Robotic Nation Evidence

It's just what you expect in a Robotic Nation -- the economy is growing vigorously, but very few people (outside the wealthiest) are seeing any benefit from that growth. Reports this week confirm that the process is even affecting people with college degrees:

College-grad wages stuck in a slump

From the article:

Wage stagnation, long the bane of blue-collar workers, is now hitting people with bachelor's degrees for the first time in 30 years. Earnings for workers with four-year degrees fell 5.2 percent between 2000 and 2004 when adjusted for inflation, according to White House economists.

As robots move into the economy, we will see more and more of this trend. For details see:

• Robotic Nation
• Manna

Video Top Ten: Robots

Man creates his robot double. The two look remarkably alike!

Android Clone

Maybe We Should Leave That Up to the Computer

From the article: "Do you think your high-paid managers really know best? A Dutch sociology professor has doubts. The professor, Chris Snijders of the Eindhoven University of Technology, has been studying the routine decisions that managers make, and is convinced that computer models, by and large, can do a better job of it. He even issued a challenge late last year to any company willing to pit its humans against his algorithms."

What Manna says:

In addition, Burger-G saved a ton of money. In 2010, Burger-G had just over 1,000 stores in the United States. Manna worked so well that Burger-G deployed it nationwide in 2011. By 2012 Burger-G had cut more than 3,000 of its higher-paid store employees -- mostly assistant managers and managers. That one change saved the company nearly $100 million per year, and all that money came straight to the bottom line for the restaurant chain. Shareholders were ecstatic. Mr. G gave himself another big raise to celebrate. In addition, Manna had optimized store staffing and had gotten a significant productivity boost out of the employees in the store. That saved another $150 million. $250 million made a huge difference in the fast food industry.

So, the first real wave of robots did not replace all the factory workers as everyone imagined. The robots replaced middle management and significantly improved the performance of minimum wage employees. All of the fast food chains watched the Burger-G experiment with Manna closely, and by 2012 they started installing Manna systems as well. By 2014 or so, nearly every business in America that had a significant pool of minimum-wage employees was installing Manna software or something similar. They had to do it in order to compete.

In other words, Manna spread through the American corporate landscape like wildfire. And my dad was right. It was when all of these new Manna systems began talking to each other that things started to get uncomfortable.

See Manna for details.

Closing the circle

Basically the idea is to create robotic tailors to replace the people who now sew garments together in third-world countries.

From the article: "Details of exactly how these high-tech tailor's dummies work are closely guarded, pending patent protection, but the basic idea is that a network of actuators inside the dummy will push and pull a flexible outer shell into different shapes. The dummy will then be used as a template to locate pieces of fabric in the appropriate position while robotic sewing arms buzz around stitching the pieces together, much like the spot-welding machines found in car factories. To what extent Leapfrog is a response to genuine market need, as opposed to a piece of industrial policy intended to keep the European garment-making industry alive in the face of competition from low-wage countries, is not yet clear."

Brainy Robots Start Stepping Into Daily Life

From the article: "Robot cars drive themselves across the desert, electronic eyes perform lifeguard duty in swimming pools and virtual enemies with humanlike behavior battle video game players. These are some fruits of the research field known as artificial intelligence, where reality is finally catching up to the science-fiction hype. A half-century after the term was coined, both scientists and engineers say they are making rapid progress in simulating the human brain, and their work is finding its way into a new wave of real-world products."

Little Bird helicopter flies unmanned for first time

From the article: "Now the Little Bird has achieved a major milestone in its development by flying unmanned for the first time. The payload for the first unmanned flight weighed 740 pounds, but could have carried an additional 550 pounds of payload. A more advanced configuration, which is expected to make its first flight later this summer, adds an additional 800 pounds of payload. Add all that up and the weapon payload could be as great as 2000 pounds, flown autonomously while its payload or sensor is guided from a remote site or another platform. We suddenly see a future of battlefields with flocks of warbirds, all networked, armed and very, very dangerous ... and not a pilot in sight!"

Nice photos.

Intel aims for 32 cores by 2010

Should be 15x faster than current chips (although that assumes you either have multi-threaded software or lots of programs to run). A good article.

Also interesting: Review of Intel's latest Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo chips, which were released today.

NASA to use Space Age 'droid' satellites: "NASA scientists say they are ready to test "smart" satellites that can fly in precision formation and are relatively inexpensive to make and operate."

Two of these droids have been delivered to the space station, according to the article.

Hyperactive Bob Fast Food Management Robot

From the article:

Hyperactive Bob, the kitchen production management computer system from Hyperactive Technologies, is now being licensed to Zaxby's, a fast-food restaurant chain with locations in the Southern states. Zaxby's has 330 counter-service chicken specialty restaurants. This artificially intelligent computer system not only takes orders, it gives them as well.

See Manna for details of how this will unfold.

The self-driving Golf that would give Herbie a run for its money

From the article:

But now German car giant Volkswagen has turned fiction into reality by unveiling a fully automatic car which really can drive itself - and at speeds of up to 150mph.

It can weave with tyres screeching around tricky bends and chicanes, and through tightly coned off tracks - without any help or intervention from a human.

The remarkable car is the VW Golf GTi '53 plus 1' codenamed after the number '53' which Herbie carried when racing in his big screen adventures.

The GTi has electronic 'eyes' that use radar and laser sensors in the grille to 'read' the road and send the details back to its computer brain. A sat-nav system tracks its exact position with pin-point precision to within an inch.