This week’s issue of The Economist has an interesting story about all the new places that robots are popping up these days.
In addition to traditional venues, like the assembly line, robots are encroaching into vocations like brain surgery and violin playing.
But the real staggering thing — to me at least — wasn’t so much that it’s possible to get a $100 million robot to do some pretty amazing things. It’s that even cheap robots can beat the pants off their human competition.
Check out that graphic! Robots labor costs are plummeting when compared to humans.
The real danger to your job isn’t some guy in Bangalore, it’s C3PO, the whiny gold bastard.
That said, there are some jobs a robot can’t really do, even if it is technically proficient at them. For example, I don’t think Sam Malone should worry about this:
Aptly for Munich, home of the Oktoberfest, the fair introduced Roboshaker, an automated bartender, created by PAAL, a German company that specialises in packaging systems. Roboshaker, based on a small robot made by Japan’s FANUC, can mix a fair cocktail and clear up afterwards. Whenever it picks up a can of drink to add to the ingredients, it examines the lid with a camera so that it can work out where to find the ring-pull.
You can’t tell your problems to the robot, or bribe it to put in a good word for you with the attractive ladies on the other side of the bar.
Then again, you wouldn’t have to tip it.
Oh God, I guess we’re all doomed.
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