Chris May

On the topic of robots in our society in the future: Marshall Brain talks about his thoughts on this in an article called Robot Nation (and parts 2 and 3) , and the opportunity this presents out society. I'm betting on the darker side of options (more extreme seperation of the haves and have-nots). "Will Humanoid Robots Take All the Jobs by 2050?" is the slashdot discussion of the first part of the article, and "Distribution of Wealth in a Robot-Driven World" is the discussion of the 3rd part.

The idea is that, as robots and technology in general, take over more and more jobs, what will happen to the workforce, and to our society? It's an interesting and troubling question. A lot of people might not think this is a big deal, and follow the assumption that it will work something like this: "Well, if 90% of all fast food workers, and janitors are replaced by robots, then there will be additional jobs working for the companies that support the robots." This is clearly flawed. You don't replace humans w/ robots who required the same number of displaced humans to support them. Otherwise there would be no economical reason to replace them.

So if you can make these giant increases in efficiency, that COULD result in a giant increase in quality of life, and also less need to work. That would work like this: Jack likes to eat a McDonalds, so he works 40 hours a week to make enough money to eat every meal at McDonalds. McDonalds replaces all humans w/ robots and is able to cut the cost of their food to 1/2 its current price. Jack now only needs to work 1/2 as man hours to pay for his McDonalds, so he can enjoy an extra 20 hours of his life each week. But, I feel the way it probably would work is that Jacks employeer would suddenly have all the fast food employees begging for a job, and thus Jacks salary would drop as his value to the company will have decreased.

This is a basic economic question. Over the last 40 years many would argue that our quality of life has increased, and in some ways that is plainly clear. But 30 years ago someone working in a labor job could support a family and own a house. Factories NEEDED people. Now they don't, or they need a lot less people as robots and automation have continued to replace jobs.