Female Robot Wants a Family, Then to Destroy Humanity

[shado_temple]

Again why do we need robots like the ones we see in the movie I-Robot.

As creepy as it may be, there's a lot of research going into projects like this for Human-Robot Interactions (HRI). One main driver is that we're running into an issue of a rapidly-aging population with a lack of qualified/interested healthcare staff to support them. Countries like Japan are betting heavily on the hopes that automation can solve this problem, but conventional robotic aesthetics tend to turn people off from the idea. As much as we like to think we're logic-driven individuals, we're much more likely to positively respond to something like this [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-lITdDUUAABLWi.jpg] handling our grandparents than something like this. [http://www.mathworks.com/cmsimages/73605_wm_utoronto_user_story.jpg] I did some work for a university that had performed tests to see if the elderly could be mentally stimulated by little guys like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwWeN1ARy74] to help maintain their social cognitive abilities. The field still has a long way to go, but the eventual goal (as dysptopian as it may sound) is to have mostly self-sufficient senior care. Other service industries would also love to have a passable social robot that can handle angry customers without issue, never sleeps, and functions purely on pennies of electricity.

But than wouldn't robots like that taking forms of work and labor hinder human economies?

People complain that "immigrants" stealing their jobs and Big Companies outsourcing jobs of their home countries to Chinese workers because they work for cheap.

Imagine if we depend soley on Robots doing laborious jobs like Farming and Construction and Factory work?

Human Economies will break.

The simple answer is, yep!

The trouble right now is that there are jobs that people don't want to do, don't want to learn how to do, or just plain can't. The example I brought up above is viable because there'll be a need for workers that just can't be fulfilled by each country's population. These short-term problems are what caused companies to seriously look at automating smaller jobs a decade or two ago, and only now are we really starting to see the progress of their work. The consequences could be good for humanity, but terrible for traditional economies, where people depend on labor (physical or mental) to provide them with a living wage. This is an actual, real problem that is going to creep up in the next 5-10 years, and we are not prepared.

CGP Grey explains this better than I ever could in a fantastic video:

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Again why do we need robots like the ones we see in the movie I-Robot.

As creepy as it may be, there's a lot of research going into projects like this for Human-Robot Interactions (HRI). One main driver is that we're running into an issue of a rapidly-aging population with a lack of qualified/interested healthcare staff to support them. Countries like Japan are betting heavily on the hopes that automation can solve this problem, but conventional robotic aesthetics tend to turn people off from the idea. As much as we like to think we're logic-driven individuals, we're much more likely to positively respond to something like this [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-lITdDUUAABLWi.jpg] handling our grandparents than something like this. [http://www.mathworks.com/cmsimages/73605_wm_utoronto_user_story.jpg] I did some work for a university that had performed tests to see if the elderly could be mentally stimulated by little guys like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwWeN1ARy74] to help maintain their social cognitive abilities. The field still has a long way to go, but the eventual goal (as dysptopian as it may sound) is to have mostly self-sufficient senior care. Other service industries would also love to have a passable social robot that can handle angry customers without issue, never sleeps, and functions purely on pennies of electricity.

But than wouldn't robots like that taking forms of work and labor hinder human economies?

People complain that "immigrants" stealing their jobs and Big Companies outsourcing jobs of their home countries to Chinese workers because they work for cheap.

Imagine if we depend soley on Robots doing laborious jobs like Farming and Construction and Factory work?

Human Economies will break.

The simple answer is, yep!

The trouble right now is that there are jobs that people don't want to do, don't want to learn how to do, or just plain can't. The example I brought up above is viable because there'll be a need for workers that just can't be fulfilled by each country's population. These short-term problems are what caused companies to seriously look at automating smaller jobs a decade or two ago, and only now are we really starting to see the progress of their work. The consequences could be good for humanity, but terrible for traditional economies, where people depend on labor (physical or mental) to provide them with a living wage. This is an actual, real problem that is going to creep up in the next 5-10 years, and we are not prepared.

CGP Grey explains this better than I ever could in a fantastic video:

It makes me wonder how any one had a laborous working job in the era of the Slave Trade?

What kind of job were avaliable back then for a working middle class person could do when most of them were done by slaves?

 

[shado_temple]

It makes me wonder how any one had a laborous working job in the era of the Slave Trade?

What kind of job were avaliable back then for a working middle class person could do when most of them were done by slaves?

I'm no historian, but if I had to guess, it mostly had to do with the amount of effort we had to put into agriculture back then. Even as late as the 1840's, nearly 70% of the American labor force [http://www.vox.com/a/explain-food-america] had to work to grow enough food to sustain the population. That number is down to less than 2% as of 2008.

 

[Objectable]

I have finally found a robot I would not fuck.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

What are the chances we create something like this in our own image and it turns out to be kind?

I'm reminded of Rousseau's State of Nature. Basically, if he were able to look at AI research, he'd say we're asking the wrong questions. So is Ray Kurzweil, in all likelihood. You have to wonder about the nature of morality than humanity proper.

What makes DudeistBelieve a good guy? Is he a good guy because he was raised to be law-abiding and socially pleasant, or is it natural to expect he would've ended up being a nice guy if left with precisely zero social guidelines? Is kindness natural, or is it something that got beat into us hairless primates after millions of years of evolution and anthropological development?

Some philosophers say we're born good, others say we aren't. Rousseau thought the New World's quote-unquote "savages" were good because they hadn't been tainted by modern society, whereas plenty of Colonialist thinkers thought that Society carried all the moral lifting power and could raise us out of endemic barbarism.

So what's goodness? What seems so quintessential about our desire to just basically get along? That's what we need to figure out and possibly code, before we end up with hyper-efficient simian chore drones that laughably fail at the first test for common courtesy or bedside manner.

Because that's what strikes me as being pretty likely: an android that helps you with chores and carries your weight around flawlessly if you need motor assistance, but who'd consistently get "Hello, how are you?" and "Fuck you!" mixed up. There's so many degrees to human speech and human interactions I can't imagine an android could navigate any sample social situation.

God forbid that kind of android gets exposed to Japanese markets, considering - there's about three berjillion incremental levels of politeness to consider in the mainstream dialect alone.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

What are the chances we create something like this in our own image and it turns out to be kind?

I'm reminded of Rousseau's State of Nature. Basically, if he were able to look at AI research, he'd say we're asking the wrong questions. So is Ray Kurzweil, in all likelihood. You have to wonder about the nature of morality than humanity proper.

What makes DudeistBelieve a good guy? Is he a good guy because he was raised to be law-abiding and socially pleasant, or is it natural to expect he would've ended up being a nice guy if left with precisely zero social guidelines? Is kindness natural, or is it something that got beat into us hairless primates after millions of years of evolution and anthropological development?

Some philosophers say we're born good, others say we aren't. Rousseau thought the New World's quote-unquote "savages" were good because they hadn't been tainted by modern society, whereas plenty of Colonialist thinkers thought that Society carried all the moral lifting power and could raise us out of endemic barbarism.

So what's goodness? What seems so quintessential about our desire to just basically get along? That's what we need to figure out and possibly code, before we end up with hyper-efficient simian chore drones that laughably fail at the first test for common courtesy or bedside manner.

Because that's what strikes me as being pretty likely: an android that helps you with chores and carries your weight around flawlessly if you need motor assistance, but who'd consistently get "Hello, how are you?" and "Fuck you!" mixed up. There's so many degrees to human speech and human interactions I can't imagine an android could navigate any sample social situation.

God forbid that kind of android gets exposed to Japanese markets, considering - there's about three berjillion incremental levels of politeness to consider in the mainstream dialect alone.

I'm not worried about good/bad. I'm worried about single entity hive mind being able to assimilate all knowledge and killing us.

 

[thewatergamer]

Yeesh...well looks like I'm going to have 2 rough nights in a row now...

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I'm not worried about good/bad. I'm worried about single entity hive mind being able to assimilate all knowledge and killing us.

I doubt that will ever happen. Unless we reach a stage where robots build other robots and these very same robots have the keys to the production line and can maintain it - along with all the import-export, refining and mining-related aspects needed to produce high-end electronics - they'll always depend on us to a degree. And if they depend on us to a certain degree, then there's an open door for all sorts of failsafes and provisos.

The whole killer robot-slash-Skynet nonsense feels forced, honestly. Let's assume a hypothetical AI hive mind gains all knowledge and loses any sort of need for human contact. Why waste resources killing us when it can just, y'know, leave the planet entirely?