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"If a customer ever feels the need to hit that button, then the people who have built and sold the robot have failed." I understand the point, but there are al

"If a customer ever feels the need to hit that button, then the people who have built and sold the robot have failed." I understand the point, but there are already many electronic devices (robots?) ostensibly made to help me including my vehicle that sometimes need to be "strangled to death" in order to reboot and fix whatever issue was plaguing it. I say strangled to death because typically power buttons are software controlled and don't respond to just a quick press. My response? A shrug because it's very common. Why would people respond to a failing "robot" in another way? I get if it's caring for your grandmother but vacuuming your carpet? I've had to hit the "kill switch" on my: TV/iPad/iPhone/PC, ancient clothes washing machine, modern dishwasher, router/modem, TV etc.

SoftTalker 2y ago
> I've had to hit the "kill switch" on my: > > TV/iPad/iPhone/PC, ancient clothes washing machine, modern dishwasher, router/modem, TV etc. And this is why these technologies, while improving productivity and saving time in many cases, are sources of continual stress in our lives. I'm sitting enjoying a pleasant evening at home and suddenly I have to get up and reboot the router. As I'm waiting for it to restart and settle down my mind is seething with visions of smashing it with a hammer and getting it out of my life forever, like the printer scene in Office Space. Now my blood pressure is up and the evening is distrupted. "The worst thing for its acceptance by people that a robot can do in the workplace is to make their jobs or lives harder"
- exe34 2y ago
  it's a great opportunity to practise patience! there's a street food seller in my town, that I only go to if there's a crowd (not a queue, a crowd). he doesn't believe in serving each customer in turn, no, he'll take everybody's orders and starts to prepare them in a random order - and he'll constantly look in your general direction and ask if you want this or that on your food - but usually he's asking somebody behind you. the first time it drove me mad, but after that, I started seeing this as an opportunity to practise patience. he's a very tough teacher.
- watwut 2y ago
  I have to say that having to restart dishwasher or vacuum cleaner or washing machine still causes less stress then having to wash dishes by hand, vacuum clean or wash cloth by hand. Especially the last one which used to amount to a full day once a week of hard physical work.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Except of course that the false dichotomy excludes the prospect of purely mechanical controls, or even electronic (but non-digital) ones, which don't periodically get their brains scrambled.
    - falcor84 2y ago
      But brains - robotic or biological - do get scrambled. E.g if you assign a repeating task to a human, and then leave and check in on them after a few months, there's a significant probability that they've burnt-out, or otherwise mishandling it for some reason, and you need to apply an intervention, up to and including replacing them. I would like to propose something like Godel's incompleteness theorem - Falcor's law of unreliability: any system complex enough to effectively and consistently solve a problem beyond some threshold of complexity (e.g. independently doing the dishes), is necessarily so complex that it cannot continuously run on its own without requiring occasional outside intervention. As per the Fundamental theorem of software engineering, we can always address any given failure mode by adding another layer of indirection/management, but the fundamental issue would still apply to the larger system. Arguably the only solution is an evolutionary one, whereby there's no single system that is consistently reliable, but the (antifragile) ecosystem as a whole is.
YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
>> TV/iPad/iPhone/PC, ancient clothes washing machine, modern dishwasher, router/modem, TV etc. Crucially, none of those can move around on their own or (attempt to) grasp objects within their reach (or without).

SoftTalker 2y ago

> I've had to hit the "kill switch" on my: > > TV/iPad/iPhone/PC, ancient clothes washing machine, modern dishwasher, router/modem, TV etc. And this is why these technologies, while improving productivity and saving time in many cases, are sources of continual stress in our lives. I'm sitting enjoying a pleasant evening at home and suddenly I have to get up and reboot the router. As I'm waiting for it to restart and settle down my mind is seething with visions of smashing it with a hammer and getting it out of my life forever, like the printer scene in Office Space. Now my blood pressure is up and the evening is distrupted. "The worst thing for its acceptance by people that a robot can do in the workplace is to make their jobs or lives harder"

exe34 2y ago
it's a great opportunity to practise patience! there's a street food seller in my town, that I only go to if there's a crowd (not a queue, a crowd). he doesn't believe in serving each customer in turn, no, he'll take everybody's orders and starts to prepare them in a random order - and he'll constantly look in your general direction and ask if you want this or that on your food - but usually he's asking somebody behind you. the first time it drove me mad, but after that, I started seeing this as an opportunity to practise patience. he's a very tough teacher.
watwut 2y ago
I have to say that having to restart dishwasher or vacuum cleaner or washing machine still causes less stress then having to wash dishes by hand, vacuum clean or wash cloth by hand. Especially the last one which used to amount to a full day once a week of hard physical work.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Except of course that the false dichotomy excludes the prospect of purely mechanical controls, or even electronic (but non-digital) ones, which don't periodically get their brains scrambled.
  - falcor84 2y ago
    But brains - robotic or biological - do get scrambled. E.g if you assign a repeating task to a human, and then leave and check in on them after a few months, there's a significant probability that they've burnt-out, or otherwise mishandling it for some reason, and you need to apply an intervention, up to and including replacing them. I would like to propose something like Godel's incompleteness theorem - Falcor's law of unreliability: any system complex enough to effectively and consistently solve a problem beyond some threshold of complexity (e.g. independently doing the dishes), is necessarily so complex that it cannot continuously run on its own without requiring occasional outside intervention. As per the Fundamental theorem of software engineering, we can always address any given failure mode by adding another layer of indirection/management, but the fundamental issue would still apply to the larger system. Arguably the only solution is an evolutionary one, whereby there's no single system that is consistently reliable, but the (antifragile) ecosystem as a whole is.

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago

>> TV/iPad/iPhone/PC, ancient clothes washing machine, modern dishwasher, router/modem, TV etc. Crucially, none of those can move around on their own or (attempt to) grasp objects within their reach (or without).