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Investment management? Sure, that seems pretty easy to automate. A home robot that can trim trees is FAR more complex. It needs to know about trees and what to

Investment management? Sure, that seems pretty easy to automate. A home robot that can trim trees is FAR more complex. It needs to know about trees and what to trim, and talk to the customer. Maybe doable. It needs to analyze the environment to look for any dangers, fragile things, property lines. It needs to navigate heavy equipment. It needs to make a series of cuts, and make sure nothing too large falls after cutting. It needs to collect and dispose of the waste. This is way beyond any robotics we're seeing. In a sci-fi world where robots can do EVERYTHING, they can also trim trees.

nojvek 9y ago
robot dexterity and cognition are both very very hard problems. Once we solve that, we just don't get human hand equivalents. We can make very tiny hands that can manipulate cells and perform intricate surgeries, or huge hands, that can move boulders and build a house in a day, or hands with 100s of snake like fingers manipulating 100s of things simultaneously and running a click farm. Once we can build artificial brains more powerful than humans, and artificial muscles more dexterous than humans, almost every profession is at risk. In addition if machines are not made in a factory, but replicated organically like seeds because we figured out the magic DNA, then we've essentially created von-neumann probes and can conquer the rest of the galaxy.
Faark 9y ago
But we are not just talking about replacing humans entirely. How much can more advanced robot-tools speed up the process? Like the human operator talks to the customer, makes some gestures in AR to signal where to cut while improved robots / tools take care of lengthy / tedious work. I totally see this happening and requiring much less human labor. And as with most automation, it will be a gradual process and not a one step replacement.

nojvek 9y ago

robot dexterity and cognition are both very very hard problems. Once we solve that, we just don't get human hand equivalents. We can make very tiny hands that can manipulate cells and perform intricate surgeries, or huge hands, that can move boulders and build a house in a day, or hands with 100s of snake like fingers manipulating 100s of things simultaneously and running a click farm. Once we can build artificial brains more powerful than humans, and artificial muscles more dexterous than humans, almost every profession is at risk. In addition if machines are not made in a factory, but replicated organically like seeds because we figured out the magic DNA, then we've essentially created von-neumann probes and can conquer the rest of the galaxy.

Faark 9y ago

But we are not just talking about replacing humans entirely. How much can more advanced robot-tools speed up the process? Like the human operator talks to the customer, makes some gestures in AR to signal where to cut while improved robots / tools take care of lengthy / tedious work. I totally see this happening and requiring much less human labor. And as with most automation, it will be a gradual process and not a one step replacement.