Robots will never be all over the place because there just aren’t enough processors and circuits to make it happen (and think of the electricity bill).
By contrast, you come ready made. No processors required. True, you might need a bit of training, but you’ll get there given time.
Plus there are people everywhere. More than a million of us are looking for work at any time. Who needs bots? People are more fun to have around, too.
Robots can’t cope with humans. Robots have one ultimate flaw. They can’t deal with the unpredictability of human beings.
Just look at driverless cars. They’d be perfectly happy, driving up and down empty roads, turning corners, reversing, stuff like that.
The problem is that there are people on those roads, and people do the strangest things.
In March, a driverless car from the tech startup Cruise was trying to make a left turn when it smashed into Infiniti Q50 performing “donuts.”
For the uninitiated, this involves slamming the steering wheel hard to one side and going round and round in circles to make circular rubber skid-marks.
That wasn’t in the driverless car’s algorithms.
Tesla’s self-driving cars will fail not because the tech is no good, but because people aren’t.
Which is why we will ultimately destroy them, rather than the other way around.
Robots have their uses. We may use them to slash NHS waiting lists, maintain sewers and manage investment portfolios. But we’ll still be the ones in charge. No wonder they think we’re scum. The problem is, we’re unpredictable scum. And they can’t handle it.
