Will Japanese Robots Rule the World by 2020?
By Prabhu Guptara | Thursday, March 16, 2006
http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=5084
However, no one seems to be working on the challenge of robots — and this challenge will
very quickly dwarf all the other challenges facing humanity at present. So who wants to join
me in addressing the challenge posed by robots to the future of humanity? For starters, I
propose the following five measures: First, global society needs time to digest the fact that
these robots have been developed — and it needs time to agree on suitable socio-economic-
political policies and arrangements to prevent mass-unemployment and political unrest.
How can we slow down the introduction of this new generation of robots — so that before
they are unleashed commercially, we have sufficient consensus on the following questions?
Additionally, we need to get public agreement for new models of social and political
organization
At present, most of the fundamental research into robotics is funded by the Japanese and
other governments. However, access to the research results is given only to selected
companies by neat legal arrangements. Corporations worldwide should be encouraged, on
the basis of the research available to them all, to produce robot-related products and services
on a competitive basis.
I have not made the above suggestions lightly. Terrible diseases require strong medicine.
The arrival of robots could be the equivalent of a terrible plague — or it could be an
enormous blessing to humanity.
The question facing the world is how to create the necessary legal agreements to make full
use of the resulting unparalleled prosperity and freedom from drudgery.
If we don't consider taking some actions similar to the ones outlined above, then I guarantee
that robots will be a curse to humanity.
On the other hand, if we are willing to take such actions, then robots could be the best thing
that have ever happened, enabling the development of the first genuinely humane society
worldwide.
Regretfully, as far as I can see, the world will not take either my recommendations or my
warnings seriously. So what will be the result?
Japanese robots, launched from 2010 at the latest, will rapidly displace most human jobs in
both the developed and developing worlds.
They will also replace the kinds of robotic machinery that is being installed in the "latest"
factories, for example in China.
Even without the cultural reformation that is otherwise necessary, Japan will therefore
finally break through its stagnation, and move from being the world's second-largest
economy — a position it has held for over 30 years — to becoming the world's leading
economic power by 2020 at the latest.
That’s the benefit of being the master inventor of all these robots.
Link mentioned in the comments here (article by Hans Moravec):
"By 2050 robot "brains" based on computers that execute 100 trillion instructions per
second will start rivaling human intelligence"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rise-of-the-robots
A comment there:
Acoyauh at 07:45 PM on 03/24/09
"Ultimately, though, it is likely that our descendants will cease to work in the sense that we
do now."
Right, assuming your robots do pick up all the work. But then "They will probably occupy
their days with a variety of social, recreational and artistic pursuits, not unlike today's
comfortable retirees or the wealthy leisure classes." hahaha, how naive.
We have enough experience there; people with no work are people with no sustenance, they
are those starving and living with less than a dollar a day, see them all over the world. Will
the robot-manufacturing corporations feed the masses for free? Is that what's on your mind?
Dude, get out of your lab more often, replacing workers for machines ultimately kills people.
Having those nice smart robots won't change the nature of it.
and:
Cerebral*Origami at 09:41 AM on 03/26/09 As for the argument that automation takes jobs
and leads to violence through boredom. These are SOCIAL issues that require we work on
improving these area through social development.
We SHOULD be living in a high-wealth, low-labor society NOW!
We have the technology AND the resources to provide everyone WORLDWIDE with a very high
standard of living and reduce the amount of back-breaking labor to a minimum.
We should be working four, four hour days a week and enjoying a middle class life style
(house, car, food, medical 4 weeks vacation time etc.) but the combination of waste and greed
at the highest levels has robbed us of this.
On the good news side:
"Slide Show: The World's 10 Largest Renewable Energy Projects"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=10-largest-renewable-energy-projects
So, there will be lots of renewable energy to run the robots.
Anyway, what all these predictions leave out is networked machine learning.
That is, when you have a million copies of the same robot, and they are all talking over the
internet with high bandwidth, backed by supercomputer clusters, they may learn together a
million times faster. A million humans typing emails and twitters won't be able to keep up
with a million robots that can transmit at one megabyte per second. Look at how frustrated
Bryan is with only about 10 bytes a second of text output. How is he going to feel left out of
these vast high speed robot nets? :-)
And here is DIY AI (another comment linked):
http://practicalai.org/
"My name is David Jones. I'm a professional software developer near Washington DC. AI has
become my passion because I believe it is the only tool that will allow human beings to cure
today's diseases in a single lifetime. That is the goal I intend to use my intelligent software
to achieve. I hope some of you will find it a cause worth striving for and join me in my
efforts."
How can one dispute the value of those ends? So, it is driven ever onward. I can still hope it
is shaped by humane values.
And now Pradhu Guptara raises another issue -- will it be US American robots that rule the
world, or Japanese robots? Or Chinese or European or African or South American etc. robots?
So, another driver of the robot race.
http://www.theglobalist.com/AuthorBiography.aspx?AuthorId=801
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabhu_Guptara
arguing that all robotics research should be openly done in the public domain. He's right. I
made a similar point here:
"On Funding Digital Public Works "
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html
"""
what have funding policies in automotive intelligence wrought?
Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise some streets in
small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the driving was primarily developed by
public money given to universities, which generally own the copyrights and patents as the
contractors. Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice these fail to
do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest physical representation of the
knowledge learned by such work is the codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what
developers carry in their heads).
We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly funded software and
selling modified versions of such software as proprietary products. There will eventually be
hundreds or thousands of paid automotive software engineers working on such software no
matter how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such self-driving
vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban planning policies leaving the car as
generally the most efficient means of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the
results of the work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially, will
those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or will they instead be
"stewards" of a larger free and open community development process?
"""
--Paul Fernhout
By Prabhu Guptara | Thursday, March 16, 2006
http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=5084
However, no one seems to be working on the challenge of robots — and this challenge will
very quickly dwarf all the other challenges facing humanity at present. So who wants to join
me in addressing the challenge posed by robots to the future of humanity? For starters, I
propose the following five measures: First, global society needs time to digest the fact that
these robots have been developed — and it needs time to agree on suitable socio-economic-
political policies and arrangements to prevent mass-unemployment and political unrest.
How can we slow down the introduction of this new generation of robots — so that before
they are unleashed commercially, we have sufficient consensus on the following questions?
Additionally, we need to get public agreement for new models of social and political
organization
At present, most of the fundamental research into robotics is funded by the Japanese and
other governments. However, access to the research results is given only to selected
companies by neat legal arrangements. Corporations worldwide should be encouraged, on
the basis of the research available to them all, to produce robot-related products and services
on a competitive basis.
I have not made the above suggestions lightly. Terrible diseases require strong medicine.
The arrival of robots could be the equivalent of a terrible plague — or it could be an
enormous blessing to humanity.
The question facing the world is how to create the necessary legal agreements to make full
use of the resulting unparalleled prosperity and freedom from drudgery.
If we don't consider taking some actions similar to the ones outlined above, then I guarantee
that robots will be a curse to humanity.
On the other hand, if we are willing to take such actions, then robots could be the best thing
that have ever happened, enabling the development of the first genuinely humane society
worldwide.
Regretfully, as far as I can see, the world will not take either my recommendations or my
warnings seriously. So what will be the result?
Japanese robots, launched from 2010 at the latest, will rapidly displace most human jobs in
both the developed and developing worlds.
They will also replace the kinds of robotic machinery that is being installed in the "latest"
factories, for example in China.
Even without the cultural reformation that is otherwise necessary, Japan will therefore
finally break through its stagnation, and move from being the world's second-largest
economy — a position it has held for over 30 years — to becoming the world's leading
economic power by 2020 at the latest.
That’s the benefit of being the master inventor of all these robots.
Link mentioned in the comments here (article by Hans Moravec):
"By 2050 robot "brains" based on computers that execute 100 trillion instructions per
second will start rivaling human intelligence"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rise-of-the-robots
A comment there:
Acoyauh at 07:45 PM on 03/24/09
"Ultimately, though, it is likely that our descendants will cease to work in the sense that we
do now."
Right, assuming your robots do pick up all the work. But then "They will probably occupy
their days with a variety of social, recreational and artistic pursuits, not unlike today's
comfortable retirees or the wealthy leisure classes." hahaha, how naive.
We have enough experience there; people with no work are people with no sustenance, they
are those starving and living with less than a dollar a day, see them all over the world. Will
the robot-manufacturing corporations feed the masses for free? Is that what's on your mind?
Dude, get out of your lab more often, replacing workers for machines ultimately kills people.
Having those nice smart robots won't change the nature of it.
and:
Cerebral*Origami at 09:41 AM on 03/26/09 As for the argument that automation takes jobs
and leads to violence through boredom. These are SOCIAL issues that require we work on
improving these area through social development.
We SHOULD be living in a high-wealth, low-labor society NOW!
We have the technology AND the resources to provide everyone WORLDWIDE with a very high
standard of living and reduce the amount of back-breaking labor to a minimum.
We should be working four, four hour days a week and enjoying a middle class life style
(house, car, food, medical 4 weeks vacation time etc.) but the combination of waste and greed
at the highest levels has robbed us of this.
On the good news side:
"Slide Show: The World's 10 Largest Renewable Energy Projects"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=10-largest-renewable-energy-projects
So, there will be lots of renewable energy to run the robots.
Anyway, what all these predictions leave out is networked machine learning.
That is, when you have a million copies of the same robot, and they are all talking over the
internet with high bandwidth, backed by supercomputer clusters, they may learn together a
million times faster. A million humans typing emails and twitters won't be able to keep up
with a million robots that can transmit at one megabyte per second. Look at how frustrated
Bryan is with only about 10 bytes a second of text output. How is he going to feel left out of
these vast high speed robot nets? :-)
And here is DIY AI (another comment linked):
http://practicalai.org/
"My name is David Jones. I'm a professional software developer near Washington DC. AI has
become my passion because I believe it is the only tool that will allow human beings to cure
today's diseases in a single lifetime. That is the goal I intend to use my intelligent software
to achieve. I hope some of you will find it a cause worth striving for and join me in my
efforts."
How can one dispute the value of those ends? So, it is driven ever onward. I can still hope it
is shaped by humane values.
And now Pradhu Guptara raises another issue -- will it be US American robots that rule the
world, or Japanese robots? Or Chinese or European or African or South American etc. robots?
So, another driver of the robot race.
http://www.theglobalist.com/AuthorBiography.aspx?AuthorId=801
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabhu_Guptara
arguing that all robotics research should be openly done in the public domain. He's right. I
made a similar point here:
"On Funding Digital Public Works "
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html
"""
what have funding policies in automotive intelligence wrought?
Consider again the self-driving cars mentioned earlier which now cruise some streets in
small numbers. The software "intelligence" doing the driving was primarily developed by
public money given to universities, which generally own the copyrights and patents as the
contractors. Obviously there are related scientific publications, but in practice these fail to
do justice to the complexity of such systems. The truest physical representation of the
knowledge learned by such work is the codebase plus email discussions of it (plus what
developers carry in their heads).
We are about to see the emergence of companies licensing that publicly funded software and
selling modified versions of such software as proprietary products. There will eventually be
hundreds or thousands of paid automotive software engineers working on such software no
matter how it is funded, because there will be great value in having such self-driving
vehicles given the result of America's horrendous urban planning policies leaving the car as
generally the most efficient means of transport in the suburb. The question is, will the
results of the work be open for inspection and contribution by the public? Essentially, will
those engineers and their employers be "owners" of the software, or will they instead be
"stewards" of a larger free and open community development process?
"""
--Paul Fernhout
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