I'm pretty sure they just pretend that trickle-down economics is a thing that would ever work.

Businesses aren't going to add more workers when demand hasn't increased just because they are keeping more of their revenue. Like the dairy owner in the video said, they'd automate jobs and reduce workers to increase profits if they had a tax cut that gave them more money.

Why do you think it was secret?
Why do you think nobody noticed?
Do you think they just began on it since sanctions?

Every major power has had back-burner development of this stuff since the cold war.
The only "secret" was how much progress they made. That it existed, you can freely take for granted.

Just how you can take for granted that everyone is working on genetic weapons, everyone is working on directed energy weapons, everyone is working on infrastructure hacking weapons, everyone is working on automated robotic weapons, etc.

Do you think there is a better / more-cost-efficient place for Russia to spend defense dollars, than on a system which can trade the price of a missile for the price of an aircraft carrier?
I would be more surprised if they hadn't put their money into a program such as this.

Look at what progress China has made :
Which country is fielding a rail gun today? China.
Which country is fielding a man portable laser rifle? China
Which country has demonstrated quantum entanglement encrypted communication? China.

The world is moving on, while we stand around confidently patting ourselves on the back.

-scheherazade

Fair points, but this is obviously a prototype.

Ultimately, the price of these will come down and even if you need to swap out the batteries, there's no reason that can't be automated too. Hell, a roomba basically does that now. The point is it doesn't need sleep or meal breaks and it doesn't care about working hours. Or you just leave it connected to a permanent power source (if you can teach it to drywall, you can teach it to avoid the cable).

And yeah, my numbers are obviously estimates, since this isn't commercially available yet, and you'd need to factor in capital investment, maintenance, etc. But you don't have to pay it a salary, it doesn't need medical and it doesn't have to comply with health and safety regs (at least, not for the robots H&S).

I find it difficult to believe that something like this could ever be less cost-effective than a human.

Of course, that's assuming a steady rate of improvement. Bipedal robots (like self-driving cars) have been "90% there" for many years now. It might be that the last 10% is REALLY, REALLY difficult.

My gut feeling is that we will see a tipping point. There will be some really challenging engineering/programming obstacle that stops these going mainstream, but eventually, someone will solve it and then the rate of progress will be exponential.

But you're right in that, that's certainly a few years away yet. I'm fascinated as to how we as a society/civilisation deal with mass automation.

*quality stuff from Grey as usual.

I’m starting to think that significantly extending human life span might be the only way we actually grow up as a species and stop thinking so short term. Problems like climate change, overpopulation and automation will be things that we actually have to deal with, instead of just letting the next generation worry about it.

#whydoyouhateyourkids

I'd hope that they put some time into automated dick-detection technology. Or perhaps just a tagging system to alert about rogue dicks for the admins to delete. I mean, you can't make this and not address that issue in some manner.

Animation?

This video has nothing to do with animation.
The fact that they used an automated service to illustrate as they talked doesn't make this animation.

I move to remove from animation. But that's up to @b4rringt0n

"I mainly do it for the creative outlet it offers me"

My pretentiousness meter just went off the scale. You're an uber driver... there's no "creative outlet" here. You are literally a stop-gap until the law allows them to use automated vehicles.

I never even thought to question why I've had to solve so many captchas of late, even on sites that should know me by now... but now that he mentions the fact they do all involve click on cars, click on street signs, click on storefronts (as seen from street view)... it starts making more sense. I'd guess it knows 98% of the ones it presents, but then thinks image 43 might be one, so it presents it, and when 99% of the people click it, then it adds that to the database of confirmations... and so it learns more...
*promote the future of AI and even more automation.

Agreed, but it's also going to be necessary due to automation.

*quality discussion from Kurzgesagt as always

We had better hope they are dead wrong, and that they aren't robot proof jobs, because millennials aren't flocking to nursing, it's hard. If robots can't take over most of the work load (they can) then elder abuse will be the norm due to neglect. There will still be a need for human interaction (until the uncanny valley is bridged) but the grunt work can be automated.

Funny that they make this assumption about men's percieved ability to empathize, and ignore historical professional gender rolls that are only recently being challenged. Most of their points became culturally outdated in the 70's imo.

It's sad that the last woman, asking if nursing or men should change (implying men should) clearly still thinks "manly" men can't be empathetic and caring...should she be countered with the equally insulting "pretty" women can't be smart or strong? That thinking belongs back in the 1960's.

I thought this was one of the first jobs replaced by automation...

Pretty much everything @ChaosEngine said, and as pointed out in the Humans Need Not Apply video. There are far more factors going into this than the economists are willing to look at.

Shelf checkouts might result in slightly higher theft rates, and each person might be at the register than they would be with a properly trained cashier, but you now have one minimum wage employee watching 6 or 12 registers, rather than 6 or 12 people... that is a huge savings. That's 5 to 11 jobs lost, and at the low end, where people can least afford to lose job opportunities. It's just a matter of time until McDonald's, Wendy's and the like all add app-based ordering, or ordering at a kiosk, and that saves a couple employees there (Chick-fil-a already has that in their app, order, notify when you are there, they process the order)... and it wouldn't be too difficult to automate the McDonald's cooking line either... the burgers aren't flipped, the grill cooks both sides at the same time, drop them in place, grill down, cook, up, then put them in the stream tray, easy for a cheap bot to do. Portion control would be far easier with a bot too... there are huge incentives for them to move to automate...

The only real incentive not to automate as fully as everyone can is the fact it would cause a huge disruption to the economy if a Universal Basic Income isn't in place. I'd expect the biggest push for a UBI to eventually come from the various industries that want to automate, who'd gladly pay an automation tax to help pay the UBI in order to greatly increase their bottom lines, because we are very close to where a UBI, even based on an automation tax, is still cheaper than employing people.

I'm upvoting this because it's an insanely important topic, but I disagree with almost everything said in it.

First up, "we have better things to worry about". Granted, climate change is a more fundamental and immediate threat, but this is still way up there on the list of things we need to worry about.

"We've been wrong about automation taking jobs in the past"

So what? Until Obama got elected, there was never a black US president. There has never been a woman US president and there won't be.... until there is.

"New technology creates new jobs"
Yeah, and before, we needed humans to fill those jobs. Previously, we created new jobs that automation COULDN'T do. That is no longer the case. Create a new industry? Fine, but it will be staffed by AIs and robots.

They also miss the point with productivity growth. Automation doesn't need to be more productive than human workers. In fact, it can be staggeringly WORSE than human workers, but if your productivity is 10% and your cost is 1%, that's still a win.

*related=https://videosift.com/video/Humans-Need-Not-Apply

haha, that things just a tad bit more aggressive. Saddly it looks like someone made a automated gun aiming rig and decided to dress it up by plopping an egg shaped styrofoam mock up in the center of it rather then actually build the guns into the egg shaped object like you are supposed to. They didn't even bother with building the same ai as the robots into the gun firing routine (complete with sound effects beeps). The whole portal thing was a complete afterthought.