Robots! Dey tuk err jabs!! What careers may be on the way out?

ScumLord

Gone Drinking wrote: »

Google car won't be programmed to make a decision to go through a barrier to avoid a head on collision for example..

Why wouldn't it? It would be able to judge one thing is moving at 60kph and another is moving at zero kph so it could instantly pick the less dangerous obstacle to hit. It wouldn't panic so it would more than likely make a safer decision quicker than a human could.

kneemos wrote: »

Self drive cars are another pointless "pie in the sky"that will never happen.

As far as I know Volvo actually have already implemented self drive systems in their trucks. The truck can do emergency braking on it's own and I think they may be able to do some motorway driving on their own.

Google driving system seems to be geared more towards public transport systems for cities. It's unclear how self aware their cars are. Audi and BMW are developing more self aware systems that do the boring driving and the driver can take over when the roads are more fun to drive.


The big development in recent times is the software catching up with what hardware can do. We've had automation on the production floor for a while but now robots are moving into the office and it will be much easier for them to take over in the office because there are no additional hardware requirements.

RobertKK

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

Saw these on Discovery the other night, was a very interesting watch and even though they're expensive they make sense as a long term investment. Do you plan on expanding to eventually have the whole setup of the different types robots going and doing their jobs 24/7? I'd imagine large farms could really benefit from the efficiency these things offer, especially dairy farmers since they'd never need to manually hook up milking machines or clean the cows and sheds again and they can also detect illnesses in the cows a lot earlier than before.

I think the robots are kinder to the animal than simple mechanical devices, and the scraper/cleaner in this case is far more flexible too given it can clean more than the traditional scraper.
If I win the lotto tomorrow night I will go fully robotic.
I would actually like the robotic back scratcher for the cows, they like a good scratch and seem to love it in the videos I have watched, with claims it is good for their health.
The robotic milking machine...that is the future.
As you say, it all costs a lot of money, but with benefits for both man and animal.

ScumLord

RobertKK wrote: »

I would actually like the robotic back scratcher for the cows, they like a good scratch and seem to love it in the videos I have watched, with claims it is good for their health.

Scratching a four legged animals back is the quickest way to get it on your side. Although I think once you start scratching it sets off a trigger where they constantly want that itch scratched and will scratch themselves raw leading to skin infections.

Ben D Bus

Egginacup wrote: »

Well Robots will always breakdown...so I guess there will be an increased need for robot technicians....

Robot repair technician is a racing certainty to be a job for a robot.

I'd imagine air traffic controllers would be replaced by total automation before pilots - aircraft could just communicate with each other to keep themselves organised. And I'd expect single pilot operations to replace the 2 that currently fly most commercial aircraft. The sole remaining pilot would be there to keep the passengers feeling safe rather than being allowed touch any of the controls.

Clearlier

Ben D Bus wrote: »

Robot repair technician is a racing certainty to be a job for a robot.

I'd imagine air traffic controllers would be replaced by total automation before pilots - aircraft could just communicate with each other to keep themselves organised. And I'd expect single pilot operations to replace the 2 that currently fly most commercial aircraft. The sole remaining pilot would be there to keep the passengers feeling safe rather than being allowed touch any of the controls.

It's an interesting thought about pilots. I remember in school many moons ago being told by somebody from the company about this brand new innovation called the DART. She mentioned at one stage that the technology to implement driverless trains was already there but that it was felt that the public wouldn't trust it (looking back the unions may have had something to say about it too!). I know that the Paris metro has an automated line and I imagine that they're not alone.

Ben D Bus

Clearlier wrote: »

I know that the Paris metro has an automated line and I imagine that they're not alone.

London's DLR is another. Initially they had a train 'conductor' sitting at the front of the train to reassure passengers. Don't think they do that anymore.

And there are countless driverless shuttle trains connecting terminals in airports around the world.

RobertKK

ScumLord wrote: »

Scratching a four legged animals back is the quickest way to get it on your side. Although I think once you start scratching it sets off a trigger where they constantly want that itch scratched and will scratch themselves raw leading to skin infections.

I would like something like this.

RobertKK

ScumLord wrote: »

Scratching a four legged animals back is the quickest way to get it on your side. Although I think once you start scratching it sets off a trigger where they constantly want that itch scratched and will scratch themselves raw leading to skin infections.

True, if they are afraid of you, just scratch them.
Mostly see them a bit raw from bulling. Too much piggyback being played :pac:

chrissb8

Accounting. It's mostly numbers and method. A computers forte.

andrew

It'll all be grand. We'll find stuff for people to do, we always have.

Maximus Alexander

shruikan2553 wrote: »

While a computer could do a great job diagnosing someone with all the information available to it I wouldnt trust an average person to be able to use it properly. You would still at least have to go to a doctor for them to confirm it.

The point is the computer actually does a better job of 'confirming' it than the average GP. Doctors are regularly wrong. Same as humans in any profession.

ScumLord

andrew wrote: »

It'll all be grand. We'll find stuff for people to do, we always have.

While that's been true in the past I think we're getting to a stage where we can make a human replacement that can do many tasks a human can do. They're even working on creative AI now that while it's not actually being creative as we know it they know enough about the end user that they can make something that will be aesthetically pleasing to humans. as well as making robots smarter we're finding that humans are more predictable than we thought.

Clearlier

ScumLord wrote: »

While that's been true in the past I think we're getting to a stage where we can make a human replacement that can do many tasks a human can do. They're even working on creative AI now that while it's not actually being creative as we know it they know enough about the end user that they can make something that will be aesthetically pleasing to humans. as well as making robots smarter we're finding that humans are more predictable than we thought.

Of course we're developing robots and AI to do the things that we do. We've been doing that for a long time now. Every time that we do that we find different ways of using our time, energy and resources. It's one of the ways in which we make the world a better place.

Baggy Trousers

d2ww wrote: »

There are flaws in this essay, but worth a look anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnJTWzf8kH4

Sounds like communism to me.

shruikan2553

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

The point is the computer actually does a better job of 'confirming' it than the average GP. Doctors are regularly wrong. Same as humans in any profession.

Oh yes. A computer could have access to travel history, family medical history and lots of other information and could easily diagnose you.

Doctors are really just doing the same, the look at a person, get their symptoms and sometimes history and come out with their best guess of what it is. A machine would do it faster and more accurate.

I just dont trust a person not to over or under exaggerate something or to make it up to get medication. The technology is fine but the users are a problem much like self driving cars could probably be used tomorrow if everyone did what they were supposed to.

TheBeardedLady

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

There's basically no role in which a human can't ultimately be replaced by a robot once it becomes cost effective.

Software development or mechanical engineering are probably the places to be since someone needs to design the robots and tell them what to do.

Of course, eventually robots will be ablooe to do that too.

Counsellor. Can't imagine ever visiting a robot with my issues and people will always have problems, mabe even more with all these robots taking over. There's still jobs where it's essential, not preferable, that the person you're dealing with is human.

Ush1

These fears have been all around for a long time and generally dismissed. For rich people to make money(i.e. the ones using the robots) there has to be poorer people making less money to buy what they produce.

Every business owner in the world, replace every worker in your company with a machine that can do the job.......okay, who's going to purchase what you produce?

Clearlier

Ush1 wrote: »

These fears have been all around for a long time and generally dismissed been proven unfounded. For rich people to make money(i.e. the ones using the robots) there has to be poorer people making less money to buy what they produce.

Every business owner in the world, replace every worker in your company with a machine that can do the job.......okay, who's going to purchase what you produce?

Since there has been automation there has been a fear that jobs will be lost to it and they are but new ones are created. They are higher value jobs and they typically require more education and there's undoubtedly some people who lose out particularly in the short term but a lot of humanity/society is in a better place than it would be if there was no automation and very few if any are in a worse place.

Ush1

Clearlier wrote: »

Since there has been automation there has been a fear that jobs will be lost to it and they are but new ones are created. They are higher value jobs and they typically require more education and there's undoubtedly some people who lose out particularly in the short term but a lot of humanity/society is in a better place than it would be if there was no automation and very few if any are in a worse place.

Well there is two approaches. One is to restrict the amount of work machines can do(even though they could do it), many unions have agreements like this such as GM, where I believe max 30% of labour can be done by machines.

The other method is natural selection, which is basically what I've described previously.

Most other things you hear are tin foil hat Luddite nonsense.

conorhal

mariaalice wrote: »

They don't disappear they evolve in to some other type of work.

Very true. If I was to believe all the futurologists of the 60's and 70's we'd be all working a three day week and every tedious task would be automated.
But what has computerization actually delivered and where is all the leasure time these labour saving mechanical devices were supposed to deliver?

We work longer hours then ever before in 24/7 economies. The dream of working 9-5 Monday to Wenesday and getting handed a martini by our robot manservants when you arrive home from work somehow evolved into the nightmare of me getting called by a computer at three in the morning demanding that I fix it, and probably hand it a chilled glass of WD40 once I'm done!

seamus

Gone Drinking wrote: »

I think they'll do a grand job at driving but I'd much rather be at the wheel to make a decision if someone driving a car came towards me out of control. Google car won't be programmed to make a decision to go through a barrier to avoid a head on collision for example..

How do you know it won't? The driverless car will be able to assess a thousand pieces of information in a fraction of the time that you could (including knowing exactly how fast the other vehicle is going), and making the decision which will result in the least amount of injury to you.

As people we're inherently led to believe that we make superior decisions, when in fact we're too slow to assess the situation and too quick to allow emotion to cloud our judgement.

I, Robot contains a great example of this where the protagonist dislikes robots because he was once in a car accidents where a robot chose to save him from drowning instead of a child because the robot determined that he was the more likely one to survive.

This was protrayed in the movie as the "robots are bad mmkay" plotline, when in reality it's exactly the right decision to make. And I say that as a parent who would happily die if it increased my child's chances of survival by just 1%.

mikemac1

The taxi robots will be able to run the government too

Well taximen reckon they can do it!

skinny90

Just did a paper on driverless...they had planned it to launch with in 5 years but there is a lot of issues that need to be nipped so it will be more 2025-2030...3D printing on the otherhand will have a bigger bearing on manufacturing/production jobs

Permabear

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seamus

Permabear wrote: »

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I currently have little or no ties to education through any avenue, so I'm not sure what the current system looks like, but my main concern would be that education doesn't replicate the working world and those required skills adequately.

I would expect, that while writing and painting and exercise and that fun stuff are an important part of the curriculum, so too should be the normalisation of computing within classes. By secondary level, all students should be using laptops and/or tablets for everything as much as is feasible (some subjects more than others, obviously).

To take one subject as an example - mechanical drawing. This is a pretty essential subject if you want to be an architect. I imagine that schools still educate and test kids using a T-Square, pencils and paper.
Then you arrive into college and you're sat in front of a computer and all of the drawing is done electronically. So there's 3 months of college wasted just relearning how to draw with a mouse. And some talented students will struggle because their computer experience is nil.
And if you actually become an architect, aside from some sketching, 99.9% of what you draw will be on a computer.
So while it's important to know and experience the basics of drawing by hand, the curriculum needs to keep pace with the working world, and realistically kids should be using computers for mech. drawing both in class and in exams.

The adoption of technology needs to happen across the board in education - in all subjects, at all levels. There's an argument which I wholeheartedly agree with that our schools should not become factories where we churn out worker-bots, instead they should focus on encouraging questions, creativity and imagination.
But at the same time the ability to become successful and creative is stifled if you don't possess the core skills essential to a modern world. The most creative in society build on the experience of those who have come before.

ressem

seamus wrote: »

To take one subject as an example - mechanical drawing. This is a pretty essential subject if you want to be an architect. I imagine that schools still educate and test kids using a T-Square, pencils and paper.
Then you arrive into college and you're sat in front of a computer and all of the drawing is done electronically. So there's 3 months of college wasted just relearning how to draw with a mouse. And some talented students will struggle because their computer experience is nil.

Part of the curriculum project work has to be done on school computers, these computers are supplied specially, with autocad and similar professional level software licensed and preinstalled.

The adoption of technology needs to happen across the board in education - in all subjects, at all levels. There's an argument which I wholeheartedly agree with that our schools should not become factories where we churn out worker-bots, instead they should focus on encouraging questions, creativity and imagination.
But at the same time the ability to become successful and creative is stifled if you don't possess the core skills essential to a modern world. The most creative in society build on the experience of those who have come before.

Being able to understand the basic principles underlying your subject is more important. Teaching a group of kids to understand accountancy to the level of transcribing numbers into Sage would do a disservice to them.

People's brains are for the most part lazy. It dumps what it doesn't practice or form into a larger pattern.
And I'm going to claim that computer based learning using standard commercial software can impede this, by hiding the boring rote stuff behind a spinny wheel animation. An educational version that shows the behind-the-scenes calculations might be worthwhile.

Permabear

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andrew

Permabear wrote: »

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A quarter of Irish teenage boys are functionally illiterate?! :eek: Where's that stat from?! Anyway, don't we only care about how illiterate they are as adults?

I think you're right in that people will need skills that a machine can't replicate, I just think that we'll get a better handle on what exactly humans, particularly low skilled humans, can/need to do as we find more uses for robots and automation. Plausibly, the kinds of job which low skilled people will do in the future don't exist yet, in the same way that many 'low skilled' jobs which exist today didn't exist 100 years ago.

kowloon

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

There's basically no role in which a human can't ultimately be replaced by a robot once it becomes cost effective.

Faith healing robots are unlikely. Robots will never have 'the gift'.

Permabear

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Maximus Alexander

kowloon wrote: »

Faith healing robots are unlikely. Robots will never have 'the gift'.

Nor will humans. :P

Capt'n Midnight

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