"What are humans for?"...Wired Magazine Commentary

bee

From the Commentary:

"Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines. But the displaced workers did not sit idle. Instead, automation created hundreds of millions of jobs in entirely new fields. Those who once farmed were now manning the legions of factories that churned out farm equipment, cars, and other industrial products...before the end of this century, 70 percent of today's occupations will likewise be replaced by automation. Yes, dear reader, even you will have your job taken away by machines. In other words, robot replacement is just a matter of time."

Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs:
robots-will-take-our-jobs/all/

Anna

Meanwhile bee, I think your title tells it all. There isn't much use for any activity without an advantage to humanity. Humanity, through it's unique creativity, could have a greater "use" that no robotics can replace. Unfortunately, I must say ---- OR NOT, it's a choice and recent displays of the worse of humanity make one question if people want to survive as a species. Of course, I have never really considered human to be viable.

Mark

Hmmm. Are there also robots to fix and repair the robots that aren't working properly? And who/what will those robots be? Where will they get the parts and materials? Will the robots be designed and programmed to produce even more efficient, less costly robots? I just want one that will cook and mix margarita's.

scott

Already kinda happening. There is a new store in Seattle (opened by a former Amazon exec) that's a men's clothing store called Hointer. Only ONE of each item on display. You scan a QR code with your phone (and I don't understand how you can even use this store without a phone, which tells you the degree of saturation for phones and where things are going with phone interactivity) and pick the size you want.

When you are done selecting things, you click a button on your phone and it tells you to go to a particular dressing room. The clothes are grabbed by robots and delivered within about 30 seconds to a slot in the dressing room. If there is something that you decide you don't want, drop it in a bin and the second it drops into the bin it is taken out of your digital bill.

When you are done, you swipe your card at a terminal in the dressing room area.

This segment clip on youtube has a cheesy host, but shows the shopping experience at this store well. Again, pretty wild to have a store where you can't really shop there (that I can tell) unless you have a phone.

msf

Reply to @scott:
Welcome to catalog showrooms 2.0. The concept was always reduced service and automation.

Wiki is wrong about these showrooms not displaying merchandise - See, e.g. Service Merchandise. The point is that there's a whole spectrum of service/staffing levels that can be offered. On one extreme, you have something like B&H Photo, which has a fully staffed showroom but sends everything to the cashier where it is waiting when you get there; on the other extreme you can have stores with nothing but online catalogs (no help, no product samples displayed) - even less than Hointer.

As to the suggestion that catalog showrooms are reducing the need for human workers: it depends. Here's a NYTimes article from last month entitled "Once Proudly Web Only, Shopping Sites Hang out Real Shingles". That's adding people, by creating brick and mortar outposts for what was originally only online.

MaxBialystock

What are humans for? Used to be religion provided those answers with a religious vocabulary that most of us understood. Some of us eventually figured out that from the start, we can create a sense of purpose, a sense of MEANING for ourselves. Some of us find that by modeling our decisions and priorities after some religious figure or another. Lately, the common discourse in the "public square" (real or virtual) tends toward the technical and mechanical, devoid of any ethical terms whatsoever.... Oh, ya, except that we heard about a big "moral hazard" around the time of the Crash of '08. What that really meant was the risk of too many people losing too much money. "Moral hazard?" REALLY? We can talk about money all day long. We can count it and measure it. We can predict how Markets will do in the future. We can calculate returns, minimize risk on investment, etc. etc etc etc. When all is said and done, money is still nothing but a tool. We can use it for good purposes or for ill. Money and (truly) ethical considerations cannot be separated. We may even convince ourselves that money and ethics CAN be separated. But that doesn't mean we're correct, merely because we've told ourselves that very thing.

Investor

Reply to @scott: This is interesting but I am not quite sure it is a real store. The name of the store is simply taped to the door.

I think this is a startup designed to showcase store automation for other retailers. In other words, they are probably not in the business of selling jeans etc. but selling technology to retailers.

bee

Reply to @MaxBialystock:
Thanks for the reminder Max...for me, somewhere between the virtues of religion and the common everyday exitence of our humanness ring the words of a French Poet.

I first heard these words at a Makem and Clancy Concert on St Patrick's Day:

Be Drunk

MaxBialystock

Hey! I LIKE that s***, I mean, that STUFF. Beaudelaire, figures. What are humans for? What am I here for? Related questions. There are times when I'm truly drunk on sheer beauty: be it Art, Music, or Scotch. I was at a funeral the other day, and an unexpected blessing toward the end got me drunk on the achingly beautiful violin instrumental piece that was being played. Someone gone. But not just remembered. Cherished. And done so in a way that brought out the best in the rest of us. And much of that was accomplished by the music: "Ashokan Farewell."

MaxBialystock

I finally took the time to look up that location-name, after all these years. It's in the Catskills. Ken Burns used this tune as his theme for the PBS series on the Civil War.