Hi David,

I think the future potential for robots is unlimited and that is my point - they can and probably will be better than most humans in most areas. They will not be limited to just the dangerous or the laborious work - they will become creative once we master how to develop machine learning. They will become better companions than most aged care workers, more skillful surgeons than only the very best humans.

Unless we start to genetically engineer humans many will be left behind - they are just not that bright or capable to compete in a world where intelligence in all its many forms is what counts.

My work is primarily in vocational education and the majority of people in this area are not academic learners they are practical people - very good practical people I might add but in so many of their professions they will in the not too distant future be replaceable by reliable robots that don't complain, don't get sick, are constantly improving and learning.

We are in the business of developing technology education solutions - we are the ones doing the design work and although there is a long way to go before what we produce is as good as the classroom environment once we get there a team of 100 top ed tech designers can replace 10,000 human teachers, school admin if not more.

Interesting times ahead

Jomathan, let's first put into perspective what a few fortunate, of our 7 billion, humans presently benefit from -- the energy equivalent of burning ~3 cubic miles of oil each year.

Or, to be more to our scale, that's 116 trillion Olympic-champoin athletes pumping generators 24/7. Divide by 7 billion.

If we give those 116 trillion slaves 8-hour shifts, we need 348 trillion.

If we feed them -- oops.

So now imagine the services performed by robots, also needing energy, beyond our favorite uses -- TV, cars, travel...

You might get the idea of not only how absurdly insustainable current living is, but how utopian robots would, in fact, aggarvate it.

By the way, we already have a genetic problem fast developing -- the exponential reproduction of humans since we conquered many diseases just a hundred or so years ago, are piling up, with serious consequences unfolding, even if we don't count the obesity epidemic. A recent study in AAAS Science explained the problems brewing.

David, "robot-human symbiosis" -- we've had that ever since we learned to throw things, especially when we invented projectile launchers, like the bow or slingshot.

Why? Because we exploited the natural behavior of mass, & gravity, coupled with machines to focus our power -- the bow, slingshot...

The 'robots' (shaped rocks, feathered arrows...) were primitive, but behaving in ways we learned how to predict. Babbage's first 'computer' for building math tables was simply a more complex, precisely-made robot.

And, without his girlfriend Ada King (Countess of Lovelace), he'd not have actually invented the first true computer -- the robot's robot.

But simply helping us with tough or boring tasks, from biosciences to car building, doesn't imply any intelligence exists within such machines -- they cannot redirect their ''intelligence' to other lines of effort at will. It actually means that some intelligent humans did the heavy thinking of why & how to design such machines.

The true computer, as Ada intelligently determined, is a speciasl machine -- it's the only machine that can simulate any other machine, including itself.

That latter, remarkable property comes at a heavy cost, known as incompleteness, or undecidability -- have to see Godel & Turing about implications.
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But, simply put, we indeed can perform thinking needed to meet the definition of "computer", which means we can determine a way to simulate that thinking as well. We just don't yet know much about how we, or perhaps other species with large brains, implement it and so exhibit testable intelligence.

And, our invented computing devices are very different from the fundamental devices used by 'wet' intellects -- nerve cells, dendritic interfaces, etc. We don't even understand how basic information is represented in our brains & nervous systems. A part of the brain, for example, is so neuron dense that we've only been able to probe it sensibly very recently. It appears to allow building & storing a representation of our surroundings.

We don't know how, of course, but we can each test it in the shower by observing the space, closing our eyes and finding we can complete a shower, turning around, doing whatever odd gyrations we like, and, with our eyes still closed, still put a hand accurately on the soap dish, the shampoo bottle, the faucets, etc.

That an animal should maintain a representation of its surroundings at all times is clearly a sensible ability woth the cells & energy needed. It in itself isn't "intelligence", but it's important and we don't understand it yet, despite our intelligence.

Would we want it in a robot -- likely. That's what one of the first mobile robots (SRI's Shakey) did, in a primitive way, but we didn't achieve it with the means or economy nature has for us.

The point of this is that true robots would suffer the same unpredictable (incompleteness) defects any computer must. A computer today is a pipsqueak compared to what animal brains are capable of, and which robots would also have to be capable of.

The results in operation of such complex systems, would not be a priori provable to always be as desired. Incompleteness gets to be more of a bitch as complexity grows.
;]

Jonathan Marshall ~

The Luddites were a bit worried about this problem during the Industrial Revolution, but the modern world rolled out and now we are living in it.

In the 1960s we heard the mantra that automation would lead to greater recreation, but the sad reality has been the shrinking of the number of workers compared to the work happening, longer hours for many in work and often without those happy holidays that were once predicted.

Considering the pattern of the last two waves of industrial advancement, we cannot expect the robot revolution to improve the world for all, unless we put in the work of designing an equitable society, so that the benefits of industry, automation and robots actually connect with the lives of the whole Human family.

If we don't do this peacefully, we may find ourselves drifting into a world of greater conflict and tighter controls of individual lives.

On the one hand we can include the right to real work with real pay in our basic expectations, rather than tolerating market forces sucking the resources of society into the treasuries of the wealthy.

I suggest that an equitable society will not happen, if we confine our work place to Earth alone, that we must include expansion beyond Earth in our thinking, if we wish to design and build a stellar economy without poverty.

Our greatest dilemma at present is stalled growth.

The stifled growth that is happening is concentrated on one planet and with a growing human population, this is draining the resources and straining the life-support systems.

We were in a position to follow through on the success of Apollo in the 1970s and build solar power stations in space, to begin the transition from an Earth-trapped carbon economy to a space liberated stellar civilization.

It is in space that real growth can happen, without limits for industry, automation and robots.

Who took the cheap option of burning our planet's fossil fuel reserves for too long and failed to consider the physical implications?

As a consequence, we have totally failed to keep a safe planet.

Do we keep trudging in the same direction that has led us into the carbon trap, which may become our evolutionary dead end?

Or will we wake up to the necessity of investing in stellar energy and cosmic survival?

Kim Peart
http://www.islandearth.com.au/

The thing is that technology is getting more accurate and more effective everyday and it requires less and less human man power.

People may design the cars the parts etc.. but you do not need that many of them.

Factories and farms do not require many people these days (unless the labor is so cheap it is more cost effective to use than machines but that will change as labor costs everywhere increase and machine costs come down).

So again what do 9 billion people do - lets say 100 million for designing all the cool stuff and another billion working in schools and hospitals (though even here technology will play and ever bigger role)

What do the rest do ???

Jonathan -- "What do the rest do ???" Repair robots.
;]
If you're not an engineer, then you may not get the hype that gets put out every year, especially since the deployment of workable computers 50 years ago. Devices aren't like organisms -- they don't heal themselves; and they don't protect themselves from the wide variety of environmentall stresses & attacks.

Each of our 10 trillion cells, for example, does a DNA correction each second -- 10 trillion/sec for life.

Engineering such a system at the micron level for complex, human-designed devices is a whole other scale of both knowledge & effort.

We don't even have a computing theory that matches how a worm's 'thinking' functions. In other words, having been an engineering grad student during AI's '60s heyday, I can vouch for the desperate lack of understanding we still have for how 'wet' intelligence works.

IBM's Watson demonstrated that via its external human dependence.