Tuesday, July 25, 2017

These people are conning you for their own purposes.

Elon Musk says - A.I. is going to kill us all.

Zuckerberg says - shut up bruh -  my whole business is built on spying on peoples habits. (essentially algorithms/ A.I)

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Listen, I've been covering robotics for longer than I care to admit at this point. This whole blog was started and was initially dedicated to robotics. It's in the title! And do you see how many times I post about this now? Almost never. And it isn't because I've become less interested or that I don't see robots all the freaking time, it's because there just isn't anything interesting. Even with the advent of A.I. For along as they've been working on this, the whole thing is actually quite disappointing to be honest.  

All of the billionaires talking about this right now are big government types. So they are going to be on the side of government regulating the shit out of things because they know they are rich enough to get past it. On one hand they encourage government to squeeze people so they can barely make it. Then in a last ditch reaction businesses deploy automation to stay alive and then these assholes scream about how robots are going to kill us all. They are playing on your irrational fears.

For example - everyone freaks out about how the Tesla plant is filled with nothing but robots. Right? Do you know how many "people" Tesla employs right now? 30,000. By that standard Musk is doing a really shitty job. That is one person for every freaking car they sell each quarter! So many people in fact that there is a Instagram page dedicated to the mad max nature of their parking lot.

I will believe that A.I. is going to kill us all when I never have to use a phone tree again. That will be the true test of A.I. Not burger flipping. Phone trees have been around for decades now. People in general are overly optimistic about product cycles. And this is a long tail cycle.

4 comments:

  1. I think that you may be underestimating its potential. Everyday, technology is stripping away at our freedoms. For example, traffic tickets. Used to B you had to run a red light in front of an officer in order to get fined now we have cameras that will mail you tickets without the need of labor. In my town they are using facial recognition attached to their vehicles in order to automatically spot known felons. That means less officers and more people in jail. Whether its commerce or keeping a community in line, automation is changing how we even think about privacy. I dont think that we can stop it but at some point the robots will be stealing $0.50 from every dollar and no one will be able to do anything about it.

    DF

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  2. No.....I understand it's potential. I was at a conference over the summer that had a nice new shiny cruiser displaying the police's ~crowd~ facial recognition software. If you want to be freaked out - think about that. They were using it on the running of the bulls. All the faces had a box around them. Some of the companies in the valley are starting to use this on their campuses. So I totally get the potential. I'm not crazy about it for sure.

    But that is like saying "anything can happen". Technically anything can't happen. Sometimes unusual things do... and just because some things "can" happen - doesn't mean they do.

    People can vote with their feet. People are choosing to let companies do this. Technology is not stripping away our freedoms. People are choosing to give their freedoms away. And they can get away with it because the economy is so weak and billionaires are chumping people out. They want you to feel afraid and powerless. And I think that is bullshit.

    It stops people from trying to be the new Facebook which doesn't spy on you. Or whatever.

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  3. I clicked the link to the Tesla parking lot. I'm guessing few of those 30,000 employees can afford to buy even the base model Tesla.

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  4. Yeah, but robots can't afford to buy a base model Tesla either.

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