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AI isn't replacing grocery store checkers. It hasn't replaced auto mechanics or professional chefs. We barely have self-driving cars and trucks, and we don't ev

AI isn't replacing grocery store checkers. It hasn't replaced auto mechanics or professional chefs. We barely have self-driving cars and trucks, and we don't even have robots to stock store shelves yet. Where is the brake-changing robot? Where is the robot that puts cans of beans on the Walmart shelf? Would humans even value such an automaton? There will always be some problems that are trivial to have a human solve, but very difficult for anything else. The Butlerian Jihad, and the underlying fear that robots will take every single job, is as much science fiction as hard light or teleportation.

arcticfox 10y ago
Well, there's some hyperbole. The examples you list can mostly be built today, just not cost efficiently. Hardly teleportation, which violates our understanding of physics.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  Right, because the cost, a measure of human value, is too high. Humans could make them, but we don't value the automation. It's cheaper for a human to do it. We've had ATMs for how many decades? And yet we still have staffed bank windows, for the edge cases the ATM can't handle, such as rolled coins. Sure, some rolled-coin ATMs exist, but they're more expensive. It's usually cheaper for a human to handle the rolled coins and other bank edge cases. Same with self-check and alcohol age verification. Same with last-mile driving for self-driving cars and trucks.
dominotw 10y ago
Forget about flying cars, I would kill for a laundry folding machine.
- Semiapies 10y ago
  To save lives: https://www.foldimate.com https://www.foldimate.com
  - manyxcxi 10y ago
    My anniversary is in two weeks. How well do we think it will go for me if I pre-order this and call it an anniversary present?
  - dominotw 10y ago
    separating, sorting and grouping is like 90% work 'folding laundry' . This thing just folds tshirts once you give to it in predefined/sorted format. I would be really surprised if anyone would actually buy this thing.
Semiapies 10y ago
Why would you need separate machines for all those things? You just have a general purpose design running software for the task at hand. But no, that's not happening soon. It seems to be a weird dream of certain left-leaving people for AI to advance as they get minimum wages to rise, so that unskilled human labor becomes no longer cost-competitive with machines. Thus, they create an unemployable underclass that has to be kept alive with welfare systems/basic income and thus are captive votes.
manyxcxi 10y ago
Couldn't you argue that the majority of cars are built mostly with robots? There may not be a brake changing robot, but I bet there's a brake installing one. When it gets to the point that the automated labor is cheaper than or more efficient to the human labor, you'd see the switch. Amazon is testing/using automated warehouse robots to stock their shelves- I imagine it would be a while until we did grocery stores with robots as it is a much less controlled environment and human beings are unpredictable. Plus running over a kid with a robot would be bad for all parties for a very long time. This is the nature of technological progress. The loom, the cotton gin, the automobile. They were thought exercises, then flights of fancy, then the differentiator between visionary adopters in the market, and then sometime later- the absolute bare minimum for being able to stay in the market. AI everything/everywhere isn't that realistic- not because of feasibility necessarily, but because of the perceived value or lack their of for any given application. But as a means to replace rote, occasionally hazardous and/or arduous tasks, I feel like that would be a great place to start. No workman's comp when someone falls off a ladder or makes a mistake. No father or mother that dies on the job when an improperly placed load shifts and collapses on someone. 24/7 shifts that don't involve working people to death or mental failure. We're probably a few decades out at least, but we'll get there. Hopefully gracefully enough to figure out what to do with a swathe of society that's been made redundant.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  Amazon is one of the few groups advancing this way, and I applaud them. Most grocery stores close at night, so a robot colliding with a child wouldn't be an issue. Cars do have a high level of automation, but much of the interior still has a human operator. The AI puts a seat or door flap in roughly the right position, then the human centers it and triggers the drill motor that turns the screw and secures it in place.
- internaut 10y ago
  > Couldn't you argue that the majority of cars are built mostly with robots? There may not be a brake changing robot, but I bet there's a brake installing one. When it gets to the point that the automated labor is cheaper than or more efficient to the human labor, you'd see the switch. For a different perspective you should look at Toyota's business model. And Moravec's Paradox. The companies (mostly American) which follow the paradigm you're describing tend to have flashy but less valuable products because they break down more frequently. If you examine the car market you'll notice Toyota vehicles have a huge premium. This is because customers know they are reliable. It is easy to say "oh, we won't be naive about automation, we'll do it properly", but in practice not many companies manage to do this because the savings from automation are an obvious win, the hiccups come later.
gcr 10y ago
A robot absolutely replaced my cashier. Now I can scan the barcodes, insert the item into the bagging area, swipe credit card, etc. all without interacting with a person. Sure, it's not AI. It's not a deep reinforcement learning neural network trained with Nesterov subgradient momentum. But robots are robots. Whatever it is, my cashier's out of a job.
- michaelt 10y ago
  A self-checkout machine is only a robot if your definition of "robot" is so broad it includes vending machines and parking garage barriers. The job's just as lost, of course.
- stephengillie 10y ago
  Last time I used self-check, I had to wait for another human to verify my age, to purchase beer. The time before, I had to wait for a human to verify I had bagged all of my items. I was a grocery store checker in 2007, when these devices were first announced. They are as capable as they were 10 years ago, handle the same edge cases as 10 years ago, and require the same human intervention as 10 years ago. And there are still human checkers at every store - usually they "turn off" the self-check at night, since the human that watches it goes home. All this AI is just a "mechanical Turk" - using AI to perform most of the tasks a human doesn't want to, and keeping a human around for the edge cases that are too expensive to automate. Humans have such a robustness of variety and ability that we can quickly solve most issues. After a certain point, it just makes sense to keep a few humans around for the really rare edge cases, like the when the grocery store is flooding.
  - chillacy 10y ago
    > I had to wait for another human to verify my age, to purchase beer. The time before, I had to wait for a human to verify I had bagged all of my items. So instead of 2 people to a register (one to bag, one to scan), you can have one person man 12 self checkouts? Sounds like an amazing reduction in labor. Even if self-checkout were half as fast as traditional checkout, that one employee is effectively serving way more customers per hour than they would be doing traditional checkout.

arcticfox 10y ago

Well, there's some hyperbole. The examples you list can mostly be built today, just not cost efficiently. Hardly teleportation, which violates our understanding of physics.

stephengillie 10y ago
Right, because the cost, a measure of human value, is too high. Humans could make them, but we don't value the automation. It's cheaper for a human to do it. We've had ATMs for how many decades? And yet we still have staffed bank windows, for the edge cases the ATM can't handle, such as rolled coins. Sure, some rolled-coin ATMs exist, but they're more expensive. It's usually cheaper for a human to handle the rolled coins and other bank edge cases. Same with self-check and alcohol age verification. Same with last-mile driving for self-driving cars and trucks.

dominotw 10y ago

Forget about flying cars, I would kill for a laundry folding machine.

Semiapies 10y ago
To save lives: https://www.foldimate.com https://www.foldimate.com
- manyxcxi 10y ago
  My anniversary is in two weeks. How well do we think it will go for me if I pre-order this and call it an anniversary present?
- dominotw 10y ago
  separating, sorting and grouping is like 90% work 'folding laundry' . This thing just folds tshirts once you give to it in predefined/sorted format. I would be really surprised if anyone would actually buy this thing.

Semiapies 10y ago

Why would you need separate machines for all those things? You just have a general purpose design running software for the task at hand. But no, that's not happening soon. It seems to be a weird dream of certain left-leaving people for AI to advance as they get minimum wages to rise, so that unskilled human labor becomes no longer cost-competitive with machines. Thus, they create an unemployable underclass that has to be kept alive with welfare systems/basic income and thus are captive votes.

manyxcxi 10y ago

Couldn't you argue that the majority of cars are built mostly with robots? There may not be a brake changing robot, but I bet there's a brake installing one. When it gets to the point that the automated labor is cheaper than or more efficient to the human labor, you'd see the switch. Amazon is testing/using automated warehouse robots to stock their shelves- I imagine it would be a while until we did grocery stores with robots as it is a much less controlled environment and human beings are unpredictable. Plus running over a kid with a robot would be bad for all parties for a very long time. This is the nature of technological progress. The loom, the cotton gin, the automobile. They were thought exercises, then flights of fancy, then the differentiator between visionary adopters in the market, and then sometime later- the absolute bare minimum for being able to stay in the market. AI everything/everywhere isn't that realistic- not because of feasibility necessarily, but because of the perceived value or lack their of for any given application. But as a means to replace rote, occasionally hazardous and/or arduous tasks, I feel like that would be a great place to start. No workman's comp when someone falls off a ladder or makes a mistake. No father or mother that dies on the job when an improperly placed load shifts and collapses on someone. 24/7 shifts that don't involve working people to death or mental failure. We're probably a few decades out at least, but we'll get there. Hopefully gracefully enough to figure out what to do with a swathe of society that's been made redundant.

stephengillie 10y ago
Amazon is one of the few groups advancing this way, and I applaud them. Most grocery stores close at night, so a robot colliding with a child wouldn't be an issue. Cars do have a high level of automation, but much of the interior still has a human operator. The AI puts a seat or door flap in roughly the right position, then the human centers it and triggers the drill motor that turns the screw and secures it in place.
internaut 10y ago
> Couldn't you argue that the majority of cars are built mostly with robots? There may not be a brake changing robot, but I bet there's a brake installing one. When it gets to the point that the automated labor is cheaper than or more efficient to the human labor, you'd see the switch. For a different perspective you should look at Toyota's business model. And Moravec's Paradox. The companies (mostly American) which follow the paradigm you're describing tend to have flashy but less valuable products because they break down more frequently. If you examine the car market you'll notice Toyota vehicles have a huge premium. This is because customers know they are reliable. It is easy to say "oh, we won't be naive about automation, we'll do it properly", but in practice not many companies manage to do this because the savings from automation are an obvious win, the hiccups come later.

gcr 10y ago

A robot absolutely replaced my cashier. Now I can scan the barcodes, insert the item into the bagging area, swipe credit card, etc. all without interacting with a person. Sure, it's not AI. It's not a deep reinforcement learning neural network trained with Nesterov subgradient momentum. But robots are robots. Whatever it is, my cashier's out of a job.

michaelt 10y ago
A self-checkout machine is only a robot if your definition of "robot" is so broad it includes vending machines and parking garage barriers. The job's just as lost, of course.
stephengillie 10y ago
Last time I used self-check, I had to wait for another human to verify my age, to purchase beer. The time before, I had to wait for a human to verify I had bagged all of my items. I was a grocery store checker in 2007, when these devices were first announced. They are as capable as they were 10 years ago, handle the same edge cases as 10 years ago, and require the same human intervention as 10 years ago. And there are still human checkers at every store - usually they "turn off" the self-check at night, since the human that watches it goes home. All this AI is just a "mechanical Turk" - using AI to perform most of the tasks a human doesn't want to, and keeping a human around for the edge cases that are too expensive to automate. Humans have such a robustness of variety and ability that we can quickly solve most issues. After a certain point, it just makes sense to keep a few humans around for the really rare edge cases, like the when the grocery store is flooding.
- chillacy 10y ago
  > I had to wait for another human to verify my age, to purchase beer. The time before, I had to wait for a human to verify I had bagged all of my items. So instead of 2 people to a register (one to bag, one to scan), you can have one person man 12 self checkouts? Sounds like an amazing reduction in labor. Even if self-checkout were half as fast as traditional checkout, that one employee is effectively serving way more customers per hour than they would be doing traditional checkout.