The *New* Endangered Species... Your Job.

[ClaytonAlbright]

There's a few major issues with "robots are going to take all the jobs" that weren't mentioned.

First, people like to deal with people for a lot of things. You think you want to walk into a retail store and have a robot tell you about that new TV? Nope, neither would I. While it may be cool for a few minutes once the allure wears off, then it'll be extremely impersonal. Just like having a robot bartender. When it comes to dealing with things, most people would opt for a person, not a tin can with a voice box.

Secondly, we have no idea how we really think. That's the major hurdle with AI -- we just don't know how we do it. So far robots can only go so far to calculate probabilities, but they can't come up with any new concepts that require cognitive abilities. Sure they may be able to diagnose someones cancer accurately, but they'll never be able to realize it's a new form of cancer... at least until we understand how we do it ourselves and able to program it into a robot.

Thirdly, the interview. Yes while most of us hate it it's ingrained our corporations and societies. Instead of an interview you'll have a robot salesman trying to make a pitch at someone in the company. While this may work and already has, it'll be a long time before companies really embrace "hiring" a bunch of automatons rather than going their normal interview routes.

It's pretty inevitable that robots will become more of a part of our societies but the technology advancement and society changes that must occur are decades off unlike the impression the video gives. Even then they will never be able to replace good old fashion human face-to-face interactions that are ingrained into our psychology.

 

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[ClaytonAlbright]

I agree with your opinion but robots can provide great assistance in service industries too. Let's say I go to Spain and I walk in to a restaurant, now I can't speak a word in Spanish but a bot can speak to me in my native language and read out all menu and take order.

The only point here is we are limited to our imagination.

Agreed. Also to put it another way, just because a robot can do a job more efficiently & much cheaper doesn't mean it will pay dividends toward a business. An example in MJ's book is the phone automation. You call in, have to dial through so many options, or yell at the computer on the other end and just end up hating that system. As opposed to you dial in and a human answers and are shocked, then you get a customer for life.

The human factor is worth a *lot* so because of that I don't think robots are going to break into a lot of (customer facing) sectors much more than they are except for minor roles.

 

[ClaytonAlbright]

If human factors are worth so much, why do people use ATM's? Why do people pump their own gas? Why do people buy anything online? If what you are saying was true small town America, with all it's local Mom & Pop shops, would still be bountiful today. I don't say this to poke holes in your theories or opinions but merely to present that you're trying to look at the future through the lens and limitations of the present.

Take the phone automation example that you stated. I think you're assuming that its the best tech we'll ever see for that application. That's not the case. Just because the current iteration sucks doesn't mean that future versions will also. Imagine what future versions of Siri/Ok Google could be like. Now imagine that interface to this kind of a system. Would it still suck? If current voice recognition systems continue to advance at the exponential rates they have been, it won't be very long until 80+% of the people probably wouldn't even know it was an AI system answering their calls.

See #2 in my original post. Also "Mom & Pops" shops are alive and well. In fact small business still make up a large bulk of our GDP. Just because we read the big ones in the news, doesn't mean there's still millions of small businesses still churning it out in our economy. Our perception is skewed through the mass media.