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The Rise Of The Robot Economy

A New Epoch of Social Revolution

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February 22, 2015 by Admin Leave a Comment

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Hanson Robotics specializes in animatronics for theme parks, but their aspirations run much higher. Their website says that they are working “to realize the dream of friendly machines who truly live and love, and co-invent the future of life”. Visit them at: http://www.hansonrobotics.com/

If we imagine the type of life-like realism their robots display with the brains of a cognitive technology like IBM’s Watson, the maneuverability of a robot like Atlas (or others), and the affordability of a robot like Baxter, well, their dream might not be so far off.

The interaction between Jules and a Hanson Robotics employee here is obviously scripted ( oddly, it is the human who gives this away, not Jules), but it is fascinating nonetheless because it shows how easily we can empathize with an artificial lifeform. Imagine this technology, coupled with strong AI, in its third or fourth iteration. We can already get a sense of how naturally an emotional bond can form with such advanced machines.

 

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Filed Under: Robots, RoR Tagged With: jules, oxford

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Something To Think About:

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production....From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.

- Karl Marx

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.

- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Race Against The Machine:

While the foundation of our economic system presumes a strong link between value creation and job creation, The Great Recession reveals the weakening or breakage of that link. This is not merely an artifact of the business cycle but rather a symptom of deeper structural change in the nature of production. As technology accelerates on the second half of the chessboard, so will the economic mismatches, undermining our social contract and ultimately hurting both rich and poor...

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy

From Foreign Affairs Magazine:

In a free market the biggest premiums go to the scarcest inputs needed for production.
In a world where capital such as software and robots can be replicated cheaply, its marginal value will tend to fall, even if more of it is used in the aggregate. And as more capital is added cheaply at the margin, the value of existing capital will actually be driven down.

- Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, and Michael Spence
Labor, Capital and Ideas in the Power Law Economy
Foreign Affairs Magazine, July/August 2014

From the National Bureau of Economic Research:

In short, when smart machines replace people, they eventually bite the hands of those that finance them.

- from the working paper "Robots Are Us: Some Economics of Human Replacement"

On the Lighter Side:

For following joke is attributed to cosmologist Stephen Hawking:

Scientists finally achieve the creation of a strong AI system capable of more computational power than all human brains combined.
The first question they ask it is, "Is there a God?"

The AI responds, "There is now."

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