Rethink Robotics
September 20th, 2012Via: IEEE:
Whereas traditional industrial robots perform one specific task with superhuman speed and precision, Baxter is neither particularly fast nor particularly precise. But it excels at just about any job that involves picking stuff up and putting it down somewhere else while simultaneously adapting to changes in its environment, like a misplaced part or a conveyor belt that suddenly changes speed.
Sign me up for Luddites Anonymous, but these two sentences:
“the robots would help make workers more efficient and American factories competitive again.”
and
“Baxter is designed to take over those simple, dumb, mindless tasks that humans hate to perform because they’re so, well, robotic.”
are kind of creepy.
In this context, the only way to make workers more efficient and American factories competitive again would be for the workers to agree to
do simple, dumb, repetitive tasks for the rest of their lives for a one-time payout of $22,000.
At least we won’t have to worry about our jobs going offshore any more, since a factory full of Baxters can operate just as well in Detroit as in Indonesia. I feel kind of bad for all the 9 year olds in Asia who will be losing their $3 a day paychecks.