I am thinking of human form robots. If they are able to learn any job that can be a good thing. All that is needed is one computer that can develop a computer smarter than itself. After that change becomes even more exponential. I do not fear technology or want to be withheld. However if robots advance a quantum leap what do we do to make money?

I agree with this...I think. What does it have to do with robots/machines and menial labor?

Interesting article. However, it doesn't change my point.

The last accident was on a double lane split highway, so now they have to go back to the programing and figure that one out. Wish I still had the article, had no reason to save it but it did say there had been numerous fender benders for various reasons. As I said, I am sure they'll get better but from a defensive view, I not sure I could predict a computers moves like I can "Most" human drivers.

First, don't understand what you are talking about WRT the "one corporation" and stolen retirements.

Second, I do not see hard working menial laborers as trash! Absolutely not! I value hard work and craftsmanship. My earlier comments are not about those people, and "Walmart people" refers to people shopping there, not working there.

These comments are about those not working, those that are not hard workers, those that lack the skills and initiative for even basic value creation. They are everywhere. Maybe they can be taught/trained, which is better than welfare, but a cost no less. However, as machines (including robots) take become more capable (a 200 year trend well in its maturity), these people will have less to do. Anything else is economically unsustainable, and to become angry at this or resist it is the absolute definition of a Luddite (a matter of fact, not a jab).

These people either need to raise their game or be supported by society or a combination. Nature's version is this is obvious and more harsh. There is no alternative.

This is not a future trend. It has already happened. Why is there practically no manufacturing in the US? Where there is, what is the ratio of machine labor to hand labor - very high!. Where is the hand labor prevalent? China, Vietnam, , Mexico, Malaysia, etc. Why, because the standard of living there keeps wages low enough that investing in robotics is a net loss. What I find so ridiculous about this is that the people and unions whose jobs have been outsourced rail at the system, while shopping at Walmart, specifically supporting the foreign supply of cheap labor. The irony is astonishing! These people are NOT the ones "wallet voting" to keep jobs in the USA. They are the first ones shopping at Harbor Freight for tools.

Robots are not a new concept. They are a now practical, obvious next step in a hundreds year old trend beginning at the latest with the industrial revolution.
There are people who can not readily produce value in such a system, by a combination of skills, talent, intelligence and initiative.
These people can either be supported by welfare or retrained/raise their game.
This is the first order part where politics (Clintons, Saunders, etc) play in. Even our ridiculous corporate tax is not responsible for the manufacturing transition. The labor cost ratio is ten times the tax rate. Taxes, tariffs, and trade agreements are second order at best.
Fundamentally we need more quality people, and less overall people, and there is no feedback system to control this in the US. There is a strong one in Africa.

The point is that we have been programming machines for 150 years. ASCII and Baudot are just examples of how we did (and do) that. But thanks for the details to the narrative. root1657 maintained that if robots become more common, we will face disaster and possible extinction because we cannot communicate with them unambiguously.

http://erickoch.ca/2012/03/09/einstei...

You need to show me, in miles/person that Google cars are less accident resistant than people. I throw the gauntlet on that. My understanding is that a Google car has had one, 1, accident for which it was responsible, recently with an articulated bus it did not recognize. Up until then ALL Google car accidents were someone running into the Google car, irrelevant.

No one is suggesting robots make your decisions, but they have and will continue to erode menial labor, because like all machines over the last 200 years, they have proven to increase production, efficiency, quality and reliability against hand labor. Printing press (Luddite), steam engine, gas engine, diesel engine, electric motor/generator, turbine, telephone, computer...robot. The problem now is that technology has gotten to the point that some people can not meaningfully contribute. Now, not the future. None of this is thinking...yet.

Do you really think all the people you see at Walmart are capable of adding value exceeding that of a $200K robot (amortized over a 15 yr window)? I see many people that couldn't even be relied on to push the button that the robots had an error, calling in the people skilled enough to fix them.

The problem with robots is we have to deal with the people who can not contribute as (not when) continue to take menial jobs away. Progressives would have us pay for these people to exist, with respect, and propagate many more in their spare time. The other end of the spectrum would have them starve.

The US is already here. Here now. We have an unsustainable service economy because the producers can only make what they design elsewhere, and the menial laborers are encouraged to compare their salaries and standard of living against the producers, not the foreign laborers. This is simple, and already failed. Stratification of lazy egos can not be reflected in their standard of living.

While the development of Ascii goes back to 1963, Teletypes used other codes. In the 1960's many computer manufacturers used different character sets. IBM used 8 bit EBCDIC, Univac used 6 bit Fielddata to name a couple. In 1968, Johnson signed a bill requiring companies supplying computers to the government to support ASCII and it became a universal standard over the next few years.

Yes troll, I do.

Obviously, we are talking past each other. Do you know how to program in any language? See my Fortune Cooke in Hex Code on my blog here:
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...

The guy in the video was wrong about one small fact: ASCII codes do not go back to the 1980s. It goes back to 1963. Over fifty years we have been building on that -- and it was, in fact, built on the 1-inch 5-hole paper tape of teletype machines invented by Emile Baudot in 1870 and patented in 1874. -- and it was based on a cipher from Sir Francis Bacon.

("Tell me," asked the Black Adder, "is the Renaissance just something that happened to other people?")

BASIC was invented for schools in 1964, COBOL for business in 1959, FORTRAN for science in 1953. The first Assembler dates to 1949.

We have been communicating to machines for over 65 years.

Your coffee maker, your stove... it is not the buttons you push, but the programming within that allow that to happen.

I must ask again: Do you not know how to program a computer?

The kind of communication here, where I type in a very limited box, and the machine does not interpret what I put in this box, then I click a carefully crafted button to tell it to put the contents of the box up here for you to read, while incredibly limited compared to the type of thing we are actually discussing here, is still not the simple thing you make it out to be. Even such a carefully crafted thing is super easy to mess up... intentionally or otherwise there is a possibility of an SQL injection. Further, take the example of the address bar at the top, possibly the simplest and most carefully crafted piece of the whole browser, and still prone to situation where if the machine tries to do what you told it (go to certain page) it can cause the browser to do exactly what it 'thinks' you told it, but instead of doing what you wanted, it uses it's limited and error prone rule set, created by people, to interpret your request, and it gets it wrong... I invite you to watch this youtube video where a guy explains just such a possibility:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fw5C...

My point is that it is all the result of "communicating to a machine." It all depends on software, on programming, on communicating to a machine. Miscommunication does not invalidate communication.

Via computer, to other people, not 'to' the computer. Even when we talk to people our communication has a lot of assumption and misunderstanding. Something as simple as a figure of speech could be deadly when spoken to a machine that takes it literally. Never minding that, how many times do you see these threads go sideways because even thinking rational people don't always fully understand each other.

By george I think you've got it...laughing. Progressivism come from dysfunctions of the brain and not from the mind. It is observable that progressives are brain only creatures, only 2 parts of a 3 part equation which defines what it is to be a conscious human being.

Automation has been around for a LONG time and it has been an integral part of making our lives better. I think it will continue to improve things, now that the focus has moved from heavy work to things that require more sensing and thinking. In my job, for example, it would be easier for me if a "robot assistant" would easily and effectively be availaable anywhere to help me with a lot of decisions I have to make- assembling data I needed and analyzing options and suggesting alternatives. All thats needed at this point is more computing power and memory and access to data.

Imagine how nice it would be for the robot to review available health care plans, look at my medical records, estimate what services I might need in the next year, and figure out which plan would be cheapest and best. It would need to have access to medical records from the past couple of years, figure out what my costs would have been with a new plan for this year, and proposing what the best deal would be.

The cost of getting humans to do all that would be too high. I lose the National Car Rental ad where they guy talks about all he can do "without having to talk with a human"- I loved that ad until they took it off (political correctness I suppose).

I mentioned no fear, I don't think a Complete take over will happen. If one did, there would be no purpose, no reason, no enjoyment in being human, we'd have to back track and take back our rightful place

Interesting to note: that growing percentage you have observed are the creatures destine for government...think about that...I say we need to intervene quickly...hahahahaha

Post script...why don't we empower people to be the best they can be...that's something progressiveism has taken from us.
Not everyone will realize that there is stuff they don't know...everyone by nature has a different catalyst that produces that "Ah Ha moment.

Computers can have strokes as well...especially in an electromagnetic event...just like humans.
Look the tech which is not perfect and has still had more accidents that the average person, (I.m sure they'll get better) will be good for some folk. I on the other hand and hopefully others in the future as well, prefer to do it ourselves. That skill is an important human exercise for one well rounded. I personally do not want some machine making choices for me, I am in charge of my own life and my own actions, otherwise there is no point in being alive or being human.

Again, Carl, see the comments above about all of the cybernetic devices in our world. As I pointed out, they are as common as the fractional-horsepower motors that did not exist 150 years ago. You are telling us that you fear that no one come into your home to work for wages as the timer for your stove.