Intelligent Robots Threaten Tens of Millions of Jobs, 50% + Unemployment In Coming 30 Years
-Intelligent Robots Threaten Millions of Jobs- AFP, Feb. 14, 2016. > Developments and forecasts from panel experts on artificial intelligence at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sat., Feb. 13.
Advances in artificial intelligence will soon lead to robots that are capable of nearly everything humans do, threatening tens of millions of jobs in the coming 30 years, experts warned Saturday. "We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task," said Moshe Vardi, director of the Institute for Information Technology at Rice University in Texas. I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?" he asked at a panel discussion on artificial intelligence at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Vardi said there will always be some need for human work in the future, but robot replacements could drastically change the landscape, with no profession safe, and men and women equally affected. "Can the global economy adapt to greater than 50 percent unemployment?" he asked.
- Robot Receptionists
Transform manufacturing - Automation and robotization have already revolutionized the industrial sector over the last 40 years, raising productivity but cutting down on employment. Job creation in manufacturing reached its peak in the United States in 1980 and has been on the decline ever since, accompanied by stagnating wages in the middle class, said Vardi. Today there are more than 200,000 industrial robots in the country and their number continues to rise. Today, research is focused on the reasoning abilities of machines, and progress in this realm over the past 20 years has been spectacular, said Vardi. "And there is every reason to believe the progress in the next 25 years will be equally dramatic," he said. By his calculation, 10 percent of jobs related to driving in the United States could disappear due to the rise of driverless cars in the coming 25 years.
According to Bart Selman, professor of computer science at Cornell University, "in the next two or three years, semi-autonomous or autonomous systems will march into our society. "He listed self-driving cars and trucks, autonomous drones for surveillance and fully automatic trading systems, along with house robots and other kinds of "intelligence assistance" which make decisions on behalf of humans."We will be in sort of symbiosis with those machines and we will start to trust them and work with them," he predicted. This is the concern because we don't know the rate of growth of machine intelligence, how clever those machines will become."
Control? - Will the machines remain understandable for the humans? Will humans will be able to control them? Will they remain a benefit for humans, or pose harms? These questions and more are being raised anew due to recent advances in robotic technology that allow machines to see and hear, almost like people. Selman said investment in artificial intelligence in the United States was by far the highest ever in 2015, since the birth of the industry some 50 years ago. Business giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Tesla, run by billionaire Elon Musk, are at the head of the pack. Also, the Pentagon has requested 19 billion for developing intelligent weapons systems. What is concerning about these new technologies is their ability to analyze data and execute complex tasks. This raises concerns about whether humans might one day lose control of the artificial intelligence they once built, said Selman.
Stephen Hawking, British astrophysicist, "It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate," he said. "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded," he added.
"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." (cont.)
More, ethics, safeguards, global response. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/intelligent-robots-threaten-millions-of-jobs/ar-BBptVUO?ocid=spartandhp AFP, 'Intelligent Robots Threaten Millions of Jobs', Feb. 14, 2016.
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take heart anyway. Most may be good, passive victims for a while, but almost all of us have limits and you could depend on many others to eventually protect you even if you didn't join them.
BTW, IF you care to educate yourself about those you imagine are someday going to take the food from your mouth and exile you to the desert to die, you will learn about their many huge setbacks over the years (all of which WE dealt them with so little individual effort that most of us scarcely realized it) and that they are very afraid of us again right now. With excellent reason.
They only succeeded this long by operating in secret, but now we know who they are, what they are up to and how they hope to achieve it.
BTW, the 2008 election of Democrats across the nation and our many subsequent hits have been the latest huge setback. See how easy that was? So easy most of don't even realize we delivered a strong left hook just by taking a few minutes to vote. That's the power of even a small fraction of 300,000,000 people.
Oh, I actually forgot! Scalia's death is actually a latest, huge roundhouse blow to them. Sad that a Justice would finally serve the people best by dropping dead, but he did do us a tremendous favor thereby. Note that SCOTUS can function indefinitely mostly TO OUR BENEFIT on its current 8 cylindars, too. 
"ROBOTS WILL TAKE OVER MOST JOBS WITHIN 30 YEARS EXPERTS WARN" BY Sarah Knapton, Science Editor in Washington, Telegraph/Reuters, Feb. 13, 2016.
The rise of robots could lead to unemployment rates greater than 50 per cent, according to Professor Moshe Vardi
- "Topio", a bipedal humanoid robot designed to play table tennis against a human being
Robots will have taken over most jobs within 30 years leaving humanity facing its 'biggest challenge ever' to find meaning in life when work is no longer necessary, according to experts.
Professor Moshe Vardi, of Rice University, in the US, claims that many middle-class professionals will be outsourced to machines within the next few decades leaving workers with more leisure time than they have ever experienced.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington, Prof Moshe said the rise of robots could lead to unemployment rates greater than 50 per cent.
"We are approaching a time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task," said Vardi, a professor in computational engineering.
"Robots are doing more and more jobs that people used to do. Pharmacists, prison guards, boning chicken, bartending, more and more jobs we're able to mechanize them.
"I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will HUMANS do?
"The question I want to put forward is, 'Does the technology we are developing, ultimately benefit mankind?'
Prof. Vardi said existing robotic and AI technologies were already eliminating a growing number of middle-class jobs and claims that the pace of advancement in the field of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is increasing.
In December, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore unveiled the most humanlike robot ever created, which will work as a receptionist on campus.
"Nadine", with her soft skin and flowing brunette hair, does not only meet and greet visitors, smile, make eye contact and shake hands, but she can even recognize past guests and spark up conversation based on previous chats. (Continued)
- Robot Receptionists
*Read More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/12155808/Robots-will-take-over-most-jobs-within-30-years-experts-warn.html
