A Glimpse of the Future
As you may have already noticed, I’ve been writing about AI and robots way more than either of us might like, but that’s because they’re continually in the news and the people who are promoting this stuff are in the process of trying to brainwash us into thinking the arrival of our AI Robot Overlords is a good thing that should be welcomed.
And their latest attempt came in Sunday’s Kansas City Star.
According to a story from the New York Times News Service; robots are taking over warehouse jobs and the job-stealing robots all have cute nicknames like “Stretch” or “Sparrow” or “Little Richard” (I may have that last one wrong) possibly because “T-800” was already taken.
(OK, that’s a top-of-the-line Terminator joke and if you didn’t get it or see the movie when it came out in 1984, you need to rectify that omission immediately.)
And now a barely-related Terminator story.
In 1984 I’m standing in line to see Terminator at a downtown Kansas City Movie Theater back when movie theaters were large enough to store commercial aircraft and had huge screens that might be 60 feet wide and 26 feet tall and the guy behind me in line is really really really excited about Terminator and has already seen it once, but wants to see it again and keeps saying:
“IT FREAKED ME THE FUCK OUT, MAN.”
A review which – let’s face it – should be on a movie poster, but he keeps repeating it and sounds kind of deranged and before long he’s:
FREAKED ME THE FUCK OUT, MAN.
Because the guy seems to think we’re now in this together and we’re going to sit side-by-side and watch Terminator and I don’t like sitting side-by-side in a movie theater with anybody, including (and in some cases “especially”) people I’m related to, so after I get my ticket I haul ass into the theater and hide in the dark far corner of the back row hoping my new pal won’t spot me.
And he doesn’t.
Instead, he walks down to the front row and sits smack dab in the middle, lying back just a few degrees short of horizontal so he can take in the entire two-story high movie theater screen from about three feet away and my first thought was:
“Dude, sitting there, Bambi would freak you the fuck out.”
OK, so where were we?
Right, the makers of job-stealing robots trying to humanize them by giving them cute names and they also gave at least one of the robots “flashing electronic eyes” to make it more appealing to its human co-workers and I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before they program the robots to take smoke breaks, tell sexist jokes and complain about their immediate superiors.
One of the pro-robot humans (BTW: during WW2 they were known as “collaborators” and got their heads shaved for betting on the wrong horse and if they made the mistake of banging Nazis were known as “horizontal collaborators” so go ahead and add that to your lexicon) said the warehouse robot would replace four humans and added:
“That may freak people out, but it’s going to allow people to focus more on what matters.”
Under the general heading of “FOCUSING ON WHAT MATTERS” I’m guessing you’d find: How to pay my rent and buy food after getting laid off because the company replaced me with a goddamn robot.
As I’ve said before and will no doubt say again: they keep trying to convince us they’re doing something for us when they’re actually doing something to us.
Sleep Tight, Don’t Let the T-1000s Bite
According to the internet the Tesla robot you just looked at will: “Watch you sleep overnight and monitor your breathing, heart rate, sleep patterns and it will also protect you from any home invasions.”
But they forgot to add: “And freak you the fuck out every time you wake up at night to go the bathroom and see this eerie son-of-a-bitch looming over you.”
(I really hope they programmed this thing to give CPR because a whole bunch of people are going to have Tesla robot-induced heart attacks.)
I read the article that photo came from because I wondered just how it would “protect you from any home invasions.” Did they program Krav Maga hand-to-hand fighting techniques into the robot’s hard drive or have it watch every Bruce Lee movie ever made and if that’s the case, training robots to fight humans seems like an incredibly bad idea.
I mean we’re already worried about them taking over and deciding we’re unnecessary (considering the last election the robots might have a point) so teaching them to defeat a human in one-on-one combat seems like a horrendous mistake that will eventually lead to Mike Tyson fighting one on Netflix which I’ll definitely watch if my TV doesn’t keep buffering.
As is so often the case when charlatans try to sell you something, the robot article was light on details, but did say:
“In the event of an intrusion, the robot could activate alarm systems, alert emergency contacts, and even provide real-time audio and visual data to help deter intruders.”
Which sounds an awful lot like a life guard who won’t actually jump in the water and save you, but “could” let the appropriate authorities know you’re drowning and make a video of you doing it, assuming you’re not on the list of humans the robots have decided they can do without and if that’s the case the robot won’t do jack shit except stand by the side of the pool and say:
“HA…HA…HA.”
https://medium.com/@gettingfrankpodcast/teslas-dystopic-nannies-261e2a39f148
Short-Term Thinking
But it turns out those warehouse robots have a hard time sorting packages and the Tesla robot (which is called “Optimus” and sounds like a robotic Roman Emperor that would hold orgies involving erotic encounters with vacuum cleaners and force former warehouse workers to fight each other in gladiator matches) isn’t actually autonomous.
When Elon Musk wanted to show off his robots, he held a public event and had his robots serve drinks, answer questions and play rock-paper-scissors, but they were actually being controlled by humans.
And the self-driving cars don’t work so hot – they keep crashing and killing people – and AI can’t actually think, it just mimics what’s already on the internet and feels free to make shit up if it doesn’t know the answer (I’ve got two brothers who will do the same thing for a lot less than we’re spending on AI) and they haven’t quite worked out drones delivering Amazon packages.
But…they’re working on it.
Bottom line: all these corporations want to use robots and fire as many workers as possible, which brings up an interesting question:
Who’s going to buy their products once everybody’s unemployed?
But that problem’s way down the road and right now the problem is making enough profit to meet the unrealistic projections they made in order to keep stock prices up and get their yearly bonuses, so they’ll worry about tomorrow tomorrow and today they’ll fire a few more workers and replace them with Little Richard the Warehouse Robot.
Now here’s a prediction:
In the Not-Too-Distant Future we’ll have millions and millions of unemployed workers and a few rich assholes living in compounds protected by security robots and the unemployed workers will attack the compounds to get something to eat and we’ll re-enact Terminator and the whole scenario:
FREAKS ME THE FUCK OUT, MAN.
But look on the Possible Bright Side: when Elon Bezos or Jeff Musk orders Optimus – the Captain of the Robot Guards – to repel the Unemployed Barbarians at the Gate there’s a decent chance Optimus will remember the time he was forced to serve drinks and play rock/paper/scissors at some lame billionaire nerd’s party and look Jeff/Elon right in the eye and say:
“HA…HA…HA.”