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I believe that the ecology is in trouble are because we have too many humans. Engineers are busy
trying to solve this problem.
Take the following problem and the engineering solution:
McDonald’s has a problem with the taking of orders. Take the Mundelein area where you live, for
example. They have so many Spanish-only speaking customers that it is almost mandatory for them to
hire a Mexican worker to take orders. The problem that this sometimes creates is that the order taker
may not speak English well enough for the English-speaking customers. The solution that McDonald’s is
now testing is the use of a virtual-human to take orders. Perhaps you heard Bob Edwards interview the
owner of the first McDonalds to use a virtual-human to take orders. It was on NPR a couple of months
ago. Modern virtual-humans can speak more than 20 languages and switch between them on a moment’
s notice.
The McDonald’s at the corner near here now has a robotic mechanism near the pick-up window that
takes commands from the computer for drink orders. It moves the cup under the dispenser and fills it
with the ordered drink. I suspect that if we were to visit the shop that has the virtual-human voice
recognition unit, we could order a drink from a computer, pay for it with a credit card and have the
computer fill the cup with the selection that we gave it. The human's job would be to pass the drink to us
and smile. Her English might be too accented to understand but she is not required to do anything
anymore but smile.
If you attend the shows for restaurant equipment, you will find robots flipping hamburgers and retrieving
french fry baskets from the oil and pouring them into the bins where the salt is then applied
automatically. It is not just McDonald's that is going through this transformation. If you visit a modern
factory you will see machines moving parts from one automated machine to another. Fully automated
factories are called “dark factories” and are becoming more common. Unskilled Chinese labor will be no
match for a robot in only a few years. Manufacturing will be coming home to the US again. To illustrate
this, take the manufacture of large, bulky items like furniture. I met a fellow at O’Hare two weeks ago
that was coming from a furniture manufacturing show in Atlanta and waiting for his flight to Washington
state. He described how he was attempting to sell a completely automated robotic system to a company
in Washington that will use it to manufacture furniture including cabinets which have panels. All of the
detail work that goes into such furniture will be automated with this new equipment. By doing this they
will eliminate the costs of shipping the lumber from Oregon to China and then shipping the furniture back
to the US. This is only the beginning of this trend.
The rate at which humans are being born in the US is not enough to sustain the population. Our
population is only growing because of illegal immigration. This will diminish as our need for manual labor
from imported workers is reduced by the use of robots and other automation equipment. My lawn is
mowed by robots and I expect that this will become a trend as newer robot mowers become available.
As the population of humans goes down, so will the damage to the ecology. Robots need electricity, not
food. As a result, farms will be able to go back to their former natural forest and prairie existence. Since
robots don’t need to commute to work or to own cars and homes, the area now dedicated to homes and
roads will eventually be going back to former more natural environment. The energy consumed by
these homes and the cars that once traveled these roads will no longer be required. The goal is to
reduce the human population of the US to 100 million by 2030.
The future for ecology looks good, in my opinion.
Polbot
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