Robotic Nation Evidence

Is nothing sacred??? Robots this week started their attack on jobs at the symphony orchestra, with a two-pronged onslaught designed to eliminate humans from the symphony as quickly as possible. [yes, I am being sarcastic -- still, it is a fascinating development]

First there is QRIO, Sony's small humanoid robot. Sony plans to take the lead in the symphony marketplace by going after the conductor's slot. According to this article:

Tokyo's Philharmonic Orchestra has a new member. Qrio, an experimental robot built by Sony, joined the orchestra for rehearsals on Tuesday.

The robot served as conductor for the group, leading them through rehearsals of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

The orchestra's full-time conductor says he was very impressed with Qrio's performance, and that the robot's movements were much more fluid than he had expected.

Then, in an unexpected move, Toyota launched a trio of robots, one of which has human-analog lips that will allow Toyota to take over the horn section of orchestras, jazz ensembles and marching bands. According to this Toyota press release:

Toyota developed artificial lips that move with the same finesse as human lips, which, together with robots’ hands, enables the robots to play trumpets like humans do.

Lots of other articles covered this story, including this one, this one and this one. See also this post.

All kidding aside, the point here is simple: there is truly no limit to what robots will be able to do in the near future. Who would have expected a trumpet-playing robot to appear, especially from a car company? It will not be long before robots are taking over millions of jobs -- even jobs that would seem to be sacred, like the ones in the symphony orchestra. See this post and this one for further details.