Silicon Valley celebrates artificial intelligence and robotics as fields that have the power to improve people's lives, through inventions like driverless cars and robot carers for the elderly.
That message isn't getting through to the rest of the country, where more than 70% of Americans express wariness or concern about a world where machines perform many of the tasks done by humans, according to Pew Research.
The findings have wide-reaching implications for technology companies working in these fields and indicates the need for greater public hand-holding.
"Ordinary Americans are very wary and concerned about the growing trend in automation and place a lot of value in human decision-making," said Aaron Smith, the author of the research, which surveyed more than 4,000 US adults. "They are not incredibly excited about machines taking over those responsibilities."
Once robots are perfected the 99% can be eliminated so they stop bumming the 1% out.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday October 06 2017, @12:23PM (2 children)
THAT brings back memories! Way back when, I used to work at Computervision in their 'specials' dept which would develop optimizations to the industry-standard parts programs it would otherwise generate from their CAD/CAM system to take advantage of machine-specific extensions provided by the manufacturer. Am curious what model of 5-axis mill you are using... Fanuc? Cincinnati? Bridgeport? Other?
For the curious, Wikipedia has an excellent article on different models of milling machines and their history [wikipedia.org].
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday October 06 2017, @06:08PM
Two year old Has VF-3SS with a TR160Y trunnion and all the bells and whistles. Came to around $150k. Plus about $30k in software and $30k in tooling.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by richtopia on Friday October 06 2017, @08:08PM
We could use more machining related stories here on SN! I'll try to keep an eye out myself.
I'm not the OP, but I am a hobby machinist. My father's one-man shop recently purchased a Southwest Industries 2OP, which works really well in the confined space of the basement. Having a tool changer and full enclosure for coolant is so nice compared to the CNC knee mill we were running before (and still do on big stuff).
Since I've moved out of my parent's house I no longer have easy access to those tools, but I make due with Fusion 360 for CAD/CAM, and cut on the Tormach at TechShop.