The third invasion of the Martians

A source

"There are no miracles in nature and in history, but every sharp turn of history, every revolution including, gives such a wealth of content, unfolds such unexpectedly peculiar combinations of forms of struggle and the balance of forces fighting, that for the narrow-minded mind much should seem a miracle."

V.I. Lenin "Letters from afar"

I remember how at one of the telecommunications conferences a representative of a specialized university asked a representative of a major foreign supplier of electronics - could you send any masters for an internship to your plant? The answer was: to send something is possible, only this, unfortunately, will not help them in any way - all production is carried out in “clean rooms” by robots, where people are simply forbidden to enter.

Whatever you say, but robotization is real, it is already happening, and this is a fact. But what are its consequences ... How has it affected our life now, and what is it worth preparing for - let's talk about it.

Dumb general words

There are serious suspicions that the digital economy, which does not go down from the front pages of the media, is only a prologue to a robotic economy. Until recently, robots came to us from the pages of fantastic works. However, as the tale becomes true, robots began to visit us much more often, and already from workshops, offices and laboratories. From the history of economic evolution, we know that machines gradually and steadily replaced manual labor, so if robots replace humans in production, and then somewhere else, then all this will be within the general trends of the development of civilization. Actually, today we do not use the coachmen, who were replaced by taxi drivers, because cars appeared. Perhaps, in the future, the taxi driver will generally replace the dispatcher, who will remotely control any flying transport. The advantage of robotic systems is that they do not get tired and can work in three shifts, and they do it more precisely than a person, while making far fewer mistakes (software failures of modern robots are quite rare). Robots are guided by the range of a given operation and within their working space. As part of a specific operation, the robot is definitely more effective than a human. Automatic machines that mimic the mobility and versatility of human hands work faster and more agile. However, the imperfection of the current control systems do not allow the robot to respond to any force majeure circumstances.

In total, over 400 companies engaged in the production of robotics work in the global market. The list of existing and used robots in the world is already quite wide: industrial and transport, underwater and flying, domestic and military, medical and pharmacy, as well as zoobots, microrobots, nanobots, personal robots, robot artists, trading robots in trading, robot robots , robots, waiters, robots, surgeons, robots, guides, social robots, robots, programs and, of course, a whole family of android robots for many of the above. All these robots are not only constantly improving, but also getting cheaper. The volume of the robotics market, according to various estimates, ranges from 15 to 30 billion US dollars, and the difference in estimates arises from the fact that various experts consider robotics. The main buyers of industrial robots are Japan, South Korea, China, USA, Germany, the main manufacturers of robots are Japan and Germany (more than 50% and about 22%, respectively, of world production of industrial robots).

4 trends in robotics

This fall in Santa Clara, California, one of the largest automation conferences in North America, RoboBusiness, was held, where truly amazing devices were presented, such as a pair of artificial legs that emulate a man’s gait, or another rover with a robotic arm. As noted by the specialists who attended this event, there are four trends in today's robotics that quite well reflect and explain what is happening.

First of all, it is usability . Usually, robots require complex training, which is a huge obstacle for small entrepreneurs, such as owners of family businesses. But a new generation of robots can be programmed on the fly, often simply by demonstrating actions or by entering several commands via an iPad.

The next trend is accessibility . Serious industrial robots have serious prices of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Today, small and relatively inexpensive, so-called collaborative robots at the price of about $ 20,000 allow companies to get an economic benefit in months, not decades.

Today, many representatives of collaborative robots already fit behind a workbench or desk, which is in line with the next trend in a drastic reduction in size . If you compare them with the huge aliens from the past, it is not difficult to understand why robots are invading all new branches of the economy.

The latest trend - friendliness towards developers - is not the last one in importance. The need for an appropriate development environment and related tools represents a huge obstacle to the creation of new equipment. However, robotics, fortunately, soon imbued with the spirit of developing open source. In particular, the Robotic Operating System (ROS) operating system dominates the industry and provides turnkey solutions for a wide range of robots, so it is difficult to overestimate the importance of an open source development environment to drive growth throughout the industry.

"The future of employment"

They say that in 3-5 years we will get a situation where we cannot distinguish robots from humans in function, and this forces us to once again pay attention to this aspect of human development. Today, industrial production, finance, medicine, science and other industries that were previously exclusively “human” are rapidly automated. Recently, Sberbank announced that it plans to cut three thousand jobs in 2017 thanks to the emergence and implementation of a robot lawyer in business processes. Earlier, the head of Sberbank, German Gref, said that "if we compare the bank today and Sberbank five years ago, then about 50% of the decisions that were made by people are made by machines today." In another five years, “we will be able to make about 80% of all decisions automatically using artificial intelligence,” which will lead to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. Nowadays, artificial intelligence occupies only the second line, which negatively affects the labor market, taking a little more than 1.5% of jobs, and takes work not only from blue-collar workers, but also from intellectual labor.

A source

The use of robots will steadily expand, which, of course, creates a problem for specialist people, and the more actively the family of these robots develops, the more specialties begin to be exposed to this threat. However, large companies, no matter how advanced they are in terms of digital technology, will always hire people for positions related to routine work that cannot be entrusted to or assigned to robots. You can’t put the car in to take you to a retail store and show you where to go - this should be done by a person. Therefore, in industries such as retail, entertainment, leisure, restaurants or hotels, people will always work. And, by the way, those who have lost their jobs in production due to its automation will be settled there. In 2013, two researchers from Oxford, Carl Benedict Frey and Michael A. Osborne, published the study “The Future of Employment,” in which they identified which professions were being automated for 20 years. According to their forecast, about 47% of specialties will be performed by machines. With a 98% probability in 2033 there will be no sports judges and referees, cashiers, packers, millers, examiners, investigators, accountants and auditors. There will also be no waiters, bus drivers and security guards.

Source of The first robot waiter started serving visitors in Bangalore (India)

In a recent report by the Mitsubishi Research Institute, it was noted that in Japan alone, by 2030, robots would displace 2.4 million people from the labor market, and jobs would be closed in industry, services and sales. In the near future, almost all traditional industries will be subjected to deep robo-modernization, and the government of every developed country should think about what to do not only with the millions of people who lose their jobs, but also with those who will never have it. In parallel, the old monetary and financial system will be dismantled. Cash will soon cease to exist, like traditional banks, and citizens will be permanently tied to their electronic account. By the way, developed countries are going to introduce the so-called guaranteed income for their citizens. Thus, in Finland, an experiment has already begun on the payment (albeit, so far to a limited circle of citizens) of a guaranteed amount of 560 euros. True, in Switzerland, they have so far refused such a benefit, but the idea has already matured and is awaiting appropriate marketing.

Robotic Digital Economy

Moreover, all that has been said is not a fantasy of writers - the robotization is so real that the European Parliament has begun a discussion on the initiative to give the systems with artificial intelligence the legal status of “electronic persons” with the corresponding rights and responsibilities. However, a number of specialists are quite skeptical about this initiative (at least for now), they say, what would the parliamentarians not indulge in ... Nevertheless, in the new economy, robots will generate the main income for corporations and the main flow of taxes. Robot owners must earn money and pay taxes and pensions, and this is nothing new. It is also said that robots will also include consumers of the products produced by them (remember, even the Tinman had to lubricate the joints). The owners of robots are a constantly growing stratum of owners of capital, they always had a profit, and they paid taxes and pension contributions. There should be no difference with the owners of other types of capital. Well, and then it is logical that other robots would become owners of some robots. And here it is difficult to envy lawyers who will have to introduce electronic and other new entities into the global legal field (as long as they are not replaced by robots too). For example, if an unmanned vehicle and a car with a live driver meet in an accident - who will be guilty?

“One day, robots will produce what people are doing now,” so robot owners will have to pay taxes to fund the needs of members of society who will no longer be engaged in professional activities, as Professor Jürgen Schmidhuber, director of the Swiss Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, said in an interview with SonntagsBlick. . A member of the Danish parliament, Ida Oken, even described the world of universal welfare expected by 2030, where robots do all the dirty work, and people "will have time to do other more complex, more interesting things." In turn, the billionaire innovation engineer and just a charismatic guy Ilon Musk at the Code Conference 2016 stated that “people are already partly cyborgs. And in the future we must be ready to become pets of the robot masters. ” It turns out that people need to create computers that interact with the cerebral cortex, and “this connection with virtuality seems to me to be injections through which electronics will connect to living neurons. Otherwise, we will be so much lower than robots intellectually that we will become their pets. They will relate to us, as people now treat a domestic cat. ” Of course, from all this perspective is breathtaking, but in this case it will be too ambiguous feeling.

The future robotic digital economy will give the poor and the unemployed a chance to survive. However, it is possible to argue - after all, guaranteed income and the cheapest possible basic goods and services are just poverty benefits. Or, perhaps, it will be a payment for non-interference in the affairs of robots? And only the real work (and it seems to be quite a bit) will be a pass to a more dignified life, where the products will remain natural, the benefits available will be really impressive, and the robots will be colleagues, not owners? In general, there is something to ponder and what to prepare for.

Letters from the future

A source

We, in turn, also thought a bit and fantasized about what we can expect in the future. Mentally transferred through the temporary teleportal, and here is the result - a couple of letters (e-mails, of course) from descendants addressed to their ancestors, with a description of the device of the robotized human society of the future, if, of course, it can be called so. So…

The first letter. “Welcome to the year 2047, the year of the celebration of the ideals of robotics and artificial intelligence. Welcome to my city - more precisely, it is "our intellectual city." The city of dense greenery, dazzling purity of paving slabs, complete freedom and universal justice. I own nothing. And not because I do not need it - just nobody needs it at all. Property documents are not needed, cadastral numbers and valuations are not needed, water, heat, electricity and gas are not required, no taxes are needed. I do not have my own house, because my house is more like a hotel, in which there is absolutely everything to meet old age. And if for some reason I don’t like my hotel, I can move to any other if I want. However, this is unlikely for me to want, because any of my desire to immediately change the furnishings, colors and lighting, clothing and household and entertainment services will be immediately fulfilled by our beloved house intelligence manager or the lovely servants sent to them, whom we choose. In general, we live in a very decent housing and at the same time are on full state support. Although, perhaps, and not on the state, but for us it is absolutely unimportant. What, actually, is the difference, for what not to pay?

Of course, I do not have a car. And not because we still haven't mastered teleportation, but I just don't need it. If I have to go somewhere, any means of transportation that I want will be served for me. Another thing is that I absolutely do not need to go somewhere, because directly from my place of residence I have access to absolutely all the benefits of civilization, including clean air and the most realistic pictures of nature. All the rest is made by robots in completely deserted automatic plants. I also do not have my home appliances and clothes. And in search of food, I do not wander the supermarket or the Internet. At my service, any clothes that I can think of in a 3D scanner and synthesize in a synthesis machine, and any food that our molecular cafe prepares for me. Sometimes I don’t even have to open my mouth for eating - all the necessary nutrients are injected directly into my blood, which is also cleansed, which, they say, can prolong my life with my body for up to 300 years. And each of us has a “reality mask” that is able to activate the necessary centers of the brain so that we can feel the amazing taste of the ordered dishes.

Yes, and almost fell out - I have remote access to my work. We rarely work in our work, because only some types of art have remained from work for which not everyone has abilities. But this work is so - for the pleasure and satisfaction of his own ego, and not for the sake of money. The rest of the work is conceived, designed and performed by robots, which over the past 30 years have turned from good assistants to our reliable partners.

True, sometimes I get annoyed about the fact that I have no more personal life, but then all robots also took care of our breeding. There are no places where I can go and not get registered. Therefore, I do not go anywhere. Moreover, I can get all the pleasures of the world right at home, I just have to wear a “mask of reality”. I know that absolutely everything is recorded absolutely everything that I do, what I think and even dream of. However, there is confidence that no one will use this against me. “Why robots?”

I generally like our life. It is much better than the one we lived before, until it became clear that we cannot continue to exist with the old growth model. Unlike our ancestors, we have confidence in the future, because after death all our memory will be rewritten by robots into special world repositories, and therefore there is no death in our new world. We just move to another place of residence. Of course, some people live outside the cities, not wanting to become part of the new world, in which machines and artificial intelligence took over all the work. .

, , , : , , . — , , , , ».

. « 2047 , . — , , , , , . , , . – , . , , , , .

, . - , , , , . , . , . , . , , , . , . , , , , . - .

, . , . – , ? , « » «». . , , . , . , , , - . , , , .

, . , – . -, , , , , . , . , : - – ; , – ? ? …

, . , . , – ! , , - XXI , …».

: servomh.ru, pcweek.ru, utmagazine.ru, news.eizvestia.com, radio.ru.

:

, «»