One often sees wringing of hands when the subject of robots is brought up, the most common objection being, what will people do to earn a living? The same complaint one has heard ever since the beginning of the Industrial Evolution.
Let's be very brief:
The complaint is based on the assumption that corporations own the robots, so the average joe will have nothing of value to offer the economy, will earn nothing, so this plays havoc with the economy.
What if, instead, the average joe owns one or more robots? What if people become the agents of their own robots, and earn their living by selling the labor produced by their robot(s)?
For the time being, I'm not putting limits on the design of the robots. To be very simplistic, assume a humanoid machine, that can literally work in our place. But in fact, robots can also be whatever - vending machines, ATMs, GPS-guided lawn mowers, autonomous cars, and so on.
So instead of removing the value offered by the human, the robot does the work for the human, and the owner is paid for that work.
The economics of actually buying the robots is not too unusual. People can buy robots as they buy anything that's relatively expensive today. The difference being, the robot earns its keep, by being paid directly for its labor, while, for example, a car is just an expense, for most people.
In short, the drudgery is taken away from the human worker, but a human individual is still being paid for doing the work.
Perhaps the robots could be taxed, as do workers today. With the proceeds of these taxes, workers who lost their jobs due to robots could be paid to do public works . In this way, the owner of the robots saves the cost of the worker's salary but not the cost of labor taxes.
It's not only the robots that are replacing human, AI and Expert systems are also doing the same.
Dear Albert,
The robot economy has also made it possible to train various industries such as transport, communications, services, etc. In addition, in the fields of medicine and especially in surgery, the robot has become an indispensable means of To many of the most difficult interventions. Also in the field of the most diverse research the robot plays a non-negligible role to achieve ambitious objectives. Indeed, if one should be rigorous in order to quantify the contribution of the robot's contribution to the comfort and wellbeing of the human being and beyond in the world economy, it will undoubtedly allow us to appreciate the right place Of the robot in modern society.
Best regards
Mohamed-Mourad, absolutely I agree with what your write. And one can argue, this trend has been occurring ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution, as really any machine can be considered a form of robot. The more advanced these machines become, the more the human being is taken out of the control loop. And in spite of what many worry about, the result has been positive for the human condition.
However, I was trying to address something different. Let's take this to the extreme, where some people think we are headed. People will have nothing to contribute to society, that other people will value enough to compensate with something of value, because the robots are filling all of our needs. What happens then?
What I proposed was a way for the economy to accommodate this extreme future. People can still benefit from the robots doing all the work, and yet the economy can nevertheless compensate these (somewhat idle) people, for the work their robots do. Plus, creative thinking would still be encouraged, because people will always look for more valuable work they can program their robots to do.
I'd like to add a few comments , but not directly related to economic benefits from the robots. Similar discussions about the times when robots will become indispensable companions of humans are described in science fiction novels, for example by Robert Sheckley or Ray Bradbury...
I mean the times when the quality of work fulfilled by robots will exceed that done by men. When robots will replace humans doing dangerous job etc... The key question will however become Creative Thinking - the subject in which robots by and by will also exceed human-brain-ability. YET, in critical situations alike sports : surfing, slalom, mountaineering, critical situations in control of airplane flight, in battle field... - it is hard to imagine that robot will be able to surpass humans.
Leonid, it's really not clear to me at what point robots won't be able to exceed humans, in the area of mechanical skills. Creativity might be more tricky, but I wouldn't rule out such activities as surfing, for example. I say this because automation has always, so far anyway, started out merely as as labor saving measure, but it soon becomes essential. Manual control soon cannot keep up with the speed of the machine, and manual control becomes unacceptably unsafe. This is very commonplace. To improve performance (and efficiency), we soon rely entirely on automating the controls.
Because robots can in principle react faster than humans, since they use automated control loops, I would not rule out that they can also surf, or ski, or climb mountains better too. These are mechanical skills.
Aparna, I'm not sure the cost of robots is necessarily a factor for all time? Look how drones have already become affordable by the average mortal.
I had the some interesting and telling experience in testing automated controls, and comparing these with manual control, in simulators. Nothing like trying this out first hand to make one a believer.
Albert, let me try to give you my point. For that I have to use quotations from your comment.
"Because robots can in principle react faster than humans, since they use automated control loops, I would not rule out that they can also surf, or ski, or climb mountains better too. These are mechanical skills"
Let's take the chess game. Of course robot robot can "think" many times faster than humans. Thus in fraction of a second they can consider all the KNOWN options of the reciprocal course. By now there exist thousands of options - chess openings, gambits. But, as Dr. Aparna said, - "robots are trained by humans". So, the strategy of Garry Kasparov (BTW his IQ well exceeds 200) to draw a party when he played against computer - was to invent unknown situations. It was also the strategy of another brilliant chess player - Bobby Fisher.
Actually, considering the "competition" between humans and robots - I wrote about extreme situations [ It may be (but very hard to imagine - looking from today the time when robot-trainer will coach a robot-student].
I agree that it is possible to teach robot to climb mountains, to surf... BUT AGAIN - up to extent when everything goes smoothly.. BUT the ocean waves have the unforeseen chaotic form it is not a harmonica. Its pattern is never repeated. It is not the "Russian Hills" (here in Russia - we call them "American Hills") in amusement park.
In younger years I was a mountain-climber. Once in Kazakstan on rise I have broken off a rock - and started my free fall into a 300-meter-depth abyss. I was lucky to escape grasping a thin liana. I see no way - the robot be that lucky, neither can I see how to teach him to perform such a trick (in sci fi it is called the second Asimov Law).
But I do believe that not only in a routine work very soon robots will replace humans. Then the problem: What will not only common people but also scientists do? - will arise. I saw one country where parallel to the main highway - were located absolutely useless segments of highways by length of 300-500 m - a result of so-called "public works".
To be the devil's advocate again, although I don't know why I should consider to be "the devil" at all, a robot could conceivably have seen and grasped the vine too, if it sensed a loss of "foothold." And even more to the point, the robot equipped with the proper sensors may never have gotten in that predicament, having sensed the weakness of the ledge.
One real advantage of automatic controls is their much better ability to know the limits. Not only to avoid going over the limits, which is why they are safer than humans in the control loop, but also to operate much closer to the limit, all the time. That's how you achieve both safety and efficiency. And, they also don't panic, becoming erratic and unpredictable when something goes wrong, as humans very frequently do.
How do humans become experts at mechanical tasks, or even at playing chess? More than anything, trial and error (I contend). We build a database of conditions, how to tackle these, and the outcome. I don't subscribe to the notion that, say, a soccer (football) player is an expert physicist, computing the trajectory of the ball. My contention is that the ball player recalls a past experience, or the more gutsy ones may even try to combine past experiences, hoping for the desired result. And often failing, of course, but at least, now they have that new experience stored.
Why do ice skaters have to fall on the ice, when they are learning to skate or to perform some new move? It's because they have to store that failure experience, to establish those limiting conditions. If they never fall, they don't know where the limit is. The competitor, the who did fall while learning, will skate better and win.
Similarly, the expert chess player keeps many more move options in his frontal lobe, and the outcomes of each one, the opponents options, and so on. But in principle, why can't a computer do likewise, with training, even if we assume that the computer is not actually computing strategies? (For actual computations, I would think a computer can always do these faster and more accurately than a human.)
Another point is this: I think that developing control algorithms, as opposed to thinking of them as some sort of alien intelligence gone wild, as depicted in science fiction, changes ones perspective? For example, those involved in designing algorithms for autonomous driving, actual autonomous driving, may very well eventually have to cede control to the human behind the wheel, when certain combinations of failures occur. But, I contend, if the algorithm designers have done their job really well, they should wonder how the human can realistically create a better outcome. It might be case of, people expect that ultimately the human has to intervene, but we have our serious doubts.
Aparna, sometimes you do rely 100% on automation. People very frequently drive cars with automatic transmissions, and never find any need to override what the transmission is doing. Even more obviously, even with manual transmissions, no one has had to manually adjust the fuel mixture or the spark advance, in very many decades. People are incompetent at such extacting tasks. Machines took them over 100%, because they can make split second decisions much better than humans can, and consequently, those functions cannot even be overridden anymore.
Your refrigerator operates autonomously all of the time, including de-icing, and no one thinks twice about that. Same with your home heating and air conditioning. None if this was the case, a century ago. It is now. We're just moving up the ladder of what tasks machines are assigned. I don't think there's a reason to limit this trend to what automation has achieved today. Every day, we are progressing. Autonomous driving, autonomous flying, autonomous shipping, is just a steady progression of what has been building for a long time.
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