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.
Related Stories
Bain consultants' macro trends department have released a report examining trends in demographics, automation and inequality to produce a set of predictions.
This kind of report seems to be all over the place these days, but this one seems more detailed and perhaps a little less optimistic than most.
In the US, a new wave of investment in automation could stimulate as much as $8 trillion in incremental investments and abruptly lift interest rates. By the end of the 2020s, automation may eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs, hitting middle- to low-income workers the hardest. As investments peak and then decline—probably around the end of the 2020s to the start of the 2030s—anemic demand growth is likely to constrain economic expansion, and global interest rates may again test zero percent. Faced with market imbalances and growth-stifling levels of inequality, many societies may reset the government's role in the marketplace.
They predict that governments will assume a larger role in markets to combat inequality and boost demand, but will our corporate overlords decide that's in their interests, or continue to squeeze the lower and middle classes forever?
Related: Humans Are Underrated
Douglas Coupland: "The Nine to Five is Barbaric"
Survey Says AI Will Exceed Human Performance in Many Occupations Within Decades
More Than 70% of US Fears Robots Taking Over Our Lives, Survey Finds
The Future of Work Is Uncertain, Schools Should Worry Now
The Venus Project and the Quest for a Socially Engineered Future
Skilled Manufacturing Workers in Demand in the U.S.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @03:52AM (9 children)
Everyone understands supply and demand of every resource except for labor, or more generally, people.
It's something that has to be factored into the calculus of society.
Your kids? We don't need 'em.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday October 06 2017, @04:15AM (7 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:45AM (6 children)
It used to be shameful to produce pregnancy outside of the confines of a well-defined, official social structure (e.g., family).
Indeed, because people had to pay for themselves (e.g., look to friends and family) instead of the State to pay the costs of producing new human beings, they took reproduction much more seriously.
Now, not only is the shame of reproduction in a poor social structure gone, but the State ultimately promotes such things through welfare programs that have been warped to the point of virtually subsidizing poor, broken households stuffed with children.
Yet, there's no need to kill everybody off to undo the imbalance; attrition will do.
However, attrition requires re-shaping the incentives back to what they used to be: Taking pride in personal responsibility, and finding subsidy (usually from friends/family) in building proper social structures.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Friday October 06 2017, @08:14AM (3 children)
How do you reconcile your argument with the steady reduction in fertility rate across the world?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday October 06 2017, @09:03AM (1 child)
Not across the world. Only in those countries where there's a good social system. Which actually strengthens your point.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @09:26AM
... but where there has been strong property rights and capitalism on which the parasite known as government has been able to grow in correlation—it is not the case that a well nourished parasite is the cause of its host's improvement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @09:23AM
It was a prophecy.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday October 06 2017, @06:30PM (1 child)
It sounds like you are trying to rewrite history to support a political agenda here. The history of western civilization and pretty much every other is filled with the squalor and fecundity of the poor. People in general bred as fast as they could for any and all of a number of reasons. They were encouraged by their leaders, they had no access to any sort of birth control (other than infanticide or crude abortions), high child mortality rates caused fear that children would not live to maturity so they upped the odds by having more, and a number of other reasons, including the fact that we are animals and that is what animals do. There were plenty of broken households, probably plenty of others that would have been better off had they been broken, and a whole lot of poor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @08:57PM
People produced many children, but that was a family affair.
Indeed, that's the whole point: People took responsibility for reproduction; they had practical reasons for producing people, and they took responsibility for rearing them, so there wasn't an issue with trying to figure out what to do with people.
You're also confusing a very short period of western civilization, industrialization, for all of human history; the massive and swift paradigm shift towards mechanized urbanization did indeed lead to a lot of societal dysfunction, but it's nowhere near the familial dysfunction that we see today, as caused by welfare programs that have subsidized the creation of a huge number of people for no other reason than a lack of personal responsibility (e.g., they weren't created for reasons of infant mortality, or labor on the family farm, or military duty, etc.).
Why are people surprised to find that huge swaths of the population can just be wiped out of existence without anyone noticing? There is an oversupply of people, because the production of people has been completely decoupled from any practical demand for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @07:39AM
If you think that is the problem, you are a fool.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday October 06 2017, @03:57AM (3 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday October 06 2017, @04:12AM
They are building EMP guns and itching to say "I told you so!".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Friday October 06 2017, @04:17AM
http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday October 06 2017, @07:55AM
...doesn't understand the threat.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Friday October 06 2017, @04:01AM (16 children)
I want the robots to do manual labor for me... let them work so I don't have to.
I fear the mega-corporations taking over our lives. Just look at congress, it has already begun.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 06 2017, @04:10AM (14 children)
I am ready to become a (robot) slave owner.
Or is it a human owner of robot slaves?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Friday October 06 2017, @05:35AM (13 children)
My job is to manage a manufacturing robot (5 axis CNC mill). I'm also saving up to buy my own.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday October 06 2017, @11:37AM (2 children)
What happens when the get a robot to manage your robot. And a robot to manage IT. And a robot to manage IT. And a robot to.......
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 1) by nekomata on Friday October 06 2017, @03:14PM
Having a lot of robots managing IT seems about right ... Not so much different from now!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday October 06 2017, @07:54PM
This will happen when there is strong general AI. At that point we all have the same problems. Or when 3D printers can quickly and reliably hold a ten-thousandth of an inch tolerance in steel and titanuum.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(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. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(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.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday October 06 2017, @04:50PM (6 children)
Is that a reference to the story about the village idiot saving to buy his own cannon?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday October 06 2017, @08:00PM (5 children)
Not familiar with that one.
For me it's about wanting to own and control the means of production, and not being reliant on an employer but being able to have customers instead. Consider it like a programmer wanting his own computer, except that a decent "computer" in this case costs at least $50k, and a really good one $200k or more. I might be able to get something really entry level around $10k and put some upgrades on it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday October 06 2017, @10:29PM (4 children)
OK, it goes this way:
There was this village in which there lived an idiot who was incapable of supporting himself. The town council wanted to support him, but objected to the idea of welfare, so they hired him to polish the cannon in front of the town hall. Years went by, when suddenly the idiot gave notice. They asked him why, and he said "All these years I've been saving up, and now I've bought my own cannon".
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.
Now printers used to work that way, and made it work. But you'd be in competition with ... well, everybody else, including Google and Amazon. Printers were usually the only local source of printing when they made a decent living by being printers. I suppose you could set yourself up the way copier shops did before printers essentially made them obsolete...but continued advances will be likely to make your model obsolete within the decade, if not sooner.
So it's not really the village idiot and his cannon, but it's not something *I* would advise anybody to do.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Saturday October 07 2017, @07:03AM
I appreciate your concern, but I personally know several machinists who have started shops this way. The main trick is to not quit your day job until you have a solid flow of business going.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday October 07 2017, @07:11AM (2 children)
Meanwhile, we have someone who works in a productive industry. And isn't employed merely because someone gave him a token job to stay out of trouble. So he knows how to use these machines, has some idea of what producible goods are profitable, and probably knows a few potential customers. That's a hell of a lot better business plan right there than most such.
It's also worth remembering that he probably knows several machine shops that started this way. It's not an idea that sprung out of vacuum.
I wonder what the source of the story is? It sounds like it probably was spectacularly bad advice for the original recipient(s). I found this 1968 news article [newspapers.com]:
Leave it to a politician to downplay individual ambition and success. Leave it to a newspaper hack to spread that story around.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 07 2017, @01:48PM (1 child)
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.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday October 08 2017, @12:00AM
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:
Why assume that mhajicek had never thought about the consequences of starting his own business? What's "careful and wise" about this advice?
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Friday October 06 2017, @02:57PM
I can only assume that you are already wealthy then, and can survive on what you have for the rest of your life without doing any work.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @04:04AM (25 children)
"Ordinary Americans are very wary and concerned about the growing trend in automation and place a lot of value in human decision-making,"
Human decision-making causes tens of thousands of deaths on US roads every year (and many, many more worldwide).
Human decision-making has given us an utterly broken political system in this country (and downright despotic regimes in other countries, like Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, and Spain).
Human decision-making has given us horrific wars and atrocities like the Holocaust.
Someone please tell me why anyone places a lot of value in human decision-making. For transportation alone, taking humans out of the loop promises to save countless human lives. We're simply not any good at tasks where making a small error can cause catastrophe. We're also not very good at flawless repetition of simple tasks. We should let machines take over all this stuff, and focus on making art and music, and coming up with innovative ideas. Those are the only things we're really any good at.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday October 06 2017, @04:25AM (3 children)
There. FTFY.
And therein lies the rub, friend.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday October 06 2017, @04:58PM (2 children)
Your assertion needs proof. It has been asserted that MOST humans are decent at creating music, if taught and inspired to do so. The fact that a only a few are "needed" at any one time given technological reproduction of their works is not evidence against this argument. And quite clearly some of the most popular musicians owe most of their success to backers.
The evidence is less clear in the other arts, but I see no real reason to doubt its truth. Consider that there are sudden eruptions from small populations of many highly talented artists of one variety or another, and that the next generation typically cannot continue. This is indication that these eruptions of genius are spurred by external factors. It's not proof, but it's the best evidence we should expect to find in the historic records.
How general this phenomenon is is not easily determinable. Clearly the eruption of programming skills was not causally connected with the sudden access to computers.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday October 06 2017, @07:11PM (1 child)
It's been my experience (and I've had over half a century of it) that many people (mostly, kind, decent and good ones too) do not have (for whatever reasons) intellectual curiosity, spontaneous creativity and/or artistic talent.
Those that do have those traits are, again in my experience, a relatively small subset of humanity.
No. I haven't done broad sociological research with a slew of peer-reviewed papers. It's merely an observation based on my own personal experience.
I'm not trying to elevate creative/artistic folks over anyone else. In fact, I agree that many people are not encouraged or supported in creative endeavors. Which is sad, not just because that limits the people who either aren't encouraged or are actively discouraged from those types of activities, but also because it reduces the overall creative output and value created by humans.
In the U.S. (although, I imagine I'm going to get flamed as an apologist for the lazy and a hater of capitalism, even though that's far from the truth), a much more generous safety net would go a long way, IMHO, to encourage creativity, entrepreneurial endeavors and a willingness to try new things and re-invent oneself. Mostly because if you are less concerned about having a roof over your head or where your next meal might come from, you're more likely to take risks and try new things.
But given the current circumstance, it's not surprising that people are *extremely* nervous about their jobs being supplanted with robots (or foreign workers), when most people are less than a couple paychecks away from living on the street and dumpster diving for dinner.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday October 06 2017, @10:17PM
For the assertion I was repeating to be correct the people need to grow up with the appropriate social support systems in place. I will definitely grant that by the time most children are in kindergarden, it's already past the appropriate time to start conditioning.
My wife taught music quite effectively, and with a VERY low failure rate, but she believed in beginning before the child was born. Whether the conditioning is of the child or of the mother cannot be determined from the available evidence, but it does indicate that given proper support most children can learn to be better than adequate musicians. Of course, this isn't the source of my original assertion, which was an assertion that if all the musicians in Ireland disappeared in one day, they would be replaced within the same generation. That probably isn't a true statement anymore, because the social conditions have changed so much with the prevalence of radio, etc. And it *MAY* not have been true when stated. But considering, e.g., the sudden flowering of what is now called classical music within one small city, it's also not improbable.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Friday October 06 2017, @04:25AM (1 child)
Wait a sec - you want there to be *more* stupid humans around? I thought you'd just admitted that humans are the problem?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @02:52PM
Humans are the problem when they're in a position to cause significant destruction, such as when behind the wheel in a 2-ton high-speed vehicle.
Humans aren't a big problem when they're just walking around, riding a train, sitting down somewhere, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:54AM
Spain gave some extra leash to Catalonia. Which they used it for brain washing, separatism went from less than 10% at start of democracy to over 40% now. Spain ended with a noisy dog, so any kind of discipline restitution is going to look oppresive.
And some politicians like Aznar, which was friends with separatist decades ago when he needed the votes, now want stronger action.
Dumb.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday October 06 2017, @07:11AM
The problem is that I don't think all this technology is actually going to increase our privacy; it will sharply decrease it, by design. Current technology is bad enough, but imagine all the spying and data collection that will be built into this new abomination of a system. Also, will all this software be free (as in freedom)? Again, I seriously doubt it. That's why it is useless trash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @11:22AM (1 child)
> Human decision-making causes tens of thousands of deaths on US roads every year
You have this upside down. Human decision making works extremely well for driving. While any deaths are very unfortunate, the system is really, really huge -- roughly 3 trillion miles driven per year in USA. And nearly everyone participates, whether they are well trained or (mostly) not. From https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/pressroom/fhwa1607.cfm [dot.gov]
You need to realize that moving at faster than a walking pace is always potentially fatal. And even walking can be fatal if you fall and hit your head the wrong way...
Also, anyone can easily improve their chances on the road by making a couple of choices -- don't drive when drunk/distracted/otherwise_impaired. Take an advanced driving course (accident avoidance training) and understand and use the safety equipment in the car correctly. Also, avoid driving in areas and at times when other drivers are likely to be impaired.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @12:55PM
And for each of those Pluto round trips, you could have gone to the moon 13458 times.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ratio+distance+earth+to+pluto+and+earth+to+moon [wolframalpha.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:17PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @02:57PM
Sure, why not?
Besides, if you replace the cannibalistic Morlocks with robots, then you eliminate the cannibalism problem, and the Eloi are free to live lives of bliss without any worry at all.
I really don't see the problem here.
Seriously: why would you want a life where you still have to spend your time on drudge-work and back-breaking labor? The only thing I can think of is that this attitude comes from Protestantism that's been ingrained into much of Western society for so long. There's no rationality to it at all. Robots won't be able to replace our ability to be creative, so we'll always have that IMO. How much great music, art, film, etc. are we missing out on because too many potential artists are wasting their lives sitting in cubicles, and also because we don't have time to enjoy as much art because we're all wasting our time sitting in cubicles?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 07 2017, @01:19AM
You're going to die; whether tommorow, the next day, years from now, death is inevitable. People don't just want life, they also want to live, and a huge requirement for that is a significant amount of freedom. Freedom, for an individual, is by it's very nature, human decision-making. Technology is amazing when it enables us to have greater freedom, such as in the case of personal computers, greater access to foods and goods, safer vehicles, etc. Technology is not looked upon kindly when it promises a reduction in freedom, such as by forcing all cars to support automated driving, or when people promote putting an AI god in charge of their nation. Those things you listed are all real problems that need to be resolved, but the solution isn't to simply take out the human equation, because what are you then left with? Something more akin to a farm than to a civilization.
I sympathize with your view point, but I feel as if the collective response from most humans, at least here in the west, would be, "We'll take our chances."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 07 2017, @07:15AM (11 children)
Obvious rebuttal: it works. Plus, how are you going to learn how to make good decisions, if you never decide anything?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:40PM (10 children)
Obvious rebuttal: it works.
I can point to countless examples of places where humans made a bad decision, and human failure caused a disaster of some kind. Every single auto accident is an example of this, for starters.
So how is human decision-making "working", in your view? I guess if you're comparing it to doing nothing at all... That's not a very high bar.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 10 2017, @07:13PM (9 children)
And I can point to countless cases where humans made good decisions. It's like we need a more nuanced evaluation of this than durr, bad things happened.
In the example of auto accidents, the huge number of miles driven per accident, for example.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @10:02PM (8 children)
Testing of automated cars so far has already put human drivers to shame. All you've done is show that humans can do some neat tricks and not cause a disaster every time, and can even do things somewhat reliably so they don't cause disaster 95% of the time or whatever. That's no longer good enough: automation can do much, much better, making accidents almost a thing of the past. I'm sorry, but outperforming chimps just isn't good enough any more.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 11 2017, @12:43AM (7 children)
How fast have those automated cars been again? No accidents while tooling around at 25 MPH (as Google has done) is not in the same league as a professional human driver.
It can. But why would they? Automation will get good enough that they remain profitable despite liability lawsuits. That's the level human drivers are already at.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:22PM (6 children)
How fast have those automated cars been again? No accidents while tooling around at 25 MPH (as Google has done) is not in the same league as a professional human driver.
A huge number of accidents occur at low speeds. It's much easier to pilot a car in a straight line on a limited-access freeway than to navigate chaotic, low-speed inner-city traffic.
And who's talking about "professionals"? I'm talking about human drivers. The vast, vast majority of drivers are not professional. Are you proposing that non-professional driving be banned or something?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 12 2017, @02:51PM (5 children)
You are. When you only compare self-driving vehicles to the worst human drivers, you're making a dishonest comparison.
Already done. If you do too much stupid shit on the road, your license can be taken away or worse.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 12 2017, @03:46PM (4 children)
ou are. When you only compare self-driving vehicles to the worst human drivers, you're making a dishonest comparison.
No, you're making a dishonest comparison. The vast, vast majority of vehicles on the road are driven by non-professionals.
Already done. If you do too much stupid shit on the road, your license can be taken away or worse.
Citation needed. Here in America, dangerous and idiotic drivers are the norm, and almost never have their licenses revoked.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 12 2017, @04:32PM (3 children)
Still not relevant in two ways. Non professionals are still for the most part safe drivers. And professionals drive more miles in total than non professionals do in total.
There are several things to remember here. First, the majority of accidents, particularly those that kill people, come from a very small fraction of people. Second, it remains that a lot of miles are driving between accidents despite the small fraction of bad drivers in large part due to the professional drivers. Third, self-driving vehicles are likely to replace the safest drivers first rather than the other way around. Just look at what sort of driving tasks are planned [cnbc.com] to be replaced first - truck and taxi drivers.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 12 2017, @04:48PM (2 children)
You have a good point about professional drivers being the first to be replaced by automation. However I cannot agree about the majority of accidents coming from a very small fraction of people. I have to ask for a citation there. From what I see in urban driving, it's a very large fraction of drivers who are unsafe, if not most of them. Tailgating is normal behavior, for instance. It's just that most of these poor drivers just never get in much trouble; at most, they'll get a speeding ticket once in a while. Dangerous driving simply isn't policed, only speeding (and even there, usually in places where it's not that bad, like on open highways, rather than on crowded city streets where it's much more likely to cause a wreck). The problem with policing is that it takes a lot more effort to police bad driving in town, on crowded city streets, and it's a whole lot easier to just sit in a speed trap in a place where people are likely to speed because the speed limit is too low for the environment and the road is wide and straight.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 12 2017, @10:50PM (1 child)
I was unable to find the information I had stumbled across earlier, a year or two ago, but we have this story which indicates that a little over 1% drink and drive, but about 30% of all fatalities on the highway are alcohol-related. As I recall from the last time I looked this up, people with a large number of points on their license are also responsible for an inordinately large share of fatal accidents. They make up a few percent of the population. As I recall between the two, I estimated that no more than 5% of the population consists of these two groups who in turn are responsible for somewhere around half of all fatal accidents.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 12 2017, @11:11PM
Ok, that sounds mostly reasonable (though the 1.x% DUI thing sounds suspiciously low to be honest, considering how popular bars are, how popular drinking is, and how low DUI limits are now). However, call this moving the goalposts if you wish, but "around half of all fatal accidents" isn't unambiguously a majority, and certainly not a clear majority. And not all serious accidents are fatal, especially these days with the excellent crash protection modern cars have. Getting maimed is still really bad. Anyway, I think if you could get honest data about peoples' real driving skills and habits, and correlate that with all the accidents not caused by that ~5% of especially dangerous drivers, you'll find that they're caused by regular everyday drivers who aren't quite as bad as those 5% perhaps, but still are not great, and most of the time they're able to get away with not having a serious crash, but then one day they're just not so lucky. I don't think these people are a minority, or at the least not a small minority. There's just too much bad driving I see every day, and tailgating is one of the big problems (as seen in an article that was just posted here on SN in the last hour or so).
Anyway, one last comment: why the hell are people with a large number of points still allowed to drive if they've been proven responsible for an inordinately large share of fatal accidents?
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Friday October 06 2017, @04:37AM
Standing next to me where you used to be...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday October 06 2017, @04:59AM (2 children)
And robots have the potential to be extremely powerful.
How long and deeply have we feared robots? Even Gilligan's Island got on that bandwagon, in 1981: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harlem_Globetrotters_on_Gilligan%27s_Island [wikipedia.org] The 1967 I, Mudd episode of Star Trek has androids plotting to replace all human decision making, for our own good. Star Trek was not the first. Bugs Bunny touched on this issue far earlier in the 1953 cartoon Robot Rabbit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday October 06 2017, @05:16PM (1 child)
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.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:46PM
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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @05:09AM
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
Spare in the robot uprising. I love robots.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Friday October 06 2017, @06:21AM (7 children)
I have couple robots in my house. They are fucking great. Save me ton of hassle with dumb things like lifting the garbage can lid, dispensing soap, etc. The last robot vacuum did not work out. I'll reevaluate when they get a bit better (more suction, and a bit better navigation). Looking forward to a more robust lawn mowing robot as well. Something to do a fly over of the property. And man if I can get one that will do the dishes it will be great. I gave up on trying to have one clean the litter box though, that is impossible in this universe. Automated blinds would also be great.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 06 2017, @08:55AM (1 child)
I'm tired of all the tedious killing. Ammunition is heavy, aiming heavy guns is finicky, people are constantly complaining about the results. I want kill-bots. Rocket launcher and chain gun as primary weapons, a circular saw for close-in work. That'll do it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @12:21PM
what you wrote:
> I have a couple
what you meant?
I have a pair
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Friday October 06 2017, @09:05AM (1 child)
I see, you've got sexbots.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday October 06 2017, @11:52AM
And THEY'VE got milk!
Man milk.
:-/
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday October 06 2017, @03:21PM (1 child)
My father-in-law got something like this: https://www.amazon.com/CatGenie-Self-Washing-Flushing-Cat/dp/B008JGIYVE/ [amazon.com] - Seems to have worked pretty good for him.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:42PM
Go read the Amazon reviews for that thing. Not so good.... Especially read this one [amazon.com].
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @04:11PM
I gave up on trying to have one clean the litter box though, that is impossible in this universe.
No, it's not. You're looking at crappy litter boxes. You need to get a "Litter-Robot" (v3). It's expensive as hell, but it really does work well.
For shits and giggles, there's a shitty automated litter box that connects to your toilet called the "Litter Genie" I think. Don't get it, but do definitely read the reviews for it on Amazon.com. There's one particular review there that talks about fried cat turds that's absolutely hilarious.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Friday October 06 2017, @02:55PM (1 child)
This is hardly surprising. Automation benefits exactly one class of people: The ones doing the automating. Yes, it results in less errors when performing boring repetitive tasks, and for a lot of work it totally makes sense. But the average consumer doesn't see that.
What DOES the average consumer see from automation? Erosion of privacy (eg: marketing). Having their lives controlled by algorithms which they have no control or appeal over(eg: insurance, the justice system). Loss of jobs. And the most recent election has demonstrated that politicians are willing to use these advanced systems to blatantly manipulate the populance. In all ways, the average person is losing what little control they still had on their lives.
So why shouldn't people be wary of automation?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 06 2017, @04:13PM
And the most recent election has demonstrated that politicians are willing to use these advanced systems to blatantly manipulate the populance. In all ways, the average person is losing what little control they still had on their lives.
So why shouldn't people be wary of automation?
The people happily allow themselves to be manipulated, so what's the problem, and why would they be wary?