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Two and a half years ago I wrote a paper on "robotic automation" for a big financial services company. One of the conclusions was that, while the world of thing

Two and a half years ago I wrote a paper on "robotic automation" for a big financial services company. One of the conclusions was that, while the world of things was heretofore designed with humans in mind, in "the near future" (i.e. about where we are now), "stuff" would be designed for "machine-first" use, rather than "human-first" use. This isn't surprising. We've seen this before in the transition from "animal engines" to "steam engines" (think - the whole infrastructure around the care and feeding of the animals etc transitioning to manufacture, fuelling and support for steam engines). We're starting to see it now in the (slow) transition from "carbon-fuel transport" to "electric transport".

geezerjay 8y ago
> One of the conclusions was that, while the world of things was heretofore designed with humans in mind, in "the near future" (i.e. about where we are now), "stuff" would be designed for "machine-first" use, rather than "human-first" use. This. Just to provide an example, humanity already has self-driving cars for decades, and they are deployed and are extensively used in public transoortation. The trick to solve this problem was to not force human-designed solutions to an automation problem. Thus, instead of trying to automate vehicles to run on roads, we have vehicles running on railway tracks. Problem solved.