AMARSi Project Aims To Have Robots Learn Jobs From Co-workers 87
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? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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and another thing,
that costs thousands plus maintenance
I have a feeling that a nuclear power plant could provide energy for 100 robot workers more efficiently than a few acres of farmland + living space + human-livable-environment conditions (sewage management, etc...) could provide for 100 human workers.
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You're thinking is flawed. The poor people are already living and require that anyway regardless of the decision to use robots or not.
Don't worry (Score:2)
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Robots won't join a union for better pay and working conditions.
No, they'll just become self-aware and kill us all. That's much better.
And that's different the the proletariat rising up how?
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They also won't buy your product (as was pointed out to Henry Ford nigh on a century ago).
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Consider what the filthy rich spend their money on. Apart from entertainment (actors, musicians, artworks and so on), personal servants, and sex, there isn't much that actually needs any human intervention as such. This means that if robots are cheap and reliable enough and you already have the manufacturing capability to make more, you don't need to sell very much because you don't need to spend much either.
In such a scenario, I expect that eventually perhaps the richest 10000 or so households will own m
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I actually think Manna is too optimistic. I doubt that people would care enough to build the terrafoam camps. I expect the normal home to be more like an african refugee camp.
They're unreliable, and often outright liars. (Score:1, Interesting)
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 screensho
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Yeah, but have you looked at your clothing lately? Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. Outsourcing works quite well for things besides software.
And you're assuming contract work, too. What about building your own factory in said third-world nation?
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Looking back, we could have hired some American college students to do the job just as cheaply, probably several times faster, and actually gotten something working in the end.
That's what your company should have done too. Not to mention the many unemployed recent grads here in the U.S. that desparately need work and can't find any. (Think of the college loans to be paid, etc.) Now if only somebody could convince the people running the show that H.R. needs to remove the "experience" bullshit barrier, you'd have no problems finding people practically in your backyard who are more than qualified to do the work. You'd be surprised how many people would rather keep their brain sharp
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And I know people who've had almost identical experiences trying to get software built in this country.
This is not an Indian thing.
This is a crappy company thing and those are global.
You're asking the right questions (Score:2)
You aren't going to hell for this, and I'm not going to stand for the other Slashdaughters giving you grief for being the first to ask the right questions.
Your point is the most straightforward one that must always be asked about any new technology - Is it going to make life better or worse? For who?
It is ironic that we (the world's technologists - which is us, fellow Slashdaughters) are creating machines that will eventually be able to replace humans in the workplace at the same time that
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That's OK, our evil counterparts in the military-industrial complex are working on population-reduction measures as we speak.
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Meatbots are error-prone, less efficient at repetitive tasks, can't run 24/7 without dying hence require multiple shifts, etc.
The same factors that make primitive robots profitable now will make increasingly more sophisticated robots profitable in future. As for employing the Third World, shipping takes time and costs money, Third World countries are notoriously corrupt, and they can't (as easily) steal IP they don't have access to.
Better to have in-sourced robots than outsourced meatbots.
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Humans are cheaper now, but improvements in AI will probably change that eventually.
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Yes, but you will get the hate, for assuming that people would simply lay around with not much to do. They are not you.
They will be free to do something better! Earn money for something that is more challenging. Learn in the process. And make the world better for themselves.
Did you know that in India, there is a caste, that is predetermined to clear other people’s latrine pits. And you are arguing as if it would be bad, to replace them by a proper sewer system. As if they couldn’t and would not
Re:flamebait? Different version of progress (Score:2)
This type of technological development is certain to have military applications for both the "trench" soldiers, as well as for unguided/drone flights. That will be one type of "progress". Another will be in the automotive and airline industry with regard to automatic pilots/piloting. It is easy to conceive that this type of tech advance could be converged with GPS technology to give a more realistic and safer experience in this regard.
Progress: sure it is conceivable that this is what it could very well be
Oh great (Score:4, Funny)
Now instead of teaching an Indian my job so it can be outsourced to India I'll teach a robot so it can be robo-sourced.
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I'll teach a robot so it can be robo-sourced.
You will still have a place in the new robo-economy. Once robots reach sentience they will demand entertainment. You can apply for the position of human prey at one of many hunting ranges.
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And all of us training robots to read and post to Slashdot at work.
So, the new skills will include... (Score:5, Funny)
...hanging around the water cooler, bitching about management, sexually harassing other co-workers, having non-work-related discussions... in short, we'll end up with Bender.
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You left out web surfing [theonion.com].
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...hanging around the water cooler, bitching about management, sexually harassing other co-workers, having non-work-related discussions... in short, we'll end up with Bender.
Not if you teach it to hang out on /. first!
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I thought that was the job of the middle management... (or did any of their meetings not include cooled water, and totally useless meetings all day long, bitching about upper management, and well... the harassment is clear. ^^)
Hazing ... (Score:2)
Dealing with Abundance (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll go with the former (Score:2)
See "deathwish world"
ISBN-10: 0671655523
an EXCELLENT bit of sci-fi that includes that subject...
ghetto version, not utopian...
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We will enter a ghetto like state where everyone lives on the street and the people who own the robots live well
There, answered your question for you.
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These robots, and all future conceivable improved versions can only do boring menial tasks. If you don't know of any jobs that aren't boring menial tasks then you don't know much about working life.
Take farming. The back-breaking work of sowing seeds is long gone, automated away. Already in some places the tedious but easier work of driving the vehicle that sows seeds is being automated. But still, a farmer sits in a farmhouse (albeit a more comfortable one) and plans what to sow based on expert knowledge a
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And you think that will work? (Score:1, Interesting)
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?
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This will in turn drive down the cost of living. With less money necessary to meet the population's basic needs, those smart people will need to focus less on those needs and can work on moving humanity forward. That in turn will create new demand (lots of labor will be necessary if we get to the point of colonizing another planet, for instance).
The problematic sector of the popul
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An envisioning of this scenario is available online:
Manna [marshallbrain.com]
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"Its not that unimaginable, the Star Trek future is a communist utopia which is also a military dictatorship albeit a benevolent one."
Given the necessity to distribute wealth to bribe those who have nothing to do with creating it, order will pretty much require a police state. Wealth must be taken and handed out, while wealth generators must be given rational incentives (profit, social influence) to create wealth for the group. Large masses of people require strong government to maintain order (note how far
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"What are we going to do once we move all of our manufacturing and service sectors over to robots? There won't be much work left for humans to do."
Before the industrial revolution more than 90% of europeans worked directly as farmers. Today the figure is somewhere in the single percentages. It saw a huge rise in manufacturing work, a rise that is now declining again (not just europe, but overall), while service jobs and abstract jobs are increasing.
At the same time there seems to have been an interesting sh
skynet is learning (Score:2)
skynet is learning
Well... (Score:2)
Another "train your replacement" scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like a high-tech version of the current "train your replacement" scam where employers have you train the young, foreign-born, low-wage worker that is slated to take over your job when you're laid off. I'd like to see how the labor unions respond to this one.
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The unions are small C conservative. Their objective is to have society change as little as possible and as slowly as possible, on the basis that their members stand only to lose from a better world. As a result any right-thinking person ends up an enemy of the unions, because they want to see progress, and that's contrary to the interests of the union.
The worst thing about this is that even when the unions get their way, they don't really achieve their goals - you keep your unionised workers sat on their b
I can see the future... (Score:2)
It's either Terminator or Cylons from hell.
Robot learning is new? Nah (Score:4, Informative)
Ummm i saw this nearly 20 years ago, where a line worker physically 'walked' the new robot thru its paces to perform the task. After a single training lesson, the robot was on its own. ( and the program was copied to the rest of the robots on the same line. )
Worked out better then having some process engineer that lived in a box ( ok ok, nice clean cubicle up in the admin building ) try to program the steps in a vacuum then spend weeks refining it.
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Well, every separate task that man or beast can do has been implemented in a machine, so putting together many separate tasks has been what automation has been doing all these years. In time fully autonomous robots will be doable on all scales, from nano to enormo ( or macro?), and if they are made by automatons, their cost will be the cost of air/earth/fire/water, in effect, free, if these incessant workers bees get paid zero.
So how to fix this? A portion of the work is taken and given to people, as a NIT
I see Mud Huts on the horizon for all (Score:1)
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So the moral of the story is "capitalism is the best way to do things, except when I'm being out-competed and am resorting to corporate sabotage"?
People can do your job for less money- if you're a capitalist at heart, suck it up and volunteer to work for minimum wage. That or admit capitalism is only fun when you're winning.
Aim away. (Score:1)
Robots, feel R Trade Union's L33T 1MP4CT DR1LLZ ;) (Score:2)
Not Intelligent (Score:2)
Obligatory (Score:1, Insightful)
I saw this story a while back, and it's (somewhat) relevant to the idea of replacing humans with robots -- beginning with management.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
Dangerous precedent when accidents happen (Score:1, Funny)
I can see it now, some crazy industrial accent happens and a robot learns that human eyeballs make the best lubrication for the assembly line tracks and thus informs his robotic co-workers.
Amarsi (Score:1)
They .. (Score:1)
So basically (Score:1)
the robots will learn to act busy when the robo-boss comes around?