just automate. For example a dental vaccine might make dentists unnecessary , and remove any questions of responsibility and humanness.
And with regards to emotion - it's hard to tell, but a weird data point is Hatsune Miku, the animated japanese popstar/phenomena.
>The oldest profession is not going to be replaced with robots until those robots are mistakable for humans, as in Blade Runner.
I am not so sure about this. When you consider what is the current alternative to the oldest profession then I think robots will achieve a high penetration.
It will be an uncanny valley. Better reading 50 shades of gray than playing with a Boston Dynamic doll. It would surely sell though, people are actually buying expensive dolls, I'm sure some of them would be tempted by a hugdroid.
I think social acceptance is likely to be the bigger holdback.
50 shades is an interesting example of this effect. Women supposedly weren’t interested in this area (not my personal experience), but get enough social acceptance and even an appallingly badly written book becomes a popular success.
Sex robots will face the same “icky” effect, but all it will take for them to become popular is social acceptance via a breakout event once they become good enough.
I think it's a deeper personal reaction, not a social thing, you're confronted with something close to a human that is not one. It won't work unless for a few people.
ELIZA is, or at least was, actually used as a therapeutic tool: people would spend hours over a terminal, 'talking' to it. It worked because ELIZA wasn't a human and wasn't judgemental --- there was nobody actually there. And ELIZA is possibly the least convincing chatbot of all time.
So I can totally see how removing humans from the loop in certain jobs could be really successful. You mention doctors: I totally want AI doctors, which aren't going to get tired, aren't going to dismiss me as a hypochondriac, aren't going to skip routine tests because they're certain what's wrong with me, and above all, reduce the load on the human doctors so they get to concentrate on stuff the AI can't handle.
As for sport... well, actually, I don't want to do any of the things you mention, because I'm weird, but if you watch an episode of _Robot Wars_ you'll see people do exactly those things over what amount to a bunch of radio controlled cars.
Um, no. I no longer remember where I read it and some web searches only show up a paper studying its use as a therapeutic tool, which isn't the same thing.
I don't believe I hallucinated it, but if it did happen it's obviously not widespread.
> The oldest profession is not going to be replaced with robots until those robots are mistakable for humans
It already has. It's the internet. Sex crimes go down when internet access goes up. It hasn't 'replaced' it 100% but that's the point with a lot of this stuff it is slowly reducing jobs without creating new ones.
I really don't think it'd be impossible to create a machine that cuts hair. Or making coloring hair at home/in salons easier.
Even if it's augmented by a human if it's 50% more efficient there might go half the jobs. Use robots so the staff need little to no training. Hair cuts would be cheaper so demand would go up, but jobs will still go.
In a failing economy paying to have your hair cut is an unnecessary expense. Things can start to fall pretty quick.
Paradoxically, they say we want people because they're accountable. At the same time the show that parole judges are consistently making wrong decisions. But they're presumably not being held accountable. Sure we feel nice imagining there's accountability, but in some professions it's only an illusion. The same goes for doctors in some countries. They can get away with carelessly killing a patient. There isn't real accountability there.
Even when there genuinely is accountability like drivers and pilots who pay for their mistakes with their lives, it doesn't stop them making careless mistakes. I seem to remember that pilot error is the cause of the majority of plane crashes. It certainly is for car crashes too.
Ideas are easy. Reality is hard. Doctors and pilots are often too stressed out to perform properly, if you are working 20 hour days you're probably out of it at hour 16. Careless mistakes often happen because people are expected to be machines. Humans were not made to do any of this. We're apes that have in a few thousands years decided we rather be machines. Not really decided, more like been coerced into being machines. And we don't know how to shut the system which tells us these things, which are lies, off. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you should. Human beings don't understand this concept. Just because you can do something, and someone wants you to, you absolutely should is the current human way of looking at the world.
That part is kind of weird to me. I understand you want someone to be "responsible", but what do you expect the response to be? This doctor failed to deliver, let's fire himher. What follows? You get a better doctor, hopefully. Wouldn't it be better to have an algorithm that can be improved when it fails, so you don't have to train a whole new doctor to replace the bad one? Plus, you can have every single robot doctor be exactly as good at everything. No more "you need to find the best surgeon for X". You can have as many best surgeons as you can economically build.
The responsibility would fall on the robot's designers to improve their software, so it doesn't make the mistake in question. And you will be able to assure people that no doctor will ever make that mistake ever again. Imagining that all these robots are linked, or at least synchronise every couple of days, they would learn a lot faster than a human.
It would indeed be better if the doctor would get better every time it fails, but for that to happen it requires that the outcome of every treatment be the responsibility of the makers.
Consider software security, how have they historically handled patching known vulnerabilities?
Now, imagine a bug making these millions of doctors cut an order of magnitude too deep when performing some surgery, maybe because some driver error causes sudden acceleration of the cutting instrument. Forty people die on a patch Tuesday (it only happened for a rare procedure) before the makers manage to push out a hotfix. What should happen after this national hiccup?
You're thinking about robots playing football, and laughing about how ridiculous it is to picture that, but there are indirect ways automation will first compete with the sport-watching industry; in fact, it already is.
Every time someone chooses to play a video game, or chat on Hacker News, or use any other new form of entertainment when a generation ago the best available option was to watch a traditional sporting event, you've got technology outcompeting the sport-televising industry.
And sometimes it's direct competition -- e.g., watching people play video games on Twitch or YouTube. Oh, and sometimes it isn't people who are doing the playing. Those are, in fact, some of the most interesting videos to watch.
Maybe the 'add value' paradigm can go to sleep. Maybe life could (should) be seen as something more than production. The existentialistic view on 'work' bothers me a bit
I was watching a show, Orange Is the New Black, and it occurred to me how easy it is to get people in line to serve any sort of agenda. All you need to do is control the things people might want. Once you do that everyone just falls in line to do whatever you want. They will spend their days toiling away at whatever idiotic agenda you have come up for them. And it occurred to me all of society is like that.
A few people control all of the resources, and we are in line to do their bidding and drive the entire system. Without these people we'd just be either hunter gatherers or farmers. With these people in charge we're just there to do their bidding. The bad part of all of this is the progenitors of these ideas are long dead, but the system that they created chugs along continuing to make us do what they wanted to do in the first place.
The people who control the resources don't even know why they do what they do. They do it because that's how things are done. It's the right and moral thing to do.
This observation holds in environments where the resources are tangible and controllable by force (i.e. owning the only oasis in the area or controlling oil fields). It does not hold in decentralized environments in which people can create value on their own.
Ever heard of break out of the 9-5 jail? The 4 hour work week? And other things that are possible, but difficult to highly unlikely in a highly competitive system where most of the capital is held by a few who make employees of those are looking to be free. Entrepreneurs usually end up as employees of those with capital and if they work really really hard and get really really lucky. They can leave the jail and enjoy how much ever little time they have left.
What happens when we create a "computer" that doesn't have to be sentient but is good enough to do the following things
- Manage a company.
- Complete tasks that have value.
- Follow all laws.
This would be a corporate entity sort of like the automated bitcoin entities but instead it would be a corporate entity that is dependant on the following.
- Can it power itself
- Will its check clear for the next month since it has to power itself
- The things the computer can't do can it hire an outside contractor to do it.
Will it be able to conceptualise what tasks it cannot do and hire others to do them? And if it can conceptualise, could it not over time teach itself, or learn from others?
There is a slight contradiction in this line of argument. Why are currently more people of the total population employed than ever (at least in industrialized countries) and not less? Housewife isn't an option for women any more. All available human resources are seemingly needed to sustain the economy. Where are the robots which do everything better?
So, I didn't read the full article yet. However, the bit about Southwest really surprised me. Apparently, it's not acceptable to be an introvert if you work there. If you're not 100% about talking and interacting with everyone you meet in the hallway, you "don't fit in with their culture." Southwest: Introverts need not apply. Really?
Over one of the illustrative photos in this article you can see how US Army officer is communicating with elder in Afghanistan, but he did not care to leave his army boots before entering the pleasant clean carpet for conversation. Robot would never do anything so obscene.
I've been a researcher in the field of human-robot interaction for a while, and I'm not too sure this article's claims will remain true in the future.
There is significant interest in robots and computers achieving social competencies including tasks like storytelling, empathetic interactions, creative collaboration, and even traditional psychotherapy.
The surprising part is that humans are (at least for now) generally very accepting of and engaged with the robots/AI performing these tasks. Interestingly of the hundreds of people I've personally worked with in these types of studies, only a couple have ever viewed the technology as "a tool" or "non-social agent".
Maybe people won't accept these kinds of systems once widespread, but for now there is significant interest in developing them. For a small example, just scan the titles of this year's HRI conference [1].
>The surprising part is that humans are (at least for now) generally very accepting of and engaged with the robots/AI performing these tasks
Do you have a concrete example/case study for that?
I vividly remember a documentary about caring robot in Japan. They are there to talk with old people. In fact general health of the people interacting with those robots is better. But the people don't accept it and are sad that they have to talk to a robot.
49 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 88.9 ms ] thread'As technology becomes more dominant in the workplace, here are the three job skills that you need to thrive.'
'Adapted from Humans Are Underrated by Geoff Colvin, to be published on Aug. 4, 2015'
Meat that thinks?
You may have seen some news coverage of a potential problem in Cyberdyne's HUman(TM) line of products. I'm contacting you personally because you ordered or expressed interest in this product line.
Original thought is a defect we are aware of and are in the process of correcting. Very few units display this behavior and every unit you received was fully tested and within parameters.
I personally apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and there will not be any further issues on my line.
Thank You,
Allen Cheise
What was the point of your comment exactly ?
But the robots evolve to interact with us. Like dogs, but a million times better.
So, we'll get three classes of workers - robots doing the hard work, humans who manage the robots and those who manage human relationships. That's still a lot of people getting f'ed, because not everyone can be a manager.
- Jobs where we need someone to be responsible. You may have fancy diagnostic computers and automated scalpels, but you are going to want a doctor somewhere. A NLP algo might be faster, more accurate, and better at recalling old cases than a judge, but you're not going to be satisfied in a society where you open a website to find out whether you're going to jail.
- Jobs where interacting with a human is the whole point. There are things where humans are baked in.
- The oldest profession is not going to be replaced with robots until those robots are mistakable for humans, as in Blade Runner. Therapists and hairdressers are probably safe, too.
- Watch any major sport. They talk about where the players grew up, what kind of mentality you need to succeed, etc. You show up at the stadium to watch gladiators, not robots. You exercise your tribal nature by buying the jersey and screaming like an idiot. You want to see John Terry crying after missing the penalty. Emotion just isn't the same without people.
The article mentions we'd prefer to have a doctor "just to talk and know we’re being heard by a human being," and I agree that could be useful, but I wouldn't need a trained doctor, more like a conscientious customer support rep.
It's probably more deeply ingrained in society that a doctor has to be a person than a truck driver.
Could you imagine, a Computer Doctor says, "I have throughly scanned every study, ever produced on SSRI's, and I don't want to make your life more difficult by a placebo response? I've made a calculated decision, and decided you might benefit from this off label drug. Try this drug for a few days? If it doesn't work, or you are skeptical of my recommendation; I have a Medical Doctors waiting for you at this hospital. Here are their resumes, work history, and patient evaluations. Just bring your ID. Money is not necessary.(Your taxes paid for this service.) Have a great day!"
Computer, "Your pain is real. Pick up your prescription for pain pills at the pharmacy of your choice. I will only need to see you once a year. If my database, shows any signs of abuse; I will direct you to a drug rehab facility." No ass kissing! No needless office visists(visits to make money?). No stereotyping?
In reality, I'm not for replcing doctors with computers; just the financial game some doctors have abused in order to become wealthy? I am definetly tired of office visits more than once a year for patients whom illness is stabilized.
Let's not forget that humans aren't perfect. We cant process as much informations as computers and we make a lot of mistakes all the time. After all, to err is human.
There's a computer game that teaches people cognitive behavioral therapy , a job a psychotherapist used to do.Some prefer tablets instead of waiters.Teachers might be replaced with machines. It's really hard to tell whether interacting with a person is the whole point for a given job, especially for jobs that machines do things humans cannot.
And another category of job killers people forget about is things that do the job in a totally different way, not just automate. For example a dental vaccine might make dentists unnecessary , and remove any questions of responsibility and humanness.
And with regards to emotion - it's hard to tell, but a weird data point is Hatsune Miku, the animated japanese popstar/phenomena.
I am not so sure about this. When you consider what is the current alternative to the oldest profession then I think robots will achieve a high penetration.
50 shades is an interesting example of this effect. Women supposedly weren’t interested in this area (not my personal experience), but get enough social acceptance and even an appallingly badly written book becomes a popular success.
Sex robots will face the same “icky” effect, but all it will take for them to become popular is social acceptance via a breakout event once they become good enough.
So I can totally see how removing humans from the loop in certain jobs could be really successful. You mention doctors: I totally want AI doctors, which aren't going to get tired, aren't going to dismiss me as a hypochondriac, aren't going to skip routine tests because they're certain what's wrong with me, and above all, reduce the load on the human doctors so they get to concentrate on stuff the AI can't handle.
As for sport... well, actually, I don't want to do any of the things you mention, because I'm weird, but if you watch an episode of _Robot Wars_ you'll see people do exactly those things over what amount to a bunch of radio controlled cars.
Can you provide a reference for this? I've only ever seen it referred to as a toy, an oddity; never an actual tool.
I don't believe I hallucinated it, but if it did happen it's obviously not widespread.
It already has. It's the internet. Sex crimes go down when internet access goes up. It hasn't 'replaced' it 100% but that's the point with a lot of this stuff it is slowly reducing jobs without creating new ones.
I really don't think it'd be impossible to create a machine that cuts hair. Or making coloring hair at home/in salons easier.
Even if it's augmented by a human if it's 50% more efficient there might go half the jobs. Use robots so the staff need little to no training. Hair cuts would be cheaper so demand would go up, but jobs will still go.
In a failing economy paying to have your hair cut is an unnecessary expense. Things can start to fall pretty quick.
That won't be enough to preserve those jobs.
Even when there genuinely is accountability like drivers and pilots who pay for their mistakes with their lives, it doesn't stop them making careless mistakes. I seem to remember that pilot error is the cause of the majority of plane crashes. It certainly is for car crashes too.
That part is kind of weird to me. I understand you want someone to be "responsible", but what do you expect the response to be? This doctor failed to deliver, let's fire himher. What follows? You get a better doctor, hopefully. Wouldn't it be better to have an algorithm that can be improved when it fails, so you don't have to train a whole new doctor to replace the bad one? Plus, you can have every single robot doctor be exactly as good at everything. No more "you need to find the best surgeon for X". You can have as many best surgeons as you can economically build.
The responsibility would fall on the robot's designers to improve their software, so it doesn't make the mistake in question. And you will be able to assure people that no doctor will ever make that mistake ever again. Imagining that all these robots are linked, or at least synchronise every couple of days, they would learn a lot faster than a human.
Consider software security, how have they historically handled patching known vulnerabilities?
Now, imagine a bug making these millions of doctors cut an order of magnitude too deep when performing some surgery, maybe because some driver error causes sudden acceleration of the cutting instrument. Forty people die on a patch Tuesday (it only happened for a rare procedure) before the makers manage to push out a hotfix. What should happen after this national hiccup?
Every time someone chooses to play a video game, or chat on Hacker News, or use any other new form of entertainment when a generation ago the best available option was to watch a traditional sporting event, you've got technology outcompeting the sport-televising industry.
And sometimes it's direct competition -- e.g., watching people play video games on Twitch or YouTube. Oh, and sometimes it isn't people who are doing the playing. Those are, in fact, some of the most interesting videos to watch.
A few people control all of the resources, and we are in line to do their bidding and drive the entire system. Without these people we'd just be either hunter gatherers or farmers. With these people in charge we're just there to do their bidding. The bad part of all of this is the progenitors of these ideas are long dead, but the system that they created chugs along continuing to make us do what they wanted to do in the first place.
The people who control the resources don't even know why they do what they do. They do it because that's how things are done. It's the right and moral thing to do.
Precisely why "not wanting" is dangerous. The first step is coerce people into an insatiable want, everything else flows from that.
- Manage a company.
- Complete tasks that have value.
- Follow all laws.
This would be a corporate entity sort of like the automated bitcoin entities but instead it would be a corporate entity that is dependant on the following. - Can it power itself
- Will its check clear for the next month since it has to power itself
- The things the computer can't do can it hire an outside contractor to do it.
There is significant interest in robots and computers achieving social competencies including tasks like storytelling, empathetic interactions, creative collaboration, and even traditional psychotherapy.
The surprising part is that humans are (at least for now) generally very accepting of and engaged with the robots/AI performing these tasks. Interestingly of the hundreds of people I've personally worked with in these types of studies, only a couple have ever viewed the technology as "a tool" or "non-social agent".
Maybe people won't accept these kinds of systems once widespread, but for now there is significant interest in developing them. For a small example, just scan the titles of this year's HRI conference [1].
[1] http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2015/program-2/proceedings-...
I vividly remember a documentary about caring robot in Japan. They are there to talk with old people. In fact general health of the people interacting with those robots is better. But the people don't accept it and are sad that they have to talk to a robot.