discussion

[thunderrabbit]

Hello my favorite creative minds.

When you have a moment, please read these two essays:

http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm

What do you think?

Comments

[weevey_bob]

there's a slight problem with the first one:
it's slightly incorrect. we are in fact (as you probably know) fast approaching the limits of a 2-dimensional transistor-based processor. heat production and power consumption are becoming ridiculous, and it's getting nearly impossible to shrink a transistor any smaller. there's some electromagnetic law (i don't remember what it's called) that predicts that as the space between electromagnets gets smaller and the heat rises, they have more and more of a chance of random flipping, ergo producing corrupt translations and calculations. bad stuff. we *could* expand horizontally, just adding more processors to a computer and what not, but that has its limits too. there are other types of processors in developement such as optical processors and quantum processors, but who knows what the level of escalation in power those will bring with them? or even if they're really feasible? physics does still apply, despite what the writer visualizes, and the situation he presents will not occur during my lifetime. also, the government (and citizens, no less than the govt.) will not allow robots to occupy anywhere NEAR that large a percentage of jobs. unemployement would skyrocket, the economy would crash, the robot manufacturers would go out of business, people would have to start occupying the jobs that were previously done by robots, chaos would erupt from mt. vesuuvius, etc, etc, etc. the human species refuses to be submissive, especially to one of our own creations.

in conclusion, the article was well written, but (at least in my eyes) quite improbable. i may be wrong, and it never hurts to keep your eyes open to what's going on in the world, but i just can't see that many people allowing that large of an unemployement rate.

at any rate, thank you for the links, rob, hope you're having fun!
take care, buddy

-avery