Why the US Consumer Doesn't Deserve A Decent Robot 311
SkinnyGuy writes "PC Magazine has up a lengthy look at how differing cultural approaches and expectations for robots are setting the stage for Amercian consumers to miss out on the best robots have to offer. The first paragraph is kind of funny:
'Someday the robots will rise up and kill us all. They'll record our lives, obliterate our privacy, set off nuclear war, and eventually turn on us and eat our brains. If any of this ever did happen, it would serve us right. We, at least American consumers, don't deserve the future that robots really have to offer.'"
Sounds like.... (Score:3)
Re:Sounds like.... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't ask, it's complicated.
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I say this president is a Vidiian, wraped in Kazon skin, cocooned by Talosian reconstructive techniques, and brought here by Gary Seven by mistake. It escaped and avoided the draft to Vietnam and bided its time until its masters from another part of the uniwerse installed it as occupant of the alienated, umm, alien
Re:Sounds like.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sounds like.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Thousands of years ago into the future Christmas was the time for the Great Red Ape in Space to descend upon the white house, painting it with decorative red and green blood of Christmas elves, moving it to the north pole and claiming that "I fully understand those who say you can't win this thing militarily. That's exactly what the United States military says, that you can't win this military", which is absolutely correct. You cannot win christmas militar
same story (Score:2, Insightful)
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I do remember a time when I would talk on and on about computers in everybody's household - and get blank stares. Com-pew--ter? I suspect the current generation of kids will embrace anthropomorphised(sic) robots in about ten-twenty years; but more likely we will see a gradual introduction of small, robot cars. Just speculation, I haven't any magic crystal ball-but I was right about computers! :)
I think there's a lot of us out there right now willing to embrace anthropomorphised robots.
Couldn't resist ... (Score:2)
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EEEwwww!! You're not advocating gay robots are you???
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Actually, I wonder if anybody tried that yet. Probably less disturbing than human-like and easy to do. Probably would have cooling issues though.
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American robot consumers have yet to comprehend the cost of the programming and mechanical complexity necessary to create effective, realistic, interactive robots.
This could just have easily been titled "Why the US Consumer Doesn't Deserve a Viper." Anyone who thinks that we should be buying robots regardless of the price is an idiot. He cites the success of the Roomba and says that, were it a bipedal, humanoid-looking robot holding a vacuum hose, it wouldn't have done as well. That's one of those "Duh" moments for me. If it were a robot with a vacuum hose, anyone would be able to see that they wasted time and energy on making it look human rather than making i
so i can protect you (Score:4, Funny)
Look, they have stairs in their houses, and we have stairs in our houses. What's so hard about this?
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My robot has telescoping legs to lift me to the second floor.
I am the shover robot... (Score:2)
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But ..... (Score:5, Funny)
No (Score:2)
Cue long line of Bender look-a-likes heading for the scrap heap saying "Bite my shiny metal ass !".
I'm gonna have my own uprising! (Score:4, Funny)
In fact, forget the uprising!
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Does not compute (Score:3, Funny)
Why would a robot want to eat our brains exactly?
Unless you're talking about ZOMBIE robots, in which case I'll have to update my Zombie Plan [roosterteeth.com]
Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto (Score:4, Funny)
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The FA is -1 stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Back up the truck. American's recognize that personality is an unneeded and costly add on for robots. A roomba with a head and arms that walked around and vacuumed my house wouldn't threaten anything other than my banking account. The frisbee shaped roombas already cost too much. There is no way in hell I'm going to pay extra for personality.
Clue to the author:
Unless you are building a sex toy, giving a robot human (or animal) shape is expensive and pointless. Don't blame Americans for seeing through this.
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Back up the truck. American's recognize that personality is an unneeded and costly add on for robots.
That's a good point. He talks about how much more Japan embraces anthropomorphic (or "animal-morphic"?) robots. Japan also has ATM machines with color screens that depict big-eyed female cartoon bank tellers bowing to you and female voices talking to you. It's just a different culture. It sounds like the author just REALLY, REALLY likes realistic robots and doesn't understand why some people don't value them as much.
Americans as a whole are too cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Killbot (Score:3, Interesting)
human-form robots (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, the point of robots is that they are modular and versatile. The human-form is only optimal if you're constrained to a one-size-fits-all spec, as genetics and natural selection are implicitly in the notion of species.
And as far as dangers from wealthy crazies with malicious intent, just think a bit about bioweapons and you'll find much more pressing worries than these far-off Philip Dick-novel wannabes. Hell, if I were
I relize this was satire mostly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire article focuses around this point. The idea that robots will some day become common place. That we will have "robot repair centers" and the like(Although he never mentioned that in the article, he hints at this kind of common place usage in other countries). The simple fact of the matter is that even the "best level" consumer robotics are horribly unuseful. The only useful one is the vacuum robot.
I work with robotics as a hobby, and consider myself a little above a "novice" in applied robotics. The issue at hand today is not a technological one, is it an inspiritional one. Try and think of a useful robot.
Go ahead, do it.
What did you come up with? If you're like most people the idea of a robotic butler("Bring me a beer robot jeeves"), perhaps a robotic lawn mower, maybe even a robotic gaurd who patrols your house.
The problem is that all of these already exist in various forms.
Take for example the robotic butler. Lets say you are watching football and you want a beer. You would simply hit "beer" on your remote and the little robot would wander off. Lets say it takes him 45 seconds to get it and bring it over. You can do it in 15. Also, you can go to the bathroom while you're up. So the only time it would be very useful is when you are being lazy and want to "veg".
So would you spend say 400$ on this robotic butler simply to be lazy? Is buying an ice chest and ice really that hard?
What of the gaurd robot? People buy dogs for this normally, or alarms. Both are easy to use, fufilling(dogs at least), and relatively wide used.
Robots are not popular in america because A. We don't need them for day to day activities. B. We already have conviences we enjoy, and most people do not want to be so lazy as to never move. C. The majority of America is only now becoming PC enabled.. try making them robot enabled. D. There are no good robot needs.
Suggested mods:
1. Troll
2. Flamebait.
Suggest responses:
1. Nub.
2. You're an idiot, your argument makes no sense and furthermore I would love robot that does
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My coffee maker already does that.
My garage door opener already does that.
You don't need a robo woman to set the thermostat, or
setup the coffee maker for the next morning. Although
a proper robo-cook would have to make C3PO look downright
primitive.
C3PO couldn't even manage rice. Nevermind something that's
more than measuring 2 ingredients and turning a switch on
the right tool.
I'm surprised the Japanese don't already have a rice cooker
with a timer activated water reservoir. It w
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There are, however, models available for lease, rental, or timeshare at affordable prices, with correspondingly varied quality.
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Re:I relize this was satire mostly.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't be the only person who not only does not have the time, but absolutely hates cooking, can I?
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Given that a human could do that job, why would the robot need to be "astronomically large"? I'd say a human-sized robot should be able to do the job, provided it can use to
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To me, driving is one of the least productive things I do.
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It would also cook for me, rub my back and have sex with any officials I need to bribe
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How about a robot servant (ie: iRobot style). A robot that does your laundry. You drop clothing where you take it off. The robot picks it up, takes it to the washer, dryer, irons it, folds it, puts it in closet, etc., with no interaction from you. Useful? Yes! Possible with current technology? Likely not. Same goes for making you dinner, buying groceries for said dinner, walking your dog, driving y
Re:I relize this was satire mostly.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is a dishwasher a robot? Is a programmable coffee pot a robot? Is a remote control or a TIVO a robot? Is a home automation system a robot? How about a motorized scooter? How about a sprinkler system? Centralized heat/air? Motion sensing lights?
They're all automated systems that solve problems or make performing tasks easier. Many of them integrate sensors that tune them to the environment or operate on a schedule. But if they don't have two legs and arms and walk around making beep bop noises, we think they're not robots.
And most anything else we come up with that doesn't do a task exactly like a human does (which is probably inefficient or wasteful, hence why we built the automated system in the first place) is not considered a robot.
Somebody alluded to it in an earlier reply. A robotic chaffeur is a robot but a car that parks/drives itself isn't.
Robots? We don't even deserve refrigerators (Score:2)
If there is a household robot, it's going to have to have a much better energy source than Bender's belching fuel ce
Re:Robots? We don't even deserve refrigerators (Score:5, Informative)
Assuming a ~3-KW fridge (beefy!), 2-person families, that's ~3.333... billion families (I'm being lazy), or 10 terawatts. This, of course, is assuming they're all running all the time.
Total energy production of human civilization: ~15 terawatts - Energy to spare!
Total energy Earth receives from the Sun: 174 petawatts
There needs to be a '-1: Poster is incapable of basic math' mod.
Love and Sex With Robots (Score:2)
All sorts of issues come to mind. If androids are self-aware, it would be wrong to use them as sex slaves. If we make androids find humans physically attractive, that would be a very artificial thing to program in. How much worse woul
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Stupid article (Score:5, Interesting)
Show me some evidence that Americans have an aversion to robots. You can't, because it doesn't exist. What it really proves is that Americans don't have a particular cultural desire for "robot buddies" as the Japanese seem to.
But the bigger issue is that we don't have any real robot technology that can do anything useful. And we won't have that until we have a real science of Artificial Intelligence, which doesn't exist right now.
Create a consumer a humanoid robot maid that can do all household chores, and Americans would buy millions of them without a qualm. Of course, the next step would be sex robots disguised as maid robots because of the social stigma of sexbots. When we have *that*, we'll have robots everywhere.
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If you could get a lawn care robot that just did it's thing without supervision or assistance, people would snap them up like Roombas. When such exists, they will be hot ticket items. It is the lack of value that is the problem. There are plenty of people that will go out on the bleeding edge for some
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I'd like to disagree with you on a minor point. It is not that we have no desire, it is that we have neither the required technology to inspire the desire nor the perceived value in a bang-for-buck kind of way.
I think that's more-or-less what I said, unless I'm misunderstanding your point.
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I don't have any proof of that, but a lot of Americans seem to have some aversion to many kinds of technology. Even on this board you might see people complain that they "just want a phone", and I think that's part of why phones available in the US are lower tech than overseas. And despite the fact that the average American watches something like 3-4 hours of TV a day, they won't buy HDTVs, only a third of US homes have an HDTV right now.
Of
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Well, as Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] notes, western films (such as The Terminator, The Matrix, and I, Robot) quite often involve killer robots. This seems a stark contrast to Japanese media like, Chobits [wikipedia.org], in which a guy falls in love with a robot.
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Well, as Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] notes, western films (such as The Terminator, The Matrix, and I, Robot) quite often involve killer robots.
What object in society *hasn't* been turned into a killer? Just because we have the movie Cujo doesn't mean society fears dogs. If something exists, it'll be turned into a plot device. Hell, Stephen King wrote a horror story about a possessed laundry machine ("The Mangler").
I can think of a bunch of examples of friendly robots: Bicentennial Man movie, Hymie from
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Who wants 'em? (Score:2)
How impolite of PC Magazine (Score:2)
U.S. Consumer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Case in point: He brings up the Aibo. Of course the market rejected it - who has $2000 to spend on a battery-powered dog whose novelty wears off after about 6 hours, unless you're a programmer who wants to use them for competitions or hacking. And cheap knock-offs costing $40 or less quickly showed up and sold well, demonstrating that there was a market for trivial fluff, as long as it was priced right.
And then there's the Roomba. Sure, it works in certain well-defined environments to remove minor debris; but we're talking about a device that takes over for a task that most of us only spend an hour/week doing, if that, and only for a single floor. This isn't to say that the Roomba is a failure, or that vacuum-cleaning robots are a dead end. It's a decent start, and there's no reason that a fully functional vacuum robot that does as good a job as a person with a full size vac isn't in the near future, but for now, unless you're Stephen Hawking, a Roomba is more about entertainment than cleaning a house.
And that's what it really boils down to: people will embrace robots when they fulfill some useful purpose that is worth the price you'll pay for them, the hassle factor in dealing with them, and the real estate they take up in your closet when you're not using them. We will get there - the recent Urban Challenge for autonomous cars reported hear earlier is a stepping stone - but stop putting the cart before the horse and demanding some hypothetical consumer buy a lot of novelty garbage just to get an industry a jump start.
-BbT
Just shoot me (Score:2)
And then goes on to extol the wonders of robots as sources of companionship.
Well, as one of those "aging population" boomers, I'm not desperate enough to want a robot as a human surrogate, and I'm glad that my kids managed to grow up with human (rather than electronic) companions.
What TFA seems to be looking forward to is Isaac Asimov's Sirian dystopia, whe
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I'm specifically referring to the 1950s stories, notably The Naked Sun.
Labor (Score:5, Insightful)
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would be automated here aren't there. I guess the labor is too cheap.
Simple things like lawn watering will be done with a guy with a hose.
Machines only work when they are cheaper than the workers they replace.
Not human enough, not non-human enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's the real reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of them can't figure out how to hide the expense of a Real Doll from their spouses anyway, so a *robotic* version, being even more expensive, would be out of the question!
What's the point of Humanoid Robotics? (Score:2)
Why should I want my robot vacuum to look like a tiny slave in my employ?
Why should I want children to have really sophisticated robot toys?
Why should I want any of that?
The article seems to imply that the lack of consumer interest in humanoid robotics is somehow socially retarded. I think consumers like it when machines can help them, it's largely irrelevant what they look like or how they behave if they do
IHBT (Score:3, Interesting)
I have robots. My car has robotics (cruise control, temperature control), my VCR has robotics, my former boss has a robot vaccuum cleaner and a robot lawnmower. Hell, I built a robot from my erector set when I was in 6th grade (yes, I'm a nerd and no apologies for it).
The fact that South Korea has an "ethical treatment of robots" mentality and the Japanese build robots to look like us and be our pals shows me that they, not we, are the ones who "don't deserve robots."
AFAIC those who see robots for what they are - unfeeling, unthinking tools - are the ones who deserve robots. Those who anthropomorphise [wikipedia.org] these creations of human diligence are the ones who don't deserve them.
-mcgrew
No animals were harmed in the creation of this comment. Except for lunch, of course.
Attack of the killer robots (Score:2)
But then I thought of it a little more, and I came out with some japanese sci-fi robot rebellions: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and Ergo Proxy.
I
You Must Protect Yourself (Score:4, Insightful)
Not much of an article... (Score:2)
"With Folded Hands" (Score:2)
Obligatory xkcd reference (Score:2)
humans are already good at doing that (Score:2)
americans love robots -- they couldn't live without internet and industrial manufacture for one day. the robots are thirsty, and have already sent us on their way.
for all those other things, humans are already good at doing that. we've already obliterated privacy, come up with the concepts necessary for mechanized mass destruction, and created this capability, where it ddn't exist before.
we already feed our brains to the televisions and internets -- our mind is only filled with things fed us by the web. wha
All that will be left ... (Score:2)
It's kind of academic.. (Score:2)
I resent the term "robot" (Score:2, Funny)
Ok I call bullshit. (Score:2)
Mine was voice controlled and played audio tapes, programmable from my atari 800XL. In contrast, Tekno was horrible, Robosapiens were a giant step backwards. One of my sons even put together a bobot in his tech class in Jr
Whether we deserve it or not is irrelevant... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why anthropomorphic? (Score:3, Insightful)
bulky and require quite a bit of energy for locomotion and so far move fairly slow. The one
benefit of bipedal locomotion is the ability to walk over multileveled and rough terrain, but
I'm guessing the majority of robot uses will be in offices, homes, etc. Why not have more designs
like this? http://www.msl.ri.cmu.edu/projects/ballbot/ [cmu.edu]
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
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pisspoor work. If you were hoping to get rich and have Molly
Maids come in an clean up after you then you are going to be
in for a bit of a rude shock.
Tipping the labor heavily (like 40%) doesn't really help either.
Good help really is VERY hard to find.
You're bound to have much better luck with a robot.
Bound to be better than trying and then firing every maid service you can find.
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If you have housekeepers stealing from you have them arrested.
Do you count how many bedsheets are in your closet or exactly how many of some other common item you have? Are you sure that you didn't just misplace that bottle of perfume? They're not idiots, contrary to what you may think, they steal things that they know from experience you won't notice. Even if you do notice there is no way to know that they stole it and the effort to prove they did it is far from worth it.
If they aren't doing a good job, fire them. If you accept a crappy job from them, why are we to believe you wouldn't accept a crappy job from a robot?
They do a crappy job when they know (or strongly suspect) you won't notice even if you pay them
Re:So what? That's wha! (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't necessarily a bad thing- the wisdom of ignorant crowds is often underrated- they KNOW they are not ready for robots or androids yet
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An article is submitted to the firehose that mentions "cool cutting edge technology" and is American bashing. What do you think the outcome will be?
The articles voted up due to the firehose are probably as well examined as most others are by posters who lead their posts with "I did not RTFA".
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It works well in writing, but as soon as a movie [imdb.com] is made, it goes right out the window.
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that it's smarter than us and that we are likely to destroy
ourselves or destroy all of robot kind in an act of
xenophobia (or both).
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Oh, sure. You say that now, but what will you do when they get driver licenses and start taking out jobs?
Even Lou Dobbs won't be able to save us.
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In soviet OW STOP IT
Imagine a beowoURK GURGLE
*thump*
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Yes, but he wants to preserve his species dominating over the company, country and society. So while the world may make less progress, it will be better for humans.
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No it won't. That was the point. When a company starts hiring in this way, that company is positioning itself to lose in the general market. If humans can't compete then acting in this way will, at best, put off the day of reckoning (and make it worse when it does happen). I feel embarrassed even saying this because it seems like such a trite po
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