Future of Robotics

The future of robotics might look completely different than what we’d expect. Instead of the humanoid robots we come to love and fear, future robots would vary by the thousands.  This “robotic swarm” is a theory that in the future, robotic technology would be so advanced that it would be fast, cheap, and out of control. Dominic Basulto - “Just as the computer revolution started with massive mainframes and evolved to the personal computer and handheld tablets, the robotics revolution is taking the same path”. Everyday life would involve these machines just like how we use computers today.

With the oncoming storm of robotic technology it’s hard not to worry about the impact it will cause to the economy and especially our jobs. In an article I’ve read they have listed the top 10 occupations that robots will eventually take over. Some of them are worth noting like musicians, with Toyota’s trumpet playing robot, 2006’s “Haile” which plays the drums and 2010’s marimba playing “Shimon” which can adapt and learn while playing with a person, it seems like the future is near. Next gone from our job list are surgeons, they will be taken over by mechanical arms that perform precision cuts without the human error. In fact some hospitals have already been using them. Another interesting one is a novelist, they say that people are working on technology that computes sentences, paragraphs and everything from crude jokes to philosophical arguments. There were many other jobs on the list; artists, teachers, robotic lover (I’m not going there), and soldiers.

With more and more robots taking over jobs the distinction between robots and humans is become blurred. Like how in Kayleigh Houde blog post mentions that robots in the near future will "mimic human tendencies, to the point where it is difficult to tell whether it is human.". Also saying that children will interact with these robots as much as computers today, which is a scary thought considering the fact that children in the future will be taught by these robotic teachers. The lines between humanity and robotics will be crossed.

With the eventuality of robotics doing almost everything from teaching our future youth to our own medical health, where would be the boundaries to robotic capabilities? In light of this question I found a 1993 article, from a former mathematics professor Vernor Vinge. He coined the term “technological singularity”, a phenomenon of technological acceleration causing an eventual unpredictable future or in his words “the ending of the human era”.  He argues that with the technological advances that eventually will come, there will be the creation of a superhuman intelligent entity. That will become the catalyst of the creation of even more superhuman intelligent entities, like a cell dividing. This plausible future is a little too bleak for me, but it is a possibility and one to think about.

http://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/the-robotic-future-is-fast-cheap-and-out-of-control

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/10-ways-robots-could-replace-humans.htm

http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html