Coming soon to a Walmart near you

Is it a robot conspiracy?

J.D. Tuccille writes in Reason,

In recent weeks, Illinois mandated a huge increase in the state minimum wage, Pennsylvania's governor proposed to double his state's minimum wage, and New Mexico lawmakers moved forward with a plan to raise the minimum wage there, too. Hiking the cost of labor is a popular cause once again—even among people who've demonstrated in the past that they know perfectly well this is a recipe for limiting opportunity and trapping people in poverty.

It's tempting to say that people are actually getting stupider about economics. But maybe, instead, it's all part of a conspiracy by robots who are poised to be the big beneficiaries of an artificially crippled job market.

Read more here.

What? Some jobs require human-to-human contact?

Sarah Knapton reports in The Telegraph,

Fears that robots could take the jobs of humans may be premature after Britain’s first cyborg shop assistant was sacked after a week of confusing customers.

In an experiment run by Heriot-Watt University for the BBC’s Six Robots & US, Scottish supermarket chain Margiotta was asked to trial ‘ShopBot’, who they affectionately named ‘Fabio’.

Fabio was programmed with directions to hundreds of items in the company’s flagship Edinburgh store and initially charmed customers with his ‘hello gorgeous’ greeting, playful high fives, jokes and offers of hugs.

“We thought a robot was a great addition to show the customers that we are always wanting to do something new and exciting,” said Elena Margiotta, who runs the chain of shops with father Franco and sister Luisa.

But within just a few days, the robot was demoted after giving unhelpful advice such as ‘it’s in the alcohol section’ when asked where to find beer. He also struggled to understand shoppers’ requests because of the ambient background noise.

Banished to an aisle where he was only allowed to offer samples of pulled pork, Fabio started to alarm customers who went out of their way to avoid him.

Read more here.

Do people really want cute, social robots?

Joe Jones writes for IEEE SPECTRUM,

Cute, social robots currently get a lot of press, but are these engaging devices early emissaries of our robotic future? Are we entering an era where no one would dream of living without a cheerful electromechanical companion? In my view, companion robots offer novelty over utility, but once the novelty wears off, it’s only utility that people will pay for.

Rather than being front and center, home robots, I believe, will follow computers into the shadows. Why? Because people don’t want robots. (I say this despite 30-plus years as a practicing roboticist.) Consumers want a spotless floor; not a machine buzzing around underfoot. Every morning, you want to find your dresser filled with clean clothes; you have no need to socialize with a laundry-bot no matter how exuberant it may be. People want the things a robot can do for them; the robot itself may just get in the way.

Read more from this roboticist here.

Round the clock robots and sexbots?

Chateau Heartiste wonders if we are headed into a future where all our needs are

catered and pleasures serviced by round-the-clock robots and sexbots, as we get fatter, weaker, stupider, lazier, more feminized, and less rebellious toward the disappearance of meaning from our lives. Government will exist primarily to regulate the profits that the top 0.00001% — those who own the robot-operated factories and distribution centers — can skim from their enterprises, because there will be democratically-elected incentive to keep the prices of goods affordable for people making no more than the Fake Money from their Fake Incomes provided to them by Uncle Samantha.

Read more here.

“There are many, many ex-military police robots in the U.S…”

"Shooter kills cops; police robot kills shooter" That is the headline for a story out of Dallas. Read it here.

Russia arrests robot at political rally!

You might be forgiven if you were under the impression that the Russian government is a bit behind the times when it comes to modern technology and its never ending desire to stifle every last bit of dissent possible. Between the bouts its had with internet censorship and some strange claims about how binge-watching streaming services are a form of United States mind-control, it would be quite easy to be left with the notion that this is all for comedy. Alas, blunders and conspiracy theories aside, much of this technological blundering is mere cover for the very real iron grip the Russians place upon free speech, with all manner of examples in technology used as excuses to silence its critics.

And now it's no longer just human beings that need fear the Russian government, it seems. Just this past week, a robot was arrested at a political rally. And, yes, I really do mean a robot, and, yes, I really do mean arrested.

Read more here.

Robots who hunt prey

Engadget reports

Intelligent robots are all well and good until they start learning how to hunt prey. That's exactly what a team of scientists at the Institute of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich in Switzerland did. They taught a robot to behave like a predator and hunt "prey," or a robot controlled by a human, using special software to aid the robot to mark its target and pounce.

The applications of these lessons for the predator robot are a lot less terrifying than thinking robots are about to start hunting the human race. It's about creating software that could potentially allow a robots to both take a look at their environments and then discern a target in real time.

Read more here.

Find a job a robot can't do

Amazon robots ding their thing:

Fred Reed writes at Unz,

...These orange devils carry heavy racks to humans who pick ordered goods from them for shipment. Amazon is working on robots that can do the picking. Who will be left? In principle, 30,000 robots can work 90,000 shifts, plus weekends. With a predictability that makes sunrise look like a long shot, the company says that the robots do not replace but “help” humans. If you believe this, I’d like to sell you stock in my venture to make radioactive dog-food on Mars.

Automation of course means more than robots. As newspaper after newspaper goes all-digital, less pulpwood will be needed to make less newsprint, pressmen will be fired, delivery trucks will no longer needed, and so on. Such ripple effects get little attention. They should.

The capitalist paradigm in which companies think only about themselves, seeking to increase productivity and reduce costs, is going to work decreasingly well. Replacing well-paid workers with robots means replacing customers with a lot of money with customers with little money. People who are not paid much do not buy much. Robots buy even less.

The first crucial question of coming decades: Who is going to buy the stuff pouring from robotic factories?

The current notion is that when a yoyo factory automates and lays off most of its workers, they will find other well-paid jobs and continue to buy yoyos. But as well-paid jobs everywhere go automated, where will the money come from to buy yoyos? Today participation in the work force is at all- time lows and we have a large and growing number of young who, unable to find good jobs, live with their parents. They are not buying houses or renting apartments. (They may, given the intellectual level of today’s young, be buying yoyos.)

Enthusiasts of the free market say that I do not understand economics, that there will always be work for people who want to work. But there isn’t. There won’t be. There is less all the time. Again, look at the falling participation in the work force, the growing numbers in part-time badly paid jobs. Short of governmentally imposed minimums, wages are determined by the market, meaning that if a robot works for a dollar an hour, a human will have to work for ninety-five cents an hour to compete , or find a job a robot can’t do–and these get scarcer.

From a businessman’s point of view, robots are superb employees. They don’t strike, demand raises, call in sick, get disgruntled and do a sloppy job, or require benefits. Building factories that are robotic from the gitgo means not having to lay workers off, which is politically easier than firing existing workers. Using robots obviates the Chinese advantage in wages, especially if America can make better robots–good for companies, but not for workers in either country. That is, production may return to the US, but jobs will not. In countries with declining populations, having robots do the work may reduce the attractiveness of importing uncivilizable bomb-chucking morons from the bush world.

...As standards of living decrease, unrest will come. I will guess that much of Donald Trump’s popularity arises from the sending of factories to China by the corporations that rule America. Now the robots are going to take the remaining jobs. Economists will chatter of this principle and that curve and what Aristotle said about Veblen, but in a free market for labor, robots will win. If we have a high minimum wage, business will automate. If we have a low minimum wage, they will automate, but a few years later.

...The obvious solution, one I think inevitable within a few decades unless we want a revolution, is a guaranteed minimum income, enough to live on comfortably, for everyone. Whether this is a good idea can be debated, but it seems likely to be the only idea. Capitalists will tell me that I do not understand markets, or capital flows or pricing mechanisms, and that I am against freedom. I will respond that they need to wake up and look around. And I will point out that economics has become a tedious form of Left-Right metaphysics, Keynes versus the Austrian School, capitalism versus socialism, all unconnected to onrushing reality.

What would be the effects of a guaranteed income? Godawful, I would guess. Some people, probably including those who read columns on the web, would read, listen to music, drink wine and talk with friends, hike in the Himalayas, scuba dive, and earn doctorates in physics. But most would get up every morning, bored, without purpose, anticipating just another of unending days of television, beer, tedium, no driving desire to do anything but discontent with nothing to do. Would the young even go to school? They would have no need. What has happened among the welfare populations that in effect have a guaranteed minimum income?

See? We are doomed. It warms the cockles of a curmudgeon’s heart. Whatever a cockle is.

Read more here.

Raise minimum wage to $15 per hour, and get robots to replace humans

Clyde Hughes reports at Newsmax,

Robots have replaced 60,000 Chinese workers at the Apple and Samsung supplier Foxconn, which has recently cut its workforce by more than half.

...Ed Rensi, who was chief executive officer of McDonald's USA in the 1990s, made headlines recently when he told Fox Business that robots would be cheaper than hiring humans at $15 an hour. He made the comments in connection with recent campaigns to increase the minimum wage.

"I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry – it's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who's inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries," Rensi said. "It's nonsense and it's very destructive and it's inflationary and it's going to cause a job loss across this country like you're not going to believe."

Read more here.

Watch This Robot Infiltrate An Office, Go Under Doors, And Gain Full Access To Locked Resources...

Thanks to Mike Miles

Robots to be fighting our wars in the future

Really? Robots are going to be fighting our wars? How will they know which humans to destroy?

What values will they have?

Oh, great! A scientist, Nell Watson, who is Chief Executive of a body scanning firm says that robots could decide to kill humans, either out of malice or kindness. She urges other scientists to teach human values to robots, before it's too late!

Ms Watson claims computer chips could soon have the same level of brain power as a bumblebee – allowing them to analyze social situations and their environment.

Read more here.

Why don't we just manufacture robots, instead of students? They last longer, and they always do what they are told!

There has been another rollout of another federal program, Common Core. Some people are saying that it is an even greater bust than Obamacare.

Ethan Young, a senior at Farragut High School in Knox County, Tenn., made an impassioned argument for dropping the new national education guidelines, which he called “a glowing conflict of interest … that illustrate a mistrust of teachers.”

“Somewhere our Founding Fathers are turning in their graves,” he said.

"In reality Common Core was contrived by an insular group of educational testing executives, with only two academic content specialists."

"The President essentially bribed states into implementation, offering 4.35 billion taxpayer dollars."

I have been fortunate to have had incredible educators who opened my eyes to the joy of learning. These standards mistrust teachers. Teaching is about interaction between teachers and students. There is no control in this model for students' participation or interest!

Standards based education is all about bureaucratic convenience.

Why don't we just manufacture robots, instead of students? They last longer, and they always do what they're told! (I've got news for you, son, that IS the plan!)

Creativity, appreciation, inquisitiveness: these are impossible to scale! They are the purpose of education!

Robots can do it better!

Today is the day of the left's planned strikes and protests at fast food restaurants, demanding that the minimum wage be raised from $7.25 to at least %15 per hour. Glenn Reynolds reminds protesters that robots made by Momentum Machines can make 360 gourmet hamburgers per hour.