Close Up (a news magazine show) last evening featured an item on Robots in a rest home here in Auckland. This is a trial that is underway to evaluate various robots to see what help if any they can be within the aged care setting.
The robots seemed at the lower end of what is possible, mostly reminding people about their meds taking blood pressure readings and the like, they certainly were not mobile or truly autonomous. The feedback that the show presents after items such as this was enlightening, two comments were presented and both of them referred to this simply being a cost cutting exercise to eliminate wage costs. No such mention had been made of anything like that in the actual article so this is probably a sub conscious display of peoples fears of such technology.
This article is another example of synchronicity for me as I had already been considering the impact of robots on our society. This interest had been sparked by the release of Honda’s latest robot, Asimov. Who is more the embodiment of what we generally think of as a robot, a mechanical person. It was the sophistication of this particular robot that had me thinking as it can clearly perform a lot of interesting tasks and it is only a development project currently. (refer Youtube.com and search for Honda Robot)
The fact that it is Honda’s robot is also of interest, Honda clearly makes mass market “things” and is presumably investing in this technology because they think there is or will be a market for them. I mean who wouldn’t want one of these fetching you a drink or better yet doing some chores like ironing etc. The meet, greet and direct function demonstrated on one of the videos is a useful application right there for some larger organisations. Not a great leap to see these things in stores walking the floors and helping customers. Do you want to buy a skill saw? Follow the robot assistant to where they are and it can then answer your questions about the saws, once you have selected one pick it up and carry it to the register where potentially another one completes the check out and then the saw is carried to your car for you.
This is far from science fiction; Asimov could clearly do this right now without any problems. But what happens to the people that do this now? Well clearly they are out of a job right but that is just the way of technology so why worry, when blacksmithing went into decline we had the rise of the mechanic so no big problem.
Well I don’t want to sound like a Luddite but this time I suspect this is different. Just think for a moment of all the jobs that can be displaced by robots and it is a lot, basically it is any job that does not require creativity. Factory jobs, pretty much all gone. Food service, all gone. Shop service, gone. Construction, gone. (yes construction, while complicated once the plans a drawn the rest is pretty much a process.) Information provision (thinking teaching). Surgery, perhaps not gone but there are already robots doing brain surgery. Robot Surgery
See the problem with this technology is that it is so pervasive and is specifically designed to replace humans not to augment them. How does the world work when most people have no work to do? Who is going to buy the goods and services all the robots produce? I can’t imagine my way to how this works out but what I do know is there is a robot coming to your life very soon (think 10 years) either as your helper or replacement. Something to think about.
I came across this little bit of doggerel some years back which now seems potentially prophetic.
When Machines do our work and machines do our play
For then we shall all be in clover
We’ll have nothing to do all the live long day
Till the machines that do nothing take over
Random thoughts on Random topics sparked by my travels through life and the things I see or hear on the way
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
The measure of the thing
Recently, if you follow such things, there has been some internet chatter about the possibility that some CERN scientists (the LHC chaps) have found neutrinos travelling faster than light. For those of us focused on the mortgage and such like this is fairly dull news but for physicist this would put a major dent in the theory of relativity and everything else that is built on this theory, hence the chatter.
Because of the importance of this issue a lot of attention has been focused on the experiment and some criticism made of the accuracy of the measurements involved. One of the measuring devices (don’t ask me which one) had a potential error rate of 30 billionth of a second, which apparently at light speed could be an issue so they have improved it down to 3 billionth of a second for their second try. (Just sit and try and imagine how small that is for a moment.). Next issue is the distance from the start of the race and the end, they are using about 450km and for some reason an exact measurement of this is important also. (I would have thought if both things travel the same distance and one is first the exact distance wouldn’t matter, shows what I know) But the main point is that measurement is important if you want the correct answer.
It reminded me that we are quite keen on measuring things, you can go to university and do a 4 year course on it if you like (surveying). It also reminded me of when we adopted the metric system in this country and there was an extended education campaign. As a kid the most memorable item was a ruler that had inches on one side and centimetres on the other side. It was made of wood and made a very satisfactory sound if one end was held by the lid of my desk and the other end was twanged to make it vibrate. Very educational but probably more about the relationship of pitch to wave length, (not that I could have told you that at the time), than measurement.
So of course the measurement issue comes up a lot, if you want your view point to sound authoritive it doesn’t hurt to have some numbers or statistics to back it up. A technique that I frequently use myself I will admit. But there are some numbers that are simply irritating due to their actual lack of substance versus their perceived importance.
One that irritates me a lot is the “Poverty Line” we hear all the time that people are this or that in relation to the Poverty Line. Well let’s start with, in NZ there is no such agreed number. So this so called line is presumably where people wish to place it which isn’t much of a yard stick is it.
A recent idea that has had a bit of press lately is “there are 220,000 children living in poverty” this comes from the commissioner for children and he has at least had the good manners to define what in his view poverty is and according to him these children are living in households with income less than 60% of the median income. OK so what is the median income, well according to Statistics NZ’s June 2011 survey it is now just a touch under $41,000 per annum, so 60% of that is approx $25,000. So to make the remark easier to understand if you have an income of less than $25,000 and you have children you are according to the children’s commissioner living in poverty.
So who are these people, well despite my dislike of the idea of minimum wage legislation this is useful in this conversation as it is currently $13 per hour or roughly $26,000 per annum. Therefore it is easy to conclude based on the above that poor people in NZ are those that either don’t work or only work part time. (for whatever reason) So reframed the idea is “If you don’t work you don’t earn much” Gee what a shock.
Yes, yes I know there is no work out there etc, but that is a different issue isn’t it. Do we really expect people who don’t work to be well off?
Because of the importance of this issue a lot of attention has been focused on the experiment and some criticism made of the accuracy of the measurements involved. One of the measuring devices (don’t ask me which one) had a potential error rate of 30 billionth of a second, which apparently at light speed could be an issue so they have improved it down to 3 billionth of a second for their second try. (Just sit and try and imagine how small that is for a moment.). Next issue is the distance from the start of the race and the end, they are using about 450km and for some reason an exact measurement of this is important also. (I would have thought if both things travel the same distance and one is first the exact distance wouldn’t matter, shows what I know) But the main point is that measurement is important if you want the correct answer.
It reminded me that we are quite keen on measuring things, you can go to university and do a 4 year course on it if you like (surveying). It also reminded me of when we adopted the metric system in this country and there was an extended education campaign. As a kid the most memorable item was a ruler that had inches on one side and centimetres on the other side. It was made of wood and made a very satisfactory sound if one end was held by the lid of my desk and the other end was twanged to make it vibrate. Very educational but probably more about the relationship of pitch to wave length, (not that I could have told you that at the time), than measurement.
So of course the measurement issue comes up a lot, if you want your view point to sound authoritive it doesn’t hurt to have some numbers or statistics to back it up. A technique that I frequently use myself I will admit. But there are some numbers that are simply irritating due to their actual lack of substance versus their perceived importance.
One that irritates me a lot is the “Poverty Line” we hear all the time that people are this or that in relation to the Poverty Line. Well let’s start with, in NZ there is no such agreed number. So this so called line is presumably where people wish to place it which isn’t much of a yard stick is it.
A recent idea that has had a bit of press lately is “there are 220,000 children living in poverty” this comes from the commissioner for children and he has at least had the good manners to define what in his view poverty is and according to him these children are living in households with income less than 60% of the median income. OK so what is the median income, well according to Statistics NZ’s June 2011 survey it is now just a touch under $41,000 per annum, so 60% of that is approx $25,000. So to make the remark easier to understand if you have an income of less than $25,000 and you have children you are according to the children’s commissioner living in poverty.
So who are these people, well despite my dislike of the idea of minimum wage legislation this is useful in this conversation as it is currently $13 per hour or roughly $26,000 per annum. Therefore it is easy to conclude based on the above that poor people in NZ are those that either don’t work or only work part time. (for whatever reason) So reframed the idea is “If you don’t work you don’t earn much” Gee what a shock.
Yes, yes I know there is no work out there etc, but that is a different issue isn’t it. Do we really expect people who don’t work to be well off?
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