To automate, or not to automate? Is there value to the human element?

A Glimpse of the Future 

Last week I took a first look at some of the jobs that have been increasingly moving over to automation, and a few that might see more automation and fewer humans doing the work in the future.

In some cases this might not be a bad thing. In other cases, the robots may not do as good a job as humans might. A couple of cases-in-point leap to mind: bank tellers and retail store checkers. Which do you prefer?

Love 'em or hate 'em (I know people who feel both ways), these machines seem here to stay.

I'm older than dirt, so I remember before they had such contraptions. I remember having to plan to get money before the bank closed for the day or weekend, and how you always talked with a human being before you could complete any transaction.

I kind of liked it (confession: I still don't own an ATM card, out of security concerns. Planning ahead: it's a thing.), but then, I live in the Midwest, where bank tellers and grocery store checkers are apparently friendlier than they are in some other parts of the world. I like to get to know them, in the fond hope that if someone they didn't know came in and tried to wipe out my bank account, they'd question it. I feel quite certain my bankers at Kansas City's Country Club Bank would. Thanks, guys!!

I also remember before there was a self-checkout line at the grocery store. I even remember before they had bar codes on the groceries (what a pain that was!), and you had to watch the checker to make sure s/he didn't make an error or ring something twice that you only bought one of. Of course, now when the machine steals your ATM or credit card information, you have few ways of knowing, so is that a net gain? Depends on for whom, I guess.

There's reportedly now a trend toward automating fast-food service, unfortunately driven in part by the industry's resistance to paying its employees a living wage. I can see how an automatic timer to pull the fries out of the hot oil at the penultimate moment might be a good thing, but completely removing all or most of the people? That's a farther stretch for me.

You see, we've actually had automated fast-food delivery for a long time. They're called vending machines, and they aren't actually noted for their-high quality products or their ambiance.

Granted, Mickey D's isn't long on "ambience" either, but I kind of like to chit-chat with the smiling teens or senior citizens at the counter. Call me weird, but I prefer dealing with people, over figuring out the interface on yet another dang gadget. I've kinda perfected the human interface, at least to some extent, and I have this weird notion that people should be respected, even when they have low-end jobs.

An automated fast-food "restaurant" looks an awful lot like a glorified vending machine to me. 

As I see it, the whole key should be playing to strengths. Robots and automation do some things way better than people. Business Insider interviewed Ryan Calo, a professor at University of Washington School of Law with expertise in robotics, who said, "For a long time, artificial intelligence has been better than us at highly structured, bounded tasks." All of the applications we've looked at so far in both this and the previous post on this topic have been in that category.

Calo thinks, however, that robots are now, or soon will be, capable of moving beyond "the three D's: dangerous, dirty, and dull." It's a fine line to define (sorry for the rhyme), so where do we draw it? If robots and automation can lift us beyond those "dangerous, dirty, and dull tasks," isn't that a net gain? I think it definitely is. If they can ever design a Roomba that cleans the potty, I'm all in!

Ivan Fourie encountered this friendly store clerk in Kyoto 2006, and immortalized her in a photo. 

But people right now (and for millennia) do/have done way better at some things than robots and automation have managed so far. The determination to push automation/artificial intelligence beyond those basic limits won't stop. (we're talking about humans with an intellectual challenge. Of course they'll pursue it as far as they can).

But just as industry doesn't want to talk about the full cost of their initiatives (including environmental and human damage), so the people involved in the "second machine age" don't want to talk about ALL the costs of their initiatives.

Are these Chinese robots cute enough to be worth their cost in human devaluation? Are they worth the effort of putting "friendly store clerk" and her siblings all over the world into financial devastation?

Would their AIs put good people out of work that they need? Don't we all need people who are a positive part of their community? The friendly 7-Eleven clerk who brightens our morning? The bank teller who keeps our accounts safe? The shopkeeper who grows her small business locally? The first-generation immigrant family who runs the gas station? The custodian who keeps the school clean and well-maintained?

What's the human cost of the fancy machines? Do they make life better for the humans in the community, or only for the corporations running the businesses?

I think we're at a crossroads, in our contemporary life. We can look globally at ALL the costs of the decisions we take, or we can keep on looking only at money in a system skewed to ignore some of the most important costs of all.

Our choice.

Our future.

IMAGES: Many thanks to Before it's News for the future-vision graphic. The photo of the Safeway self-checkout is courtesy of WonderHowTo, and the photo of the ATM machine is from The Northeast Today; many thanks to both of you! The cynical minimum wage meme is from Ron Paul's "Liberty Report." Your thanks is that I acknowledged where it came from, dude. You certainly illustrated my point, anyway. Many thanks to NPR's "All Tech Considered" for the photo of the automated fast-food restaurant. I am grateful to Ivan Fourie's Flickr Photostream for the the friendly store clerk's photo. Many thanks to Business Insider for the photo of the Chinese food service robots.

10 Ideas about Future Tech that may change our lives

What does the future hold?
As a reader and writer of science fiction, I like to keep an eye on what people are saying about the technological innovations that may fundamentally re-shape our world in the future. 

Science fiction itself has opened windows on many ideas that later became reality--think about Arthur C. Clarke writing about geostationary satellites, for example.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke was one of many sf authors who have correctly predicted future innovations.

Other things apparently were less predicted. Few people really seemed to foresee and understand the potential for massive changes that would ripple out from the advent of personal computers, the Internet, wireless technology, and smart phones, before they our lives forever.

Few of us realized what a revolution these represented, when they first came on the scene.

Nowhere is the wireless revolution and the advent of smart phones having a greater impact than in the developing world. Here's an image from rural Bihar, India.

I've been looking at recent videos on YouTube that attempt to answer this "what future tech is being developed?" question. I shared one in Bionic Sensory Enhancements that I thought looked interesting. 

Here's a video that explores "The Top 10 Future Technology That's Here Right Now." Published in early October by the Top Ten Archive, it predicts a range of innovations from sunscreen pills to personal nanotech factories.


The video's show notes include a full list of the ten technological developments profiled, as well as links that offer more detailed information about each.

IMAGES: Many thanks to the Telegraph Media Group for the image of Sir Arthur (unfortunately on his obituary). The photo of popular smart phone brands is from a TechReviewPro article about the top smart phones of 2015. The photo of mobile phone users in Bihar, India, is from an excellent article on the Design Public Blog. The video is from Top 10 Archives on YouTube.

Future Visions of Home Interiors

One of my projects in 2015 was designing a space station. Not for NASA or any other agency--I've been world-building for the sf novel I'm writing. 

And in the course of gazing into the future through the collective wisdom of the Internet and entertainment media, I've discovered some odd things about the places we apparently think we will live, in the future. 

1. They will be either blindingly white, or very dark. And either way, they'll be cold. 
It appears that in the future very few of us will live in normal lighting. If we are very wealthy or on a spaceship, our homes are likely to be all white. 

From Prometheus 2, via Flavorwire. As if it wasn't cold enough, they added a snow scene in the background!

Curves that make impractical use of space, and blinding white: from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, again via Flavorwire.

If we are poor and live on the wretched Earth, or on a different kind of spaceship, our homes will be dark and tiny. 

The dark side of the decor: Deckard's apartment from Blade Runner, via Bladezone.

Murky lighting, odd color schemes, and hard furniture: how relaxing can you get? From Star Trek: Insurrection, via the Memory-Alpha Wiki.

2. There will be inexplicable things on the walls. 
It appears we will not care about the dust collected by 3D wall textures. We also won't have paintings (as an artist, this bums me out) or photos of loved ones on display, because there won't be room for them.

More of Deckard's apartment from Blade Runner, via Bladezone. What is up with the funky wallpaper?

House Atreides Frigate from Dune, via Flavorwire. Is that a robot-face at far R?

3. Doors and other architectural features will be odd shapes.
In addition to the examples above, consider the practicality of the following:

From Battlestar Galactica, via Flavorwire: triangular doors? Really?

Another view from Prometheus, via Ben Procter. Octagonal doors and rooms: Sure. We all love living in places where the walls aren't square to each other.

4. All the seating will be uncomfortable.
Couches and chairs will have no arms, there will be no throw pillows or afghans, and there also will be no recliners, no chintz, and absolutely no lovingly-restored antiques.

Even the actors at R look uncomfortable (from 2001: A Space Odyssey, via Flavorwire).

Harsh lighting, a knee-bumper table and an oddly retro rolly-chair combine to make this one of the least comfortable-looking offices I can imagine. Plus, his back is to all the action (or potential snipers) outside that massive window. An Elysium concept, via Moviefone.

It also apparently won't matter how many hundreds of years we are from now: the Future Design Ghods have decreed that once these design principles have gone into effect, we will henceforth always have to live in cold, dark, cold bright-white, or oddly-shaped interiors, with illogical openings and uncomfortable furniture. 

Here's to the future! Happy New Year! 

IMAGES: Many thanks (as attributed above) to Flavorwire, as well as Bladezone, the Memory-Alpha Wiki, Ben Procter, and Moviefone.