If you earn your living by playing music, waging war, gardening or driving a car, watch your back! The \u201crobots are coming for your jobs\u201d mantra hovered over the symposium for three days, and participants had to deal with a disturbing thought: \u201cWhat if I am soon replaced by a set of cables and buttons named Tom?\u201d All jobs could be automated sooner or later. The good news is that certain occupations will stay out of Tom\u2019s reach for still some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, cleaning ladies. There is a widespread belief that jobs requiring physical labour will be the first to fall into robotic hands. However, there are exceptions. Using the vacuum cleaner, arranging books, picking up toys from the floor, and cooking pasta is, for now, too much for one robot to take on. \u201cParadoxically, automation will not get to the cleaning ladies for many years,\u201d says leading
AI researcher Dileep George. \u201cWe can envision single-purpose robots for specific tasks, but we have not yet developed the technology to face variable situations and multiple activities.\u201d
An all-encompassing cleaning robot is not yet technically feasible; it might not be wanted, even if it existed. In the \u201850s, sociologist Warner Bloomberg conceived of a fully-automated home-based roasting process. As explained in a study conducted by Anna Salomons from Utrecht University and David Autor from MIT, the idea never took off. \u201cNo matter how intelligent new technologies are, if they do not generate human demand, they become smart garbage,\u201d University of St. Gallen business Professor Caspar Hirschi wrote in an essay for Primer, a collection of background pieces prepared for the 48th St. Gallen Symposium and available online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe President of the United States,\u201d someone who used to work one door down from the Oval Office answered when asked which job will never be replaced by robots. His differences with Barack Obama\u2019s successor have not changed the views of Denis McDonough, Obama\u2019s former chief of staff: A robot cannot be trusted with the nuclear codes. \u201cPoliticians are safe, provided they do uniquely human things,\u201d he laughs. \u201cCognitive things? That is a different question.\u201d
Even if a robot capable of dealing with the unpredictability of politics was invented, would people vote for him? \u201cRobots can lead to augmented decision making, but I do not think we would ever accept being governed by them,\u201d argues Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick, the youngest member of the New Zealand Parliament. \u201cIf the robot gets it wrong, who would you blame? The robot?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Huaracheros (traditional Mexican shoemakers) design and make huaraches, hand-crafted leather sandals whose design predates Columbus\u2019 arrival in the Americas. \u201cEach huarache is different. They are valuable, because they are unique and have a story behind them,\u201d explains Celia Ram\u00edrez, who coordinates a centre for entrepreneurship in Jalisco, Western Mexico. She is now training a group of women to upscale their production of huaraches, increasingly popular among trendy young people. Bob Bland, fashion designer and founder of the Women\u2019s March, also points at the challenges faced by robots when working with \u201canything soft\u201d: \u201cI saw entire companies come in with all this technology and treat us, fashion professionals, as if we were stupid. They came to see that it was not possible to replicate what the humans were doing,\u201d recalls Bland, \u201cand certainly for artisanal techniques it is even more so. I have yet to see a robot able to sew a simple dress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Cambridge dictionary defines an intellectual as \u201ca person whose life or work centres around the study or use of ideas, such as in teaching or writing.\u201d Could a robot ever be a recipient of a Nobel Prize in Literature? For John Ralston Saul, one of Canada\u2019s most prominent thinkers and a former president of PEN International, the answer is a clear no: \u201cMachines are irrelevant. They are basically shards of memory, that interweave elements and try to draw conclusions,\u201d Saul points out. \u201cBut they are completely missing the mutability of imagination, and the nature of intuition and common sense.\u201d
An intellectual defending the relevance of intellectuals is no surprise, some would argue. Yet Akash Gupta, founder of GreyOrange, an Indian start-up in the field of robotics, also acknowledges the limitations of the machines he creates. \u201cRobots might be able to have conversations, but these will be very objective, not emotional. That will be very hard to achieve,\u201d he admits. Intellectuals can breathe a sigh of relief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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If you earn your living by playing music, waging war, gardening or driving a car, watch your back! The \u201crobots are coming for your jobs\u201d mantra hovered over the symposium for three days, and participants had to deal with a disturbing thought: \u201cWhat if I am soon replaced by a set of cables and buttons named Tom?\u201d All jobs could be automated sooner or later. The good news is that certain occupations will stay out of Tom\u2019s reach for still some time. Cleaning Lady Yes, cleaning ladies. There is a widespread belief that jobs requiring physical labour will be the…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"INSIGHTS<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"wordpress@weitblick-online.ch","url":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/author\/wordpressweitblick-online-ch\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","authors":[{"term_id":93,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"jon-martin-cullell","display_name":"Jon Martin-Cullell","avatar_url":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/gravatars\/762b22de4bf1bf3924204e9b02554eaa","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3023,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions\/3023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}