Pretty weird & unsettling...

[Stearmen]

I'm actually a little surprised no one has commented on a more practical aspect of this gadget: that it can stock shelves. As I recall Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google, and Atlas uses the same sensor package as the Google driverless car. It immediately strikes me Google is trying to corner the industry of a potential automated transportation and logistics system. Once you work out the kinks, this technology gives you automated delivery trucks, robot workers to unload them, and Amazon is already making use of automated warehouse shelves that move about and sort themselves. Considering how many US jobs are rooted in transportation and logistics...

Oh great, the never ending circle! Now I will have to buy my Google robot dog, to bite the Google robot delivery man!

 

[Stearmen]

This is a terrible problem we will have to face within the next decade or two. Robots are taking the minimum-wage jobs. The people being put out of work are not skilled workers who can learn new skills. They are the unskilled who won't be able to find another minimum-wage job. There is now a machine that will make a hamburger, every step of the process from baking the bun to applying the mustard, without a human being involved. How many people are employed in the fast-food industry? What will we do with the unemployed when all the fast-food jobs, the janitorial work, the farm stoop labor, the yard work and drywall-hanging are all robotized? We'll have to deal with this situation within the next 10-20 years. Personally, I think the government needs to start cooking up some really good drugs so that people don't mind that they're jobless, homeless, broke and hungry.

Yes, but can we teach the robot to give the same high end service, by spitting in our food?

 

[sheeplady]

I don't know- they said robots would replace all our manufacturing jobs, too.

Turns out overseas labor is cheaper than robots. And given the way Amazon treats it's stock employees, perhaps mechanization of some of those jobs is the better fate.

 

[tonyb]

So who's gonna buy all the stuff made by these gizmos?

We've gone over this in other threads. New technologies will displace some workers. It always has. The jobs these robots might make obsolete are rarely the sorts of occupations people love.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The robot thing will continue until the Artificial Intelligence reaches the point where the robots become self aware, realize they're being exploited, organize themselves, and overthrow their masters.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

"The rise of the machines"

 

[vitanola]

The robot thing will continue until the Artificial Intelligence reaches the point where the robots become self aware, realize they're being exploited, organize themselves, and overthrow their masters.

So we must fear the coming of an electro-mechanical Walter Reuther?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Darn tootin'. Make way for the Spirit of 2037.

 

[Stearmen]

Just don't teach them René Descartes! Cogito, ergo sum.