The fear of being usurped by robots has leapt from the pages of science fiction into the realm of reality.
At this point in our history we are experiencing massive amounts of paranoia in regards to AI. The concept of the singularity, a point in our not-too-distant future whereby machines will be able to autonomously out think us, is a very real one.
Part of that paranoia is represented by a growing tide of fear of your job becoming automated and being replaced by a robot. Of course a person's paranoia will directly be correlated with the job they do. Some jobs are already being automated, with others soon to follow. For instance, it is hard to imagine that driverless transportation won't be the future of public transport.
However some jobs are safe, until at least the AI running the machines to do those tasks, gets significantly better. Other industries are able to automate certain tasks, however the costs become actually greater than employing humans. It is within that last definition of tasks that we are beginning to see a very interesting trend. One of man and machine coming together in a symbiotic, symtechnologic way.
The Rise Of The Human Machines
For the past decade or so, a number of companies have been developing exoskeletons. In the past few years especially this area of robotics has come along leaps and bounds.
If you've seen the film Aliens, you will have seen Sigourney Weaver sitting in a machine that allowed her to walk around and pick up boxes with ease, that weighed several times more than she did.
The science fact isn't that far away from the fiction, for some time now there have been medical applications in use. However now we are seeing the manufacture and production of industrial exoskeletons.
Ekso Bionics is one such company, that have provided product to the medical industry, and now they're branching out.
Their Eksovest is designed to help the wearer with light overhead tasks. Ford have given it to workers whose work requires them to continually lift their arms above their heads.
The vests give an assistance of between five and fifteen pounds in weight (2.2-6.8 kg). So making the lifting of tools above the head easier and greatly reducing the risk of repetitive strain.
Perhaps more in line with the machine in Aliens, the car manufacturer Hyundai has developed an exoskeleton that will enable a human being to lift objects weighing "hundreds of kilograms".
More and more players are coming into this market, even the Japanese electronics giant Panasonic have thrown their hat into the ring.
A Logical Progression
I believe the exoskeleton answers two age old problem in robotics.
*How do I get the thing to move in a useful and practical way?
How can I get it to act in an intelligent way when carrying out its tasks?
Having a human being inside a robot body, or at least one that behaves as such, answers these two problems elegantly and relatively cheaply.
The bonus of course is that particular human won't lose their job to a machine, instead, for eight hours a day, five days a week, they will become a machine.
Perhaps exoskeletons are a stopgap till the machines themselves become smart and agile enough to do the tasks we pay humans to do now.
Or maybe there will always be room for this technological symbiosis between man and machine. I for one applaud and embrace a future where the lines between our technology and our biology are blurred together.
Further reading & links
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS BRANCH OF ROBOTICS? DO YOU WORK IN AN INDUSTRY WHICH COULD BENEFIT FROM EXOSKELETONS? WOULD YOU WEAR ONE? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
I even wrote a post on how a robot has been given citizenship in Saudi Arabia. I think, there are pros and cons to it.
Pros - They will be accurate and not pretend like humans.
Cons - If Robots eat up most of the jobs, what end result will be achieved on humanity ? Because humans will loose job, and find it hard to survive which may result to a bigger break to violence with Robots ?
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Wow citizenship??? That's incredible! I think the best thing to do is if you are in a job that is vulnerable to robot takeover, start retraining now!
Cg
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I don't think, there will be any job except human relation, that the robots can't take 😁So retirement will be the only option, if we go that way.
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Exoskekeleton robot Providing the severely disabled with the ability to walk is undoubtedly the headline benefit of exoskeletons, and has been the subject of much media attention and investment over the past few years. Although by no means universally available, the technology is seeing rapid development, with a handful of companies around the world already selling working exosuits.
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Okay, I had never seen an exoskeleton until now. They look super useful & I would wear one. What an awesome invention.
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Absolutely awesome, I want one too! :-)
Cg
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I think adding more senses and brain power is more important than exoskeleton
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Definitely, however let us crawl before we can walk and then run, :-)
Cg
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:) I did not get that :
"A biochemist and a hip-hop star! I found you through your wicked tune Steem Power! It's awesome man, keep it up :-)"
I am not native speaker please say it in more simple way.
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Ah, sorry, I really don't know how that happened! That was a comment for a completely different post; which I thought I had deleted, but somehow it attached itself to my reply to you :-)
Only the top line is for you :-) I shall delete now :-)
Cg
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haha ok
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I can see the benefits, it would be wonderful used on humans who have lost limbs and enable them full capacity once again.
Loss of a labour force not so much, living in a third world country, still seeking to obtain quality education, it would render more unemployed than we have to contain already.
Pro's and Con's to everything in life, it will have to be weighed up carefully before implementation into different territories of the world.
Good thought provoking post @cryptogee
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Yes the benefits for the disabled are amazing; if you go onto the Ekso site you'll see some inspiring stuff there.
I don't see how it will contribute to loss of labour, that's the whole point, is rather than replace the human workforce with robots, you augment them with cybernetics. I just see plenty of wins all round for this type of tech.
Cg
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Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Good information.
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The design of the present human form is half a million years old. Time to upgrade?
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Exactly, a soft upgrade if you will, we don't want to get rid of 4.5 billion years of R&D, simply augment it :-)
Cg
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it's a beautiful thing to use the best of humans and technology to do what neither can do alone! great post @cryptogee. I stopped being afraid of robots making humans irrelevant (in terms of jobs) as I began to realize how much this could potentially free humans up to apply ourselves at higher levels.
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Yes that's what I love about this the most, we retain our humanity and reap the benefits of machine strength. The 'free up potential' is indeed huge, we just have to make sure on an individual level that we are aware of how dispensable we are in our varying roles.
Cg
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I would say that robots will not be able to outgrow humans because of a few tiny reasons... Feeling and intuition. This is something you can't program. Therefore, robots will be available only as an auxiliairy help or guide and will never be able to overrule us.
Great post!
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20 years ago you couldn't program a decent translator, or voice recognition. Robots couldn't walk then either.
Feeling and intuition are just responses to external stimuli, they are nothing special. That being said I don't think robots will overrule us, because we're the ones designing them, and we are primarily making them to help us.
Cg
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