{"id":6905,"date":"2016-06-01T14:38:02","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T13:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6905"},"modified":"2016-06-01T14:38:02","modified_gmt":"2016-06-01T13:38:02","slug":"robots-going-take","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6905","title":{"rendered":"Are robots going to take over?"},"content":{"rendered":"

"PicaBot"<\/a>Are robots a real threat?\u00a0 There has been a lot of talk about automation recently.\u00a0 Last week Mcdonalds were threatening to replace their serving staff in the US who have been agitating for living wage of $15\/hour with robots since they would be cheaper.<\/p>\n

There are a number of areas of concern about robots. The first is could robots with artificial intelligence (AI) take over?\u00a0 This is still the realm of SF but serious scientists like Stephen Hawking are raising concerns.\u00a0 Asimov proposed the first law for robots was never to harm a human being, but was he thinking about their potential military use?\u00a0 At the moment AI is insufficiently advanced to pass the Turing test<\/a> but we do need to think about this.\u00a0 We are also reaching the point when conventional chips reach the physical limits of how many transistors can be squeezed on a chip (see Moore’s law<\/a>).\u00a0 There are solutions to this problem, at least one company is trying to develop a quantum computer, but it needs cooling to near absolute zero so will use a lot of energy (see below).\u00a0 So is not likely to be portable. Even knowing as little about this as I do it seems computing power is not yet there on AI, which could save us from this threat.<\/p>\n

The second threat is as I outlined in the opening paragraph to jobs. In the late 70\u2019s BBC “Horizon” made a documetary showing the threat to the UK economy from computing. This so concerned my school we were all made to watch it.\u00a0 Of course the programme was not wholly negative and as it pointed out new technology has both pluses and minuses. Many new types of jobs have been created here, most of which would have been pure SF -web designer anyone?.\u00a0 What hollowed out the UK economy was Mrs Thatcher\u2019s economic policies and then later globalisation.\u00a0 A whole swath of jobs just disappeared overseas.\u00a0 Many of these jobs were unskilled or low skilled and there is a shortage of these jobs.\u00a0 Robots were brought in to such settings as car factories but are used for welding or in the paint shop.\u00a0 Its noticeable that the insides of the cars are put together by humans.\u00a0 There just seems to be threat from robots moving into other sectors now. One estimate is that almost 50% of current jobs could disappear. Globalisation and automation is now threatening other jobs more skilled professional jobs.\u00a0 Lest you think that robots serving in restaurants is scifi there is at least one restaurant in Japan that is using them.\u00a0 Then there are other such areas as driverless car\/trucks etc.\u00a0 These are on the way.<\/p>\n

The third area of concern is that of energy.\u00a0 As oil and gas run down we having some success in switching to renewables.\u00a0 Germany, Portugal, Denmark etc. and even the UK are breaking renewable records almost everyday.\u00a0 However this process is just beginning. We will have to electrify almost all our economy.\u00a0 That is going to take a lot more energy. If we automate large swaths of it than the energy to build and maintain the robots has to come from somewhere.\u00a0 As does running them.\u00a0 Taking the McDonalds example. The robot will likely take more energy to run but even if they didn\u2019t (taking into account commuting for example) then the displaced worker is still going to use energy sitting at home.\u00a0 It seems very unlikely widespread automation would use less energy as it seems unlikely widespread globalisation uses less energy.\u00a0 In my next post I will look at the social effects and draw some conclusions.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are robots a real threat?\u00a0 There has been a lot of talk about automation recently.\u00a0 Last week Mcdonalds were threatening to replace their serving staff in the US who have been agitating for living wage of $15\/hour with robots since … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAre robots going to take over? - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6905\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6905\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6905\",\"name\":\"Are robots going to take over? 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