Thursday, October 21, 2010

They Took Our Jobs! [Robot Apocalypse]

These cold, heartless bastards aren't content to just conquer the world, they want our JOBS too!

Today, a Japanese company called Fanuc, Ltd., has industrial robots making other industrial robots in a "lights out" factory. (That's the somewhat unsettling term for a fully automated production facility where you don't need lights because you don't need humans.) That's where we're headed.

It's not just manufacturing, either. Automated call centers are replacing customer-service agents. Automated checkout stations are replacing grocery-store clerks. When the science of computer vision advances sufficiently, we'll have algorithms, not humans, evaluating X-rays at airport security checkpoints and screening user-generated content for sites like Facebook.

The robots are going to do all our work, better than us, at a fraction of the cost.

Or, as the denizens of South Park so eloquently put it:

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