Compare the generations of humans and who will take care of humans in their old age
A mother had two sons. One of them had two daughters. The one son and the two granddaughters
helped take care of her in her old age. The other son was a burden, died at 56.
Another mother was lucky as well. Two of her children moved back home to take care of her in her old
age. (Perhaps at added expense on her part.)
But how about the current generation of 60 somethings? Will your children take care of you? How
much did you invest in having children and will they perform as well as a future robotic system when it
comes to “cleaning tasks” and taking care of you in your dotage? Had you saved your money and
invested it, you would now be considering the specifications of the specific robot you will have to perform
the “nuisance home cleaning tasks” in 2025. If you don’t believe 2025, then check out the progress as
of 2008 at http://asimo.honda.com/ It walks, it talks it holds trays. Rather than huge wide feet, it has an
electronic cochlea to provide balance feedback to articulated feet.
It doesn’t yet dust and manipulate a vacuum cleaner nor does it pick up a sewing needle and mend your
clothing. Do you truly believe that it won’t be vacuuming and sewing after another 17 years of
improvements? Obviously you wouldn’t be surprised if you were told that the current version of Asimo
could beat humans at chess and win 99% of FreeCell games while you struggled at winning half of
them. The only part that would be hard to believe at this point in time is that Asimo could physically
move the chess pieces and shuffle and deal the cards. While you are judging the grade level of
speech, what is your estimate of Asimo’s speech level in 2008 and where do you anticipate it will be in
2025? Kurzweil’s projection is that the hardware will be available in 2019 to simulate the complexity of
the human brain. Although he adds another ten years for software development, it appears that
software development is occurring in parallel with hardware development. Materials are being
developed that more closely simulate organic muscles. Such devices would take more processing
power to operate, but the operation might be quieter and more human-like.
In summary we may have gone from a generation where
1. People’s life expectancy was 65 and we were leaving our genes behind.
2. People’s life expectancy was 80 and we had our children to take care of us.
3. People’s life expectancy is 100 and we will have robots to take care of us.
Go to next section.
A mother had two sons. One of them had two daughters. The one son and the two granddaughters
helped take care of her in her old age. The other son was a burden, died at 56.
Another mother was lucky as well. Two of her children moved back home to take care of her in her old
age. (Perhaps at added expense on her part.)
But how about the current generation of 60 somethings? Will your children take care of you? How
much did you invest in having children and will they perform as well as a future robotic system when it
comes to “cleaning tasks” and taking care of you in your dotage? Had you saved your money and
invested it, you would now be considering the specifications of the specific robot you will have to perform
the “nuisance home cleaning tasks” in 2025. If you don’t believe 2025, then check out the progress as
of 2008 at http://asimo.honda.com/ It walks, it talks it holds trays. Rather than huge wide feet, it has an
electronic cochlea to provide balance feedback to articulated feet.
It doesn’t yet dust and manipulate a vacuum cleaner nor does it pick up a sewing needle and mend your
clothing. Do you truly believe that it won’t be vacuuming and sewing after another 17 years of
improvements? Obviously you wouldn’t be surprised if you were told that the current version of Asimo
could beat humans at chess and win 99% of FreeCell games while you struggled at winning half of
them. The only part that would be hard to believe at this point in time is that Asimo could physically
move the chess pieces and shuffle and deal the cards. While you are judging the grade level of
speech, what is your estimate of Asimo’s speech level in 2008 and where do you anticipate it will be in
2025? Kurzweil’s projection is that the hardware will be available in 2019 to simulate the complexity of
the human brain. Although he adds another ten years for software development, it appears that
software development is occurring in parallel with hardware development. Materials are being
developed that more closely simulate organic muscles. Such devices would take more processing
power to operate, but the operation might be quieter and more human-like.
In summary we may have gone from a generation where
1. People’s life expectancy was 65 and we were leaving our genes behind.
2. People’s life expectancy was 80 and we had our children to take care of us.
3. People’s life expectancy is 100 and we will have robots to take care of us.
Go to next section.
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