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posted by mrpg on Friday October 06 2017, @03:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-robot-you-slave dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday October 06 2017, @05:16PM (1 child)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 06 2017, @05:16PM (#578138) Journal

    The problem that you point out is that naive ideas of robots have them thinking and emoting exactly the way some human does. There's little reason to expect this to actually happen.

    Please note that this doesn't mean your job is safe. That's a legitimate worry. And it's also true that a robot acting at the behest of some uncaring or inimical entity (person, corporation, etc.) may well be a great threat. But the direct threat doesn't come from the robot...not unless it really mal-programmed, which is possible either accidentally or on purpose, but which isn't the line of maximum probability. (Most errors cause weaknesses of one form or another, e.g. the robot that accidentally disassembled itself.)

    So while fear of robots is valid, the reasons for the fear are usually themselves invalid. And, to be honest, I think that AI (not necessarily robots) while a great threat, is the only plausible path to long term survival of humanity. If done right it could enable us to avoid major wars, possibly all wars. Of course, if done wrong it will kill us all, but our current leadership has already almost done that more than once, and a simple projection says that eventually it will do so.

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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:46PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:46PM (#579858)

    I think that AI ... while a great threat, is the only plausible path to long term survival of humanity.

    If we need AI leadership to prevent us from exterminating ourselves, then do we really deserve to survive long-term?