AMARSi Project Aims To Have Robots Learn Jobs From Co-workers

Lanxon writes "Robots of the future will be capable of learning more complex behaviors than ever before if a new, pan-European research project succeeds in its goal of developing the world's first architecture for advanced robotic motor skills, reports Wired. If successful, the four-year AMARSi (Adaptive Modular Architecture for Rich Motor Skills) project could see a manufacturing world filled with autonomous, intelligent humanoid worker bots that can learn new skills by interacting with their co-workers."

flamebait?

[girlintraining]

I know I'm going to hell for this but... why build robots when it costs less to use a bunch of third world labor? I'm all for technology, but when you've got a few billion people just laying around with not much to do, it makes more sense to hire them for pennies than to build a robotic replacement that costs thousands plus maintenance.

Re:flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention not having to pay out for insurance claims, no risk of lawsuit whilst operating in hazardous environments, and no threat of unionization (yet). There's a whole laundry list of pros, that is, until the robot uprising.

They're unreliable, and often outright liars.

[Anonymous Coward]

They tried that. Have you ever worked on software, for instance, written by an Indian outsourcing firm? It's complete shit. I don't mean little mistakes here and there. It's basically unusable, in its totality.

I worked for one company that contracted out some internal software to one of those companies. They were sent very detailed instructions and specifications, and were told to use Java, since that company ran Solaris on Sun hardware, and Oracle as the database. They sent weekly reports showing screenshots and demo videos. It all was looking quite good.

Then they delivered the final version, and it ended up being written in PHP and using MySQL as the data store. The small parts that actually ran (they didn't actually function, though) looked nothing like what they had demoed to us. It turns out that they had spent most of their time faking the progress reports, rather than developing the software we'd paid them to develop.

Remember, the people mentioned above are among the "smartest" of the third-worlders. At least they tried to fake the work. When it comes to manufacturing, they often just take your money, and don't even bother to produce anything. They'll tell you the goods have been manufactured and shipped, but that's nothing but an outright lie.

Re:They're unreliable, and often outright liars.

[Belial6]

Not to mention farming in California. The myth that food would not be grown if Mexicans did not come across the boarder is absurd. There are already plenty of machines that could take over for most of their work. The reason immigrant workers are used is because it is cheaper in the short run. Whether that is good or bad is an entirely different discussion, but it is clear that cheap human labor today is successfully winning over the long term investment in automation (if automation could ever be as cheap as the immigrant labor) when it comes to farming.

Re:Dealing with Abundance

[J3TP4CKKN1GHT5]

The economic implications of transitioning completely to automated labor are not as simple as it may seem. Depending on how quickly the transition happens, the immediate loss of jobs could be massively jarring to economics and culture as we know it now, but that doesn't mean that there "won't be much work left for humans to do." Increasing automation (through more capable robots) will just move us closer to a post-scarcity economy, wherein less of the world will be forced to work miserable jobs just to subsist. Wage-slavery is a necessary evil now, but increased production could allow us a society to provide for everyone's basic needs without requiring that so many people have unfulfilling or downright abusive jobs. And if capitalism forces could survive the upheaval and continue to reward those that make life better through innovation, entertainment etc. (rather than society entering a WALL-E-esque apathy once robots can take care of our day-to-day needs) then the temporary economic upset of lost jobs is well worth it.

And you think that will work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your answer is the kind that sounds nice but doesn't work when you think it through.

If you educate everyone, you will find that the available pool of educated labor is vastly larger than the demand.

Empowerment by modern technology means that a very few smart people can meet and exceed the needs of the entire human population.

So what are all the other smart people...the ones with education but still no jobs...supposed to do to earn money?