When I was a kid, my grandfather, a lifelong employee of Ford Motor Company, bemoaned the coming age of the robot. On many a before daybreak morning, as he was feeding us bran flakes, he would tell us how robots were going to change the world, pushing the working man into severe poverty and making the rich richer at the poor man’s expense.
I used to think he was exaggerating or that he was overly sensitive to the plight of the working man, but that day has come.
Wired magazine posted an article yesterday about a robot that does the job of hospital orderlies. It takes out the trash, picks up the linens, and delivers drugs and foods.
The Boston Consulting Group released a report that the use of automation and robots in manufacturing will rise from their current share of 10% to 25% in the next decade. They estimate that about 1.2 million robots will be deployed in domestic factories in that time.
Even off the factory floor, robots are rising. A hotel in Japan is now fully staffed by androids and robots, with jobs ranging from concierge to bellhop.
They may even be capable of collective thought, albeit on a primitive level. But any level of collective thought by androids is just short of creepy.
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