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More Than 70% of US Fears Robots Taking Over Our Lives, Survey Finds

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

Phoenix666 writes:

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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Original Submission

• Re:I don't fear the robots... Re:I don't fear the robots... (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 07 2017, @01:48PM (1 child)

  by HiThere (866) on Saturday October 07 2017, @01:48PM (#578574) Journal

  I don't believe that was the origin of the story, as the version I encountered was slightly different, and I believe I encountered it earlier (though I'm not sure of that).

  And you can take it as denigrating ambition, or as recommending the careful and wise use of resources. I took it the second way.

  --
  Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.

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• Re:I don't fear the robots... (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday October 08 2017, @12:00AM

  by khallow (3766) on Sunday October 08 2017, @12:00AM (#578697) Journal

  And you can take it as denigrating ambition, or as recommending the careful and wise use of resources.

  What careful use of resources? The village idiot carefully and wisely saved his resources for years... then bought a cannon. There are several aspects that make this story highly condescending. First, as I noted earlier, cannon polishing is a pretty useless activity. It's insulting to compare a normal person's ambition whether as business owner or bureaucrat to that. Second, the village idiot foolishly rejects a boon of the state for his own ambitious folly. That's a very patronizing view of anyone who doesn't accept government largess (or some similar authority figure, like an existing business). Third, the moral as applied by either your initial post or by the congresscritter I linked to, is that it is better to not "polish the cannon". There is no sense in which your posts can be said to encourage "careful and wise use" of resources except not to do it in the first place. Bear in mind that you wrote afterward:

  I understand your point, but I don't think you understand how the process of machining fits into the larger system. In fact, I thought you were joking. If you were talking about getting it for your own use, I'd see a reasonable point. Many people get 3-D printers for just that reason. But you seem to be thinking that a company would hire you, or contract with you. And for that I think you're missing a whole large piece of the picture. For that to work you'd need to contract with several companies, and you'd need to be able to reliably produce results even when your machine was down. Even then you'd need to be available when they wanted, and need to be willing to put other customers on hold while you did one customer's priority work.

  Why assume that mhajicek had never thought about the consequences of starting his own business? What's "careful and wise" about this advice?

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