4 ms·

This post is rife with bad assumptions. Here are some big ones: 1. Dexterity is NOT the "last mile" gap to having robots in minimum wage jobs. I don't care if

This post is rife with bad assumptions. Here are some big ones: 1. Dexterity is NOT the "last mile" gap to having robots in minimum wage jobs. I don't care if the robot can flip a burger, can it recognize a grease fire (and put it out, and clean up afterwards?) Can it recognize a moldy bun or if the special sauce is spoiled? While low wage retail jobs don't require years of specialized training, they do take advantage of a lot of innate human skills. Most of the mechanical aspects of these jobs are already automated. 2. Good software is not created by people sitting in cube farms programming. In projects of any size it's more about communication among developers and between developers and other business functions than writing code in isolation. 3. Not everyone can be a programmer, and most that could be won't want to (and I predict won't have to). I'm sure you can invent trivial examples that anyone can do, but then you're not saying much. There are large classes of people that can't program a VCR or do long division, let a alone construct a slightly involved program. As someone who's been involved in research that attempts to teach average people how to "program", I feel confident that we will never see a large portion of people become programmers.

zamfi 15y ago
Thanks for your thoughts. Just to respond a bit: 1: One human is enough to put out grease fires, clean up, and find moldy buns. Most fast food joints have multiple humans, and dextrous robots would change that. 2 & 3: I don't think I made either assumption. Specifically, I didn't say we'll all be good programmers or produce good software. (Even today, not all programmers are good or produce good software.) I suspect what we think of as "programming" will change significantly, and with it, the number of people who program.

zamfi 15y ago

Thanks for your thoughts. Just to respond a bit: 1: One human is enough to put out grease fires, clean up, and find moldy buns. Most fast food joints have multiple humans, and dextrous robots would change that. 2 & 3: I don't think I made either assumption. Specifically, I didn't say we'll all be good programmers or produce good software. (Even today, not all programmers are good or produce good software.) I suspect what we think of as "programming" will change significantly, and with it, the number of people who program.