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NY Times on the coming robot revolution

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shnozzola:

--- Quote ---...........And they do it all without a coffee break — three shifts a day, 365 days a year.

From this warehouse in Newburgh, C & S, the nation’s largest grocery wholesaler, supplies a major supermarket chain.   ........
Each rover is connected wirelessly to a central computer and on command will race along an aisle until it reaches its destination — a case of food to retrieve or the spot to drop one off for storage. The robot gathers a box by extending two-foot-long metal fingers from its side and sliding them underneath. It lifts the box and pulls it to its belly. Then it accelerates to the front of the steel cage, where it turns into a wide lane where it must contend with traffic — eight robots are active on each level of the structure, which is 20 aisles wide and 21 levels high.
--- End quote ---

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/new-wave-of-adept-robots-is-changing-global-industry.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

HAL:
Yep, more robots are coming and that means less low wage jobs and more unemployment.

Here's another good article on that -

Robotic Nation

shnozzola:
My wife and I got blood tests last week.  The 2 women at the check in were overwhelmed by 50 or so people in line with different insurance companies, different tests needed, different payment systems, etc.  I wondered how close we are - if we could agree on health care  &)  - to not needing those two women, but scanning a health card that would be programmed with all the information needed.

Also, the comments below the NY Times article are great - from both sides of the issue.

shnozzola:
HAL,
       I wish Brain would discuss some negatives of his turbo-capitalism and the "central account" that equally distributes money to everyone.

joebbowers:

--- Quote from: HAL on August 19, 2012, 06:39:02 PM ---Yep, more robots are coming and that means less low wage jobs and more unemployment.

Here's another good article on that -

Robotic Nation

--- End quote ---

You're looking at this in completely the wrong way. Automation of menial tasks frees humans to do more creative things. If machines do all of the resource gathering, production, and service work, we wouldn't need money to pay people for these tasks, and therefore low wage jobs wouldn't be a problem. People could simply do whatever job they enjoyed, instead of whatever job pays the best, as they do now.

Machines replacing humans on the assembly line or in the fields is awesome, and represents a new age of freedom that mankind has never experienced. Only a fool would lament the loss of dangerous, menial, unsanitary jobs that are beneath human dignity.

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