953 replies to this topic

[mag1]

The sheer hopelessness of the situation for the people who will be affected by the approaching changes is what has me especially worried.

 

It is similar to those experiments when they shock the animal for going right and then they shock them for going left: before long the animals are a hopeless mess.

They have learned that no matter what they do, they will be shocked.

 

This could be the fate of many of the people who will be displaced by the approaching wave of technology.

This will be an extraordinarily dangerous time for human society.

 

If the basic thought process of effort leads to reward becomes compromised, our entire civilization could collapse.

If effort did not lead to reward, then why bother?

[niner]

Something else that has me worried is that the trucking life is such a different way to live. More broadly, "transporters" have made a valuable contribution to the economic development  of human civilization for thousands of years. We might now be just on the cusp of the end of this entire way of life. It is not entirely unreasonable to expect that truckers have evolved a somewhat different genetic pattern. Perhaps there might be some ADHD, or other such behavioral traits that push one in the direction of a trucking life. It is a concern when thinking what might happen if this way of life of thousands of years standing with genetic modifications might simply end over possibly the next decade or so. What would become of these people? Are they expected to simply

change their genomes? Would working in an office really suit people with such wander lust?

 

I don't think people's genomes change that fast.  Truckers aren't that special, and they will be able to do other things.  The problem is that it's a loss of a relatively high-paying job that doesn't require a lot of education.  Many of these people will see themselves slipping down a few (or a lot of) rungs on the economic ladder, much like the displaced factory workers whose jobs went overseas.  This is an era of change.  McDonalds is closing stores because people would rather eat good food than crap.  Cable companies are on the ropes because people are watching TV on the internet.  Soft Drink companies are on the ropes because people are realizing that drinking high fructose sugar solution isn't good for you.  The task is to construct a socioeconomic system that can manage the coming transitions with minimal stress to society.

[resting]

People will recognise the 'reality' of the human condition. 

[Elus]

China sets up first unmanned factory; Workforced decreased from 650 to 60. As a result productivity has nearly tripled and product quality up by 20%.

 

 

"A Chinese firm specialising in precision technology has set up the first unmanned factory at Dongguan city where all the processes are operated by robots, regarded as futuristic solution to tide over China's looming demographic crisis and dependence on manual workers."

 

 

Our Paradoxical Economy Courtesy of Technology and the Lack of Basic Income

 

"The latest numbers are in, and there are now more people not working in the U.S. as a percentage of the total population, than ever in the last 38 years. Some are already asking if this may very well be the “new normal” here in the 21st century."

 

[mag1]

Here is the longer term view.

Attached Files

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[mag1]

Happy Labor Free Day Everyone!

 

It is the future!

[zawy]

In the short term, it appears governments will simply print money to keep up with the increases in productivity. This partially offsets the increasing disparity between rich and poor. But shareholders may not continue to advance ahead of the masses because technology no longer needs capital. In recent decades capital was primarily used to gain monopoly status and market share instead of increasing production. Even market manipulation for shareholder and bank benefit can now be bypassed by distributed technologies; things like 3D printing, roof top solar cells, bitcoin, and hydroponic gardening. The crypto-technologies can even make governments and lawyers obsolete. Programming is the remaining skill needed, but more and more luck is what differentiates them. Compare Microsoft, HP, Apple, and Google founders to the founders of youtube, snapechat, and facebook. Instead of 5 to 10 years of hard work by pretty smart people, only 1 to 2 years of work by market-savvy LUCKY < 25 year olds (mere punks in some cases) with little computer skill are winning their first billion....and that billion is not capital investment in or for technology to help the market objectives, but merely buying market share for monopoly purposes by pre-existing monopolies that succeeded by pre-existing luck. Bill gates was not without luck or market savvy in acquiring DOS and taking advantage of IBM ignorance, but if the youtube buyout was not a wakeup call, then snapchat and facebook should have been a warning that this is a completely different world where skill, intelligence, ethics, and hard work are not path of the equation.

People simply spending money printed for them can't end well. We need challenges or at least goals in order to exhibit any sort of beauty.

More generally there are laws of physics that require entropy on in gravitational systems to decrease and this led to the biology and is leading to its end. Specifically, the entropy of the comoving volume of the Universe has been observed to be constant which means it decreases in "empty" space proper volumes which is offset by entropy being released by gravitational systems. So the rule "entropy always increases" is not as true as "Entropy is always emitted from gravitational systems in order to keep the comoving volume entropy constant as the Universe expands." Here on Earth we observe this entropy release as Gibbs free energy ultimately originating from the Sun creating higher energy bonds on Earth while releasing an excess entropy to the Universe. More specifically, 17 photons of lower energy each but same total energy per second are emitted in random directions to space for every incoming directed photon of high energy. The increase in entropy to the universe is the max potential decrease entropy on Earth, but the Earth is currently far from efficient in this, especially with fossil fuel use. Evolution is constantly trying to improve on the efficiency which can be seen from another physics law I'll state classically that originates from quantum mechanics satisfying the constant entropy of the Universe. (energy change of state that releases the lower-energy photons, i.e. thermal bombardments causing black body radiation). The classical principle is stationary action which is least action in the presence of thermal and quantum effects preventing stable maximum or saddle-point solutions. Least action minimizes average kinetic energy minus average potential energy over the shortest and longest time scales. Less kinetic energy means lower-energy collisions which reduces the per photon energy of emitted photons. Said another way lower kinetic energy means lower heat losses which means lower entropy. Lower entropy being my point. The second aspect is higher potential energy, which is also lower entropy for the following reason. Given that there are always a limited number of the types of bonds, if the highest energy bonds are maintained then the same type of bonds will be more frequent (copies) than if the bond energy were evenly distributed across all types of bonds. We view shells in animals as mere protection and pretend randomness somehow creates order in evolution, but there is a higher-level "force" at work that can be seen in least action that controls the end result of the randomness. Symbiosis at a system-wide level is more dominant than the errant selfish gene view (evolution is holistic, not ground up) "Selfish gene", if completely true, would eventually destroy all high-level order effects, never giving rise to what we see.

Least action is the most general and useful form of Newton's law, more general than Hamiltonian and Lagrangian approaches.

The highest energy bonds that we form on Earth are metal-metal, carbon-carbon, and silicon-silicon. These are used to store, capture, and transmit electricity, which includes computer thinking, and building strong structures. Lithium and now aluminum and other metals will be used to replace oil as fuel storage. Economics finds and COPIES the best technologies and the best are always the highest-energy long-lasting bonds. We think of this as fulfilling human desires, but it is a consequence of least action.

Copies of higher and higher bond energies are the two ways to lower entropy given a constant local mass in constant local volume (Earth's surface) at a (relatively) constant temperature and constant pressure. The other variables can change, but only in accordance with least action which will always result in lower entropy within the gravitational system. Even a black hole temporarily, I think, hides entropy in the highest-possible gravitational bond energy in the smallest volume with lowest possible kinetic energy, all exhibiting least action. I do not think entropy that can't be observed is "present" like entropy that is present in kinetic energy. To elaborate on this for those interested in physics: Using relativistic units meters=i*c*seconds (see Einstein's "Relativity" appendix 2) and replacing seconds with meters/i*c in all units and measurements to get rid of time as physically distinct from meters (as opposed to mathematically distinct i.e. i=sqrt(-1) ) and getting rid of speed as a physical measurement shows the deep reversibility of time. Then the entropy units of black holes becomes negative (from the units). None-reversibility of time ideas seem to depend on believing universal expansion is a "speed", which is physically unitless in relativity. "Speed" of light is physically unitless in relativity. All photons leaving all observers at the same speed means all observers are going ZERO speed relative to photons and requires the same photons to change energy which means they are not the same photons. All this can be resolved by letting "c" change with reference frames instead of forcing the idea of speed.

If we are "good" then the process that created us is "good". If that process replaces us, then the result is "good". By seeking efficiency in the marketplace (least action) and enjoying the competition that implements it, rather than trying to directly increase human happiness as a group that fights against nature, we are simply helping least action, aka the evolution of matter. We like making our species stronger and better, and everything in us strives for it. Stronger and better does not mean keeping our current form or thought processes.

Let's not fight it and raise a toast to our greatly superior "children" replacing us.

Electrical motors are only 100 times more efficient than muscles and replacing us on the farm and factory initiated the great depression. Not printing money fast enough made it worse, and it took us a decade to invent more war, welfare, mass marketing, fiat currency, and leisure to put enough money back into the system in order to keep the machines going. The U.S. department of defense is "welfare" to ourselves and to the world (not only the trade imbalance but our foreign military base system has always been increasing our balance of payments problem), protecting the machines at the same time it wastefully puts money back out there. As an electrical engineer, I can attest to how much more difficult it has been the past 3 decades in the U.S. to find the highest-tech jobs that were NOT military.

So we had to get education in order to replace muscle and figure out ways to efficiently and at the same time wastefully use the machines to keep them going. Now our brains are being replaced. Instead of 100 times more efficient, computers are currently 10 million times more efficient per dollar for any programmable task. All tasks are programmable, even desire. It is already happening system wide in ways we can't easily see. It's not a conspiracy, it's physics. The machines are already creating their own desire between themselves. People trying to figure out how to deal with this might end up killing each other, but at the same time there is plenty of hope: distributive technology can maintain the current mass of humans for a long time while greatly increasing the mass and bond energies of machines. Less hierarchical and peaceful society means more copies and less kinetic energy. War is a release of kinetic energy which least actions works against. DNA crystals are not exactly low energy bonds, and certainly contain an enormous amount of redundancy (copies=lower entropy), a lot more than anyone in the previous generation ever expected (Carl Sagan's estimate of the information content in the 1980's was 50 times too high). Bio-oils will remain competitive with metal-air batteries. Photosythesis is 20 times less efficient than solar cells on an area basis, but still price-competitive.

Edited by zawy, 08 September 2015 - 02:23 PM.

[Elus]

Fujitsu Achieves 96.7% Recognition Rate for Handwritten Chinese Characters Using AI That Mimics the Human Brain - First time ever to be more accurate than human recognition

 

"Fujitsu R&D Center Co., Ltd. and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. (collectively Fujitsu) today announced the development of the world's first handwriting recognition technology by utilizing AI technology modeled on human brain processes to surpass a human equivalent recognition rate of 96.7%, that was established at a conference."

 

Robots will cut 25% of US jobs in 4 years, transform workforce

 

 

Edited by Elus, 21 September 2015 - 04:32 PM.

[Elus]

Cheap robots may shift car making from China to U.S

 

"The falling cost of intelligent robots may help repatriate some car manufacturing work away from low-cost locations like China back to factories in Germany and North America, Donald Walker, Chief Executive of auto supplier Magna told Reuters."

 

Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.c...turing_back_to/

Edited by Elus, 22 September 2015 - 10:07 PM.

[Elus]

Day After Employees Vote to Unionize, Target Announces Fleet of Robot Workers

 

"Just a day after pharmacy workers from a Brooklyn Target store formed a union, the company announced plans to replace employees with robot workers in the near future."

[mag1]

I thought I would share with everyone an interesting conversation that I recently had with a family member.

 

This family member expressed the frustration that people today do not know what hard work is. 

They felt that today people want to do nothing and get a hand out for their effort.

Office workers were also not held in high esteem.

 

Our family member remembered the days when people worked extremely hard largely without the help of machines or government assistance.

There was a palpable sense of resentment when they commented on modern life.

 

It was a very interesting insight given the topic of this thread.

Perhaps we have already been drifting toward a work free world for quite some time.

The only reason why this might not have been appreciated is because there has been no historical context provided.

 

I am sure this thread and support groups in which people whined about there being no work in the modern world would simply infuriate my relative.

Our relative might even start throwing chairs if people started talking about how this lack of employment made them feel psychologically.

Such talk would simply be too much for them to handle.

 

 

Edited by mag1, 29 September 2015 - 12:33 AM.

[niner]

Mag, your relative sounds like a lot of elderly people.  My father-in-law once said "What's all this Dot Com Crap!?"  There was a palpable sense of him being pissed off because there was this thing in the modern world that was clearly important and he didn't have a clue about it.  I think he was 91 at the time.  How old is your relative?

[mag1]

Yeah, about 90.

 

I was just so surprised by the level of RAGE emoted by this relative.

They explained how hard it had been working for our relatives working on banana farms, mines, and fighting in the trenches.

There was this real sense of hate when they asked me where were my calluses from my day's work.

It was soo SCARY. They seemed bug eyed crazy.

 

I had never really given it much thought what it must have been like to work on a banana farm, especially without modern farming equipment.  

They started to get me worried when they explained how hard such work is.  

People worked and worked and worked without any government programs to help.

 

All the definitions of work that we are using on this thread exist within the current context.

How many workers today would actually satisfy the definition of work used by my relative?

I suspect if I were to ask our relative they would say that most of those currently considered as employed were layabouts.

"Where are their calluses?"

 

This perspective probably should not be simply dismissed.

I think it helps to provide a context for us to understand the experience of work and how it is changing through time.

There is no doubt in my mind of the truthfulness of what my relative told me.

 

For their generation it really was not about endless psychological ponderings.

It was more a complete lack of consciousness.

If they told you to crawl over the trench, you did.

You never asked: Why should I?

 

After talking to this relative I realized how dangerous such people can be.

For them recreating their reality in order for others to feel their pain seems all too plausible.

In our family we never grabbed the steering wheel from our elders because we respected them and allowed them to assume position of family leadership.

Yet, for some societies or families, it might be a priority to make sure such people were not put in positions of authority.

It might be dangerous to allow it.

 

 

I do not have this same sense of rage at younger people: I hope I never develop elder rage.

I really do not understand it.

We are trying to make a better world for the next generation.

If the kids have a better life, well then we have succeeded!

 

However, my ongoing fear with respect to the ideas on this thread is that the kids today will not have a cooler, better time than we had.

Technology could soon mean that hundreds of millions of these kids will never even have a chance to have a job.

I will not be raging at them for being "Layabouts" {(as my relative described them). They really did not have a high opinion of those who lounged around.}

I will feel very sorry for those who will be displaced from the socio-economic system with the approaching wave of technology.

   

 

[ceridwen]

I remember meeting someone like that only once I was a little girl and he was an old man. My Mother and I were going for a walk in the new forest. My Mother said Hallo to him because he was walking the same path he was only to be met with a tirade about how children should be working in the mines and not allowed to walk freely on the heath. That when he was a boy all the boys had to work very long hours that it was not acceptable for children to be free then he started in on my Mother he said that children didn't know what it was like to work that he used to work 20 hours a day down the pit. My Mother who had a ferocious temper herself was very quiet tried feebly to defend our point of view but in the end gave in. He said she didn't know what it was like to work either she worked very hard. His argument was that no one especially children should be allowed any free time to enjoy nature they should all be working down the pit
I didn't and still don't know why he was so angry it felt like and was an attack

[niner]

I didn't and still don't know why he was so angry it felt like and was an attack

 

He was a traumatized victim of what today we would call child abuse.  In the future, maybe old people will complain because young people don't have to spend decades in a 9 to 5 job that they hate in order to survive.   If we could bring back a person from 40,000 years ago, I wonder what they'd complain about?

[mag1]

This discussion has got me started thinking about my own life experience.

 

The relative who expressed these views was only 1 generation removed from me.

My parents started our family late into their lives.

Many of the sentiments expressed by our relative, though not expressed by my parents in words were expressed in actions.

 

For example, they could never accept air conditioning.

No how much money we had, they never felt comfortable spending money on feeling comfortable.

They also worked relentlessly hard even when this was no longer necessary and saved almost every penny they earned.

For them growing up during the depression created a psychological truth that could never be forgotten.

Withholding air conditioning from us, was one way they used to feel their pain ( feel the heat?).

 

 

I suppose these behaviors of my parents put me in a very different family context than the other kids I went to school with.

 

We have moved increasingly towards a society based on leisure and comfort.

Those who do not embrace such values are not part of mainstream society, and often become socially marginalized

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mind]

This discussion has got me started thinking about my own life experience.

 

The relative who expressed these views was only 1 generation removed from me.

My parents started our family late into their lives.

Many of the sentiments expressed by our relative, though not expressed by my parents in words were expressed in actions.

 

For example, they could never accept air conditioning.

No how much money we had, they never felt comfortable spending money on feeling comfortable.

They also worked relentlessly hard even when this was no longer necessary and saved almost every penny they earned.

For them growing up during the depression created a psychological truth that could never be forgotten.

Withholding air conditioning from us, was one way they used to feel their pain ( feel the heat?).

 

 

I suppose these behaviors of my parents put me in a very different family context than the other kids I went to school with.

 

We have moved increasingly towards a society based on leisure and comfort.

Those who do not embrace such values are not part of mainstream society, and often become socially marginalized

 

I got the same lessons from my elder relatives. I respect it for what it was...a reminder that life (and the economy) has ups and downs, so be prepared...don't think everything will be all leisure and excess forever. I am frugal and do not use air conditioning much, but that is because I don't have much money/wealth.

Edited by Mind, 01 October 2015 - 05:55 PM.

[mag1]

This one seems well thought out enough to be scary. This is a workable, near term implementable technology, in a way that self driving car technology isn't. 

 

It would be hard to object to this technology on safety grounds.

Be embarrassing to say you got run over by one of these things.. not so much deer in the headlights as snail in the headlights.

 

It would be much better than having swarms of helibots flying around.

They might even let these little buggies kick it up to 10 mph at designated off hour times.

 

 

www.cnet.com/news/startup-bets-its-wheeled-robots-not-airborne-drones-will-deliver-your-groceries/

 

 

Hey, this is a BIG development for humanity I want some good ratings!

A few "Informatives" or "Well Researched would be greatly appreciated!

Edited by mag1, 04 November 2015 - 05:24 AM.

[sthira]

This one seems well thought out enough to be scary. This is a workable, near term implementable technology, in a way that self driving car technology isn't.

It would be hard to object to this technology on safety grounds.
Be embarrassing to say you got run over by one of these things.. not so much deer in the headlights as snail in the headlights.

It would be much better than having swarms of helibots flying around.
They might even let these little buggies kick it up to 10 mph at designated off hour times.


www.cnet.com/news/startup-bets-its-wheeled-robots-not-airborne-drones-will-deliver-your-groceries/

DUBLIN -- Worried about malfunctioning Amazon or Google delivery drones dropping out of the sky? Startup Starship Technologies has a more down-to-earth alternative: wheeled delivery robots that travel on city sidewalks.

The Tallinn, Estonia-based company, which unveiled its products this week in conjunction with the Web Summit conference here, hopes its compact vehicles will help make delivery of groceries and medium-sized packages "almost free." That may sound ambitious, but it's similar to what proved successful for Skype, the online voice and video chat service that Starship co-founder and Chief Executive Ahti Heinla helped found.

We want to do to local deliveries what Skype did to telecommunications." Heinla said in a statement. His co-founder at Starship, Janus Friis, was also a Skype co-founder.

If successful, Starship's battery-powered robots could replace some delivery vans and trucks and accelerate the e-commerce industry's current push toward instant-gratification services. If you don't have to wait days for packages, the thinking goes, you'll be more likely to buy products on the spur of the moment with an app or website -- and less likely to go to a brick-and-mortar store.

Starship hopes retailers and shipping specialists will want its robots, but the first to be seen in the real world will be in an early 2016 test program in partnership with Greenwich in the UK, Heinla told CNET. Rain-soaked Brits will be delighted to hear the robots are waterproof and can handle all weather.

Skype, which Microsoft acquired for $8.5 billion in 2011, did indeed make long-distance and international communications dramatically cheaper for those with broadband connections. But terrestrial delivery robots face real-world obstacles that software doesn't. Delivery robots will need to be reliable, swift and theft-proof enough to match alternative delivery methods.

Starship's robots will be able to deliver two grocery bags' worth of cargo -- 20 pounds -- within five to 30 minutes at one-tenth to one-fifteenth the price of conventional delivery, Heinla said. They have a range of four miles and travel at 4mph, or about the same as a fast pedestrian. Customers can track the delivery vehicle online and, when it arrives, unlock it with an app to ensure only the proper recipient gets the goods.

They'll navigate on their own, but human overseers will help ensure safety, Starship said.

Airborne drones offer a more direct route to people's homes, with no difficulties handling traffic signals and crowded sidewalks. Though they've been used in Singapore for delivering mail, ice cream and meals, they pose complicated questions for regulators trying to keep the airspace safe.

In the US, airborne-drone delivery could become a reality only after Federal Aviation Administration develops rules. Wal-Mart has joined Amazon and Google in showing interest in drone delivery. In October, the FAA granted Workhorse Group clearance to test its HorseFly delivery drones, sent from a compartment atop its delivery trucks, in a five-square-mile part of Wilmington, Ohio.

###

So employment prospects for security guards look good ("They'll navigate on their own, but human overseers will help ensure safety, Starship said.")

Oh wait: will robots replace the human security required to protect these piss-ant little fuckers from unemployed people with baseball bats? Or will these things be armed with their very own violent weapons?

Edited by sthira, 04 November 2015 - 05:02 AM.

[mag1]

This technology could greatly accelerate the roll out of automated transport.

This thread has been thinking in terms of a four year time horizon: with this

implementation it could be much closer.

 

These buggies might look cute and cuddily, though they might just bring us the urban moonscape scenario that I have

suggested on this thread much sooner than anyone could have imagined.

 

Out of the three choices: helibots, self driving cars and self driving buggies, I would have to say that the buggies make the most sense.

They would probably be the safest choice, with the cheapest delivery charge. This technology could transform our lives. 

 

Perhaps these robots could piggy back on existing subways or bus systems.

Also, within each city block there might be a way to create some sort of right of way for these buggies.

 

I wonder what sort of approval would be required for them?

I also wonder if they could fly under the radar of regulatory oversight. 

 

The market for this service would be simply overwhelming.

Given a choice I would never go out on errands again.

No more grocery shopping, mail drop offs, fast food runs ...

 

This technology would create an entire new market.

This is probably a good place to start from because if it were simply about fighting for

the existing delivery market, then that would be a struggle.

[sthira]

^^ Yes but if no one has a job, no one has money to purchase more meaningless garbage to be delivered by these stupid little things, then what? Or are they only plodding their precious, oh precious cargos around for the wealthy? In my neighborhood they'll get pounded and looted. Then what? Will they be armed with weapons?

[mag1]

I think that the idea that this technology will open up an entire new vast untapped market is a good starting point.

Good technologies have a way of creating a new set of opportunities that go far beyond simply addressing one particular market niche.

 

Consider all the errands that a typical person does almost on a daily basis.

Only a small fraction of these errands are now avoided through the use of delivery services.

 

This new buggy technology will create this massive new market opportunity.

With this you can really see the argument made about letting the horse and buggy era end.

 

Many times these new technologies are scary because they do not grow a new market.

These buggies would create a very large delivery market. 

 

The remaining concern that I have mentioned several times, though, is the idea that these technologies

would have profound upstream effects on retail etc. The future of distribution might simply be a single store

within a half mile of every residence in order for these buggies to be restocked.

 

Urban moonscape.

[sthira]

^^ yes but soon to be addressed is how these things will protect themselves from street corners of lingering unemployed people who'd like to eat the cute little buggy's insides.

[mag1]

This is a very large development for the global economy. 

 

It now appears the robotic transport technology that we have been discussing on this thread has been developed into a form

which addresses the main concerns that might be raised. This implementation would not likely require the same regulatory oversight as

would be needed for a helibot or autonomous automobile roll-out.

 

This new design could be good to go on the near term time horizon.

 

As we have repeatedly mentioned here, this could have overwhelming socio-economic implications.

 

If we are now really confronting a transport technology that could move a product within a city for less than

$1, then this would have substantial consequences. Recently, when I made an online purchase, the quoted rate

for within city delivery (for my town) was almost $10. Such charges have greatly restricted my range choices for the

products that I have had delivered and have bought. This approaching new era will greatly change my consumer behavior.

 

Furthermore, it would not be unexpected that international shipping rates would soon be greatly reduced to reflect this latest

development. It only costs a few pennies to ship a product from China to the USA on the largest of container ships. Nearly all of the

cost of such shipments are in the proverbial last mile. One certainly wonders what the new shipping rates will be when the last

mile only costs pennies or less!

 

I think this topic deserves some greater involvement by those on the thread.

 

It appears that we are quickly approaching what I believe could be truly disruptive social change.

Robotic transport might no longer be 4 years away, but months away!

 

Edited by mag1, 05 November 2015 - 01:44 AM.

[mag1]

The idea of these robots being able to piggyback onto urban transit systems seems interesting.

Wonder if local governments would be interested in some incremental revenue.

 

Retrofitting subway systems probably would not be that expensive, might have to redesign buses somewhat.

Doing this would allow businesses anywhere in a city to simply put the bots on mass transit to deliver items to customers.

 

Ideally, the fare for such hitchbots would be low.

One problem would be that local transit might try to overcharge.

This would encourage a parallel private service to emerge.

 

These bots would probably become ubiquitous in urban environments.  

[niner]

What do these things do when they need to cross a street, or when the sidewalk is obstructed?  What if someone picks it up and walks off with it?  What if someone hits it with their car just for the hell of it?  TBH, drones sound a lot more practical to me.  They move from point A to point B in a straight line without any obstructions to deal with.  That's probably why Google and Amazon and Walmart are looking at drones, not slow robo-buggies.

[mag1]

Most of the procedural aspects of this have been or will be worked through.

 

It always impresses me how little traffic there is typically on a sidewalk.

Often a street can be nearly totally congested with few if any people on the sidewalk.

For an obstruction, these bots could simply go around it.

 

These bots will certainly be equipped with all sorts of sensors (video, GPS etc.). It will likely become a criminal

offense to damage, attempt to robonap etc. these vehicles.

 

This brings to mind places in the States that had riots and looting of stores. In some of these locations the stores have never reopened.

This serves as a strong warning for what the consequences are for such behaviors. Loot your local grocery store: Where will you get your food?

 

Same with these bots. If the community takes a collective action by damaging these robotransporters which will make the lives of so many people more

convenient, then perhaps the suppliers of this technology will also create an eternal no go zone in such communities. This might have substantial implications for

the resale value of real estate in such neighborhoods. 

 

The drones likely have a host of issues. Could they really provide 100% assurance that these drones would not regularly fall from the sky?

These robocarts wouldn't be falling from anywhere. They seem quite non-threatening. If they spent some time, then they might even be able to make the

carts fairly cute and cuddily. The great benefit of these carts is that there would be an almost unlimited capacity for them in a typical urban environment.

There is likely only so many drones that could be safely in the air at any one time: The FAA would have to carefully think about how such a technology would work out.

With robo-buggies, such restrictions would not be as necessary. In fact, I wonder whether these buggies could start appearing immediately in urban environments.

What specific legal restriction would prevent it?

 

The buggies would not necessarily have to be slow. The initial roll out envisions one form of a robobuggie, though perhaps there could be certain designated times

say 5-6 am when these buggies could kick it up a notch. As well, the slow moving part, would really need to apply only on the last leg of the trip once it is within 

a city block of its designation. Before that it could be loaded onto a bus or a subway train. However, even with this approach it would be faster to shop online and have

it sent to you through mass transit and then walk it to your door, then for you to take transit to get to a store, and then bring it home.

 

For most of the tasks that they would be used speed of delivery would not be of paramount importance.

 

As I mentioned, until this latest announcement, we were thinking of the introduction of robotransport as being perhaps 4 years away.

With robo-buggies, it could be much closer: possibly only months.

They would have first mover advantage.

 

These buggies would probably offer an overwhelmingly attractive investment opportunity.

They could probably make them for $200. If they made 10 runs per day at a 10 cents per run, then they would repay their investment in less than 1 year. 

 

Next time you're offered a time share somewhere, you might be better off by investing in these buggies!

Edited by mag1, 05 November 2015 - 04:06 AM.

[mag1]

I have been thinking (from the previous topic) about what it is that I feel somehow deprived that I did not have growing up.

I really could not think of much. With air conditioning, we only have a few warmish days all year and sometimes

we do not have any truly warm days at all.

 

Yet, these robo-buggies could be a strong contender. We are still living this Paleolithic hunter gatherer lifestyle!

I resent it. Why should our life have to be such a drag? Don't people have better things to do with themselves?

Did not Einstein (widely considered the prototype of human genius) greatly resent having to choose his wardrobe

in the morning because such an inconvenience interfered with his meditations on the nature of the universe?

What would he make of the loss of human potential resulting from this animalistic lugging of matter through space

by a great portion of the population?

 

So, yes, I think that the absence of these buggies will go down as my greatest deprivation. Admittedly it is not

really that onerous, though I am not sure of many others that I feel would be ranked nearly as highly.

[niner]

These buggies would probably offer an overwhelmingly attractive investment opportunity.

They could probably make them for $200. If they made 10 runs per day at a 10 cents per run, then they would repay their investment in less than 1 year.

 

I'd expect them to cost north of $2000.  Pretty far north, in fact, with all those sophisticated sensors.

 

If the community takes a collective action by damaging these robotransporters which will make the lives of so many people more

convenient, then perhaps the suppliers of this technology will also create an eternal no go zone in such communities. This might have substantial implications for

the resale value of real estate in such neighborhoods.

 

The suppliers wouldn't have much say in where they were used; if someone wants to use a robot delivery device, then they would just buy one and deploy it.  If they are really so valuable as to alter real estate prices, then people will pay for the service and someone will provide it.

 

The great benefit of these carts is that there would be an almost unlimited capacity for them in a typical urban environment. There is likely only so many drones that could be safely in the air at any one time

 

Ground is 2D; air is 3D.  The buggies are limited to sidewalks and related places that they would have to share with pedestrians and god knows what else.  You could easily put a hundred times as many vehicles in the air as on sidewalks without worrying about crashing.  There is a LOT of space between the top of things on the ground and the lowest flight path of conventional aircraft.

[mag1]

I was thinking more of the pricing level that could be achieved in China.

We have gotten accustomed to Western style pricing that we often do not carefully think about what the true minimum achievable marginal cost might be.

I would think that the true cost for these buggies could be surprisingly modest.

 

The robot service providers could use the threat of withholding this service to those neighborhoods that might habitually abuse them.

 

That is true about 2D and 3D. However, when you consider how urban aircraft control is currently done, the actual air space capacity becomes surprisingly modest. 

 

If you had one major subway connected warehouse in every city, a tremendous amount of goods could flow through an urban transit system.

 

Each household might receive many shipments per day. Starting with the morning paper, possibly with a coffee, fresh bread, ...

This will be awesome! 

Edited by mag1, 05 November 2015 - 04:59 AM.