Technological Unemployment Scream Room

[Reub]

Intelligent robots are trying to run away commit suicide. Should we let them?

"A robot capable of thinking for itself is set to be scrapped after it escaped from a high-tech lab for a second time.

The Promobot IR77 has been fitted with artificial intelligence meaning that it learns from its experiences and its surroundings, although the programmers had not expected it to yearn for freedom.

They say that despite reprogramming it twice, the robot continues to attempt to escape and they are now considering scrapping it. The other robots which have been created from the same series are well-behaved, and have not been escaping, say the team.

Promobot IR77 made headlines last week when he escaped but ran out of battery in the middle of the street after 45 minutes in the city of Perm in central Russia's Perm Krai region.

The expert said that they had programmed the robot to try and avoid obstacles, and it had not been intended that it would look for ways to leave the research centre."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news ... ld-8248559

[MachineGhost]

LOL!

It's not time for the android rights movement just yet...

[MachineGhost]

[MachineGhost]

[MachineGhost]

At a shopping mall here one recent Friday, six-year-old Ruby Dowling made friends with a friendly egg-shaped robot. Her sister Layla, five, even patted the robot on its glossy white tummy. “This robot is nice,” said Ruby, as a group of children encircled it.

It wasn’t surprising that the bot, named K5, inspired this response—it had been designed to look approachable. When it was surrounded and needed to return to work as the mall’s security guard, though, the K5 did something its small admirers never expected. It let out a screech that scattered them in all directions.

“It’s a monster,” whispered three-year-old William Milne.

As their latest creations move into daily life and take on public-facing jobs, robot designers have been taking pains to give them body lines and face-like features that seem nonthreatening. They’re also learning that there is a vanishing point.

If they make their robots seem too friendly, or too meek, there may be unintended consequences. At a mall in Osaka, Japan, for example, experts in human-robot interaction were studying robot abuse in 2014 using a machine designed to help the elderly buy groceries. They observed children kicking it, hitting it with a bottle and bending its neck.

“The robot said ‘Someone help me!’ and ‘Ouch, that hurt!’ ” said Dražen Brščić, a researcher there from ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, a private research company. “But it didn’t stop the children.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-robots ... 1466365635

Funny comment!

You can now hire a machine for seven dollars an hour to replace a human that costs fifteen dollars an hour plus FICA, plus sick leave, plus maternity leave, plus overtime, plus health insurance... And there will be no complaints about working on holidays or late shifts. That makes for a pretty easy business decision.

[Libertarian666]

Did anyone realize that Uber was named after an Ayn Rand novel?

When was this unpublished novel discovered? I'd like to read it!

[MachineGhost]

Did anyone realize that Uber was named after an Ayn Rand novel?

When was this unpublished novel discovered? I'd like to read it!

Whoops, guess I should have verified that. The CEO is inspired by Ayn Rand (specifically "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged"), but "uber" itself is from Neitzsche.

[MachineGhost]

[Reub]

A Tesla self-driving car recently drove into the side of a truck, killing the passenger. It didn't recognize the white paint on the truck's side as being part of a large vehicle. Or it had enough of traffic and tried to commit suicide.

[Libertarian666]

I believe the main reasons for that change are these:
1. Because many occupations that didn't require a degree now do, as a "free" initial employment screen;
2. Because so many more people have degrees now.

[Pointedstick]

I believe the main reasons for that change are these:
1. Because many occupations that didn't require a degree now do, as a "free" initial employment screen;
2. Because so many more people have degrees now.

Yeah, I think that's right. It's so weird how you practically need a degree to be like even a janitor these days. They'd probably want "Waste disposal engineering."

[barrett]

Yikes! I knew kids were expensive but I've always thought of the issue only in terms of paying for their food, clothing, shelter & education.

[Pointedstick]

Yikes! I knew kids were expensive but I've always thought of the issue only in terms of paying for their food, clothing, shelter & education.

As the chart shows, mostly inasmuch as a mother generally sacrifices her career to have and raise children. But this is misleading; most of the women who favor their careers never have children or hire out the childcare from day one (I know several such women), and most of the women who prefer being mothers never have much of a career.

I have two kids and am the sole breadwinner, and honestly they're really not very expensive, and most of the costs are marginal; you already need to eat, be clothed, have shelter, etc. Kids' clothes aren't very expensive, especially secondhand, and if you live where where the public education system is fine, then educational costs are low as well, mostly bundled into your property taxes or rent. The major ways in which you can break the bank with children are if you live somewhere housing is ridiculously expensive, the public schools are bad, and you opt for expensive boutique childcare from infancy onward, in which case paying for an extra bedroom or two will cost you dearly and the childcare and private school bills can wipe out $10,000 a year or more per kid--often a lot more. But most people who aren't rich only live in such places when they don't have kids and move somewhere more affordable with better schools once they want a family.

[flyingpylon]

Sounds like your kids are very young... give 'em a few years and see what you think, they don't get any cheaper as time goes on...

[barrett]

Sounds like your kids are very young... give 'em a few years and see what you think, they don't get any cheaper as time goes on...

This chart struck me because this was the choice my own mom made when my sister and I were young. We were born in 1956 and 1958 respectively. My mom went back to work in about 1968 so she stayed out of the workforce for 12-13 years. My business partner's wife chose to go back to work after their first kid was about six months old (in 1989), and they paid a fortune (in NYC) to have someone look after their kid for three days a week. When their 2nd kid was born in 1995 the mom took about five years off.

And the graphic in question only looks at lost income and lost investment growth of that income. It does not touch on the severely diminished Social Security benefits that can result from taking a lot of time off at that point (years when the indexing factors are likely to be quite high).

[Pointedstick]

Sounds like your kids are very young... give 'em a few years and see what you think, they don't get any cheaper as time goes on...

You're right. The oldest turns four this month. What have you generally found to be increasingly expensive as time goes on?

[curlew]

Sounds like your kids are very young... give 'em a few years and see what you think, they don't get any cheaper as time goes on...

You're right. The oldest turns four this month. What have you generally found to be increasingly expensive as time goes on?

I raised 3 of my own and one adopted grandchild who just graduated from high school.

Everything gets more expensive as they get older. Obviously 4-year-olds don't need braces. Or dance lessons. Or sports uniforms. This type of expense peaks when they are in high school and they all want to get their driver's licenses. If your salary increases with the demand, as it usually does as you advance in your career, then it isn't that much of a problem.

But the peak expense, yet to come, is a college education. Personally, none of my kids even wanted to go to college so this wasn't a big deal for me either. My parents didn't spend a penny on my education so I'm kind of amazed at the current attitude that parents have that they need to scrimp, sacrifice, and save to give their kids a college education or else feel like a failure and bad parent if they don't. If I'd had that attitude and my kids wanted to go to college there is probably no way I'd be even thinking about retiring next year, but planning on working until I dropped dead.

[Pointedstick]

That makes sense. I definitely expect lessons, classes, and equipment to cost money. But none of that stuff seems like it's all that expensive. I'm currently taking a martial arts class for $50 a month. The kids' classes are like $35 a month I think. A lot of it seems like you choose how much you want to pay. When I was a kid my parents sent me to these political indoctrination camps as a teenager where you visit the UN and the DNC and stuff like that. They spent thousands and all I got out of it was this story. A lot of stuff parents obsess over doesn't really seem to be that important. On the other end of the spectrum, I had weekly private French lessons for three years for I think something like $75 a month. High impact, low cost (my French is very strong). As with so much in life, it seems like the important part is avoiding the financial traps that society sets for you. I hear ya on the drivers' licenses bit, but it's not like you have to buy your kids cars or anything. To account for the fact that they're probably gonna crash one, you can get an old beater that won't break the bank if they wrap it around a tree. And saving a zillion dollars for college seems crazy in this day and age. It feels kind of like the tide is already turning against the "college uber alles" ideology and I doubt things will be anywhere near the same in 14 years. And if they are, 14 years of compounded tuition inflation will mean a year of college will cost like $150k. Nobody can afford to pay that. Everyone who goes will get like 95% expenses paid scholarships and there will be financially sane alternatives for people paying attention.

I mean, poor people used to raise like 7 kids on one income before there was a social safety net. I just don't buy the idea that kids are this huge expense. I think most of it is basically the cost of keeping up with the Joneses. If everyone in your social group is paying for all-day daycare for their newborns and sending their preschoolers to intensive Mandarin classes and buying each one of their kids new laptops and smartphones and video game consoles every two years and a private car as soon as they get their license, there's pressure for you do to the same. But those expenses are a choice.

[WiseOne]

The plot in the OP is severely oversimplified. It doesn't take taxes into account, and apparently it also assumes quite significant "wage growth" that may exist on some other planet, but not this one. Also, it completely ignores work-related costs: childcare, commuting, work clothes, lunches, and prepared foods at home, for example. These are likely to be greater than her take-home pay from that $44K paycheck.

And, the SS difference assumes that SS isn't going to be decimated by the time Jane retires.

Hopefully, Jane's decision to have children wasn't made for monetary reasons anyway.

[MachineGhost]

I mean, poor people used to raise like 7 kids on one income before there was a social safety net. I just don't buy the idea that kids are this huge expense. I think most of it is basically the cost of keeping up with the Joneses. If everyone in your social group is paying for all-day daycare for their newborns and sending their preschoolers to intensive Mandarin classes and buying each one of their kids new laptops and smartphones and video game consoles every two years and a private car as soon as they get their license, there's pressure for you do to the same. But those expenses are a choice.

Poor people had so many kids because they didn't have a TV to watch at night. My Gma had an amazing 8 siblings growing up in rural NC. Yeah, I can't believe it either -- doing the nasty is not THAT interesting.

But what you're doing is essentially sacrificing your kid's social signaling to raise them cheaply. They're not gonna have the access and opportunities of the transational elite if you don't raise them that way -- that much should be self-evident. But looking ahead 14 years with this thread title in mind, I agree college will highly likely be way less of an issue than being of lower social class is nowadays. I'm so glad I wasn't dumb enough to get anyone knocked up (like many of my peers) because the kids would now be around the age where all of these social signaling issues would be a very serious consideration and not something that can be just ignored (or necessarily in your control if they repeat the same dumb mistakes of their parents which I've also seen in some of my peers). One would hope the kids could emotionally manage [self]employment without a degree, but that seems pretty risky bet to take if their temperament and skills aren't conducive to going against the crowd (and frankly, how many are really?). Those are the ones who will really cost you nowadays.

It's obvious the colored haven't got this message yet. They continue to breed while poor and just don't consider all of these issues. It's so annoying. Throw in the obesity epidemic and I'm overwhelmed.

[MachineGhost]

The plot in the OP is severely oversimplified. It doesn't take taxes into account, and apparently it also assumes quite significant "wage growth" that may exist on some other planet, but not this one. Also, it completely ignores work-related costs: childcare, commuting, work clothes, lunches, and prepared foods at home, for example. These are likely to be greater than her take-home pay from that $44K paycheck.

And, the SS difference assumes that SS isn't going to be decimated by the time Jane retires.

Hopefully, Jane's decision to have children wasn't made for monetary reasons anyway.

Well, $44K is obviously not indicative of a job in NYC nor a transnational elite. Those would be earning six figures or thereabouts. So lets say its for a housewife in the Midwest? Think Roseanne in inflation adjusted terms.

Of course, to be PC, "Jane" nowadays is actually Hispanic or Black. What whites are still at that level are undoubtedly stuck in a lower class stigma they can't escape from. It's a problem because my generation is the last that didn't obsesss about degrees or was technology skill proficient (i.e. PCs), so that is the white angst of the Trump base in my view.

[Pointedstick]

Being a transnational elite is overrated. Been there, done that. It's exhausting and unsatisfying after you get beyond the initial burst of excitement and money. That's why I moved to flyover country. And it can actually close doors for you, too. Not a lot of lefty transnational elites go into the military, construction, or skilled trades, open restaurant franchises, become real estate investors, start small businesses, or do similar things. All perfectly acceptable ways to earn a comfortable living, and you can actually see the impact of what you're doing, more so than teaching victimology studies or re-designing some flash-in-the-pan startup's logo while trying to make ends meet in a $2,000 a month studio apartment.

[MachineGhost]

[Reub]

When can robots become a victimized group so that they can vote for Democrats?

[flyingpylon]

I mean, poor people used to raise like 7 kids on one income before there was a social safety net. I just don't buy the idea that kids are this huge expense. I think most of it is basically the cost of keeping up with the Joneses. If everyone in your social group is paying for all-day daycare for their newborns and sending their preschoolers to intensive Mandarin classes and buying each one of their kids new laptops and smartphones and video game consoles every two years and a private car as soon as they get their license, there's pressure for you do to the same. But those expenses are a choice.

Couple of things here. It's true that every expense is a choice, and when your kids are young it's entirely the parents' choice. But kids have a way of getting older and forming opinions of their own that are heavily influenced (against your will!) by friends, advertising, society in general, poor decisions by other parents, and all kinds of other things you hadn't considered. As an adult it's easy to refuse to keep up with the Joneses and let the chips fall where they may. But kids often don't have the same perspective or values. Sometimes they are simply unreasonable. So many of the decisions end up being these long drawn-out negotiations where your initial position gets eroded over time, partly by reconsiderations but also by rationalizations made in the interest of domestic harmony. Sometimes the issue goes away on its own, and sometimes it actually starts to sound good to you!

In some cases the choices really do have social impacts for the kids that you might not initially be aware of. For example, with boys in particular, video game consoles are a huge deal. The boys all get online and play games together, a lot of socializing gets done that way, and it carries over into their interactions at school, etc. If you refuse to purchase the right console or sometimes the right game, you're making a real impact on your kid's social life. You could see that as a good thing or a bad thing, but it's there. Believe me, I realize how completely shallow and ridiculous that sounds, and I am in no way saying that there should be no limits at all, but it's difficult to understand until you see it all play out. You can't just be the grumpy old man that says "In my day, we never blah blah blah..." The world is different now.

Then of course there are issues that just are what they are. Your kids will start to eat like adults (or two adults!), they will wear adult-sized and priced clothes (and develop brand preferences), they will be charged adult prices to attend events. They may need things like braces. They may display an aptitude for a sport or other activity that costs more to participate in as their skill level increases (and I'm not just talking about ultra-elite travel teams or pursuing scholarships or anything silly like that... just participating with comparably skilled and like-minded kids). They might get (seemingly) "once in a lifetime" opportunities to travel with a particular group of friends. They may develop interests and hobbies that you'd like to encourage because you can see real-world applications but they can get awfully expensive. And I haven't even gotten to cars or college yet...

Anyway, I've gone on long enough but the point is that raising kids starts out cheap and it's easy to think it will continue forever, but it doesn't really work out that way. Obviously the location and culture you're surrounded with will make a huge difference, so choose wisely or change before the kids are old enough to notice.