In Taiwan they have traffic workers who are robots. They stand in dangerous areas around construction sites and open street holes waving yellow flags. They have a humanoid face and realistic upper torso but sometimes their moving arms are rather skinny, composed of the flag sticks.
Curbside sign-waving isn't a job; it's an exercise in public humiliation -- especially when silly costumes are involved: e.g. mattresses and gorilla suits. Imagine this courtroom scene in seventeeth-century Plymouth, Massachusetts:
"Samuel Pennypacker, for the crime of public expectoration, I sentence thee to eight hours in the stockade, subject to bombardment with rotten eggs and overripe tomatoes by whomever wishes vent their anger at thine heinous misdeeds. Alternatively, if thou so chooseth, thou mayest dress up as a turkey and wave a sign advertising Plymouth's upcoming Fifth Thanksgiving Expo and Community Feast to passing wagons on Shoebuckle Avenue. Which shall it be?"
"Your Honor, I thank thee for the opportunity to choose mine own punishment. I choose the stockade."
I feel sorry for those who have to work under such circumstances and hope that the robots free them to find less demeaning employment.
That said, the robots present an interesting legal conundrum in areas, like my fair city, that have sign ordinances. Presumably, a human waving a sign is an exercise in free speech, which trumps any laws restricting sign size and location, despite any commercial message they might contain. But how does that change when a humanoid robot replaces the human? Are we to endow robots with the same rights guaranteed by the First Amendment? And if so, how do we define the threshold that separates mindless automatons from those of a more sentient capacity?
Curbside sign-waving isn't a job; it's an exercise in public humiliation...
Indeed, it seems that way. But on the other hand, those people apparently have the guts to take a job - any job - to be better than they were without a job. From one perspective, it's humiliating. From another, I can't help feeling those people have got to be tough as nails.
...
...Are we to endow robots with the same rights guaranteed by the First Amendment? ...
That won't happen. But what will happen is those same said robots will be equipped with telepresence equipment that will, at least in theory, be "manned" by somebody somewhere, even if it's one dude snoozing in front of five hundred video feeds. Heck, if corporations are people, too, my friends, then people, even if they're time-shared via a corporate-owned server someplace, are people, too. Those robots will have total rights endowed by a mere sliver of human telepresence - and heaps of corporate cash.
Oldbitcollector (Jeff)
Posts: 8,091
Comments
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81441929/
Nor are the one-legged variety:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/all/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNEt0U5nOIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6a2lFp_jkQ
"Your Honor, I thank thee for the opportunity to choose mine own punishment. I choose the stockade."
I feel sorry for those who have to work under such circumstances and hope that the robots free them to find less demeaning employment.
That said, the robots present an interesting legal conundrum in areas, like my fair city, that have sign ordinances. Presumably, a human waving a sign is an exercise in free speech, which trumps any laws restricting sign size and location, despite any commercial message they might contain. But how does that change when a humanoid robot replaces the human? Are we to endow robots with the same rights guaranteed by the First Amendment? And if so, how do we define the threshold that separates mindless automatons from those of a more sentient capacity?
Enquiring Minds Want to Know! TM
-Phil
Indeed, it seems that way. But on the other hand, those people apparently have the guts to take a job - any job - to be better than they were without a job. From one perspective, it's humiliating. From another, I can't help feeling those people have got to be tough as nails.
That won't happen. But what will happen is those same said robots will be equipped with telepresence equipment that will, at least in theory, be "manned" by somebody somewhere, even if it's one dude snoozing in front of five hundred video feeds. Heck, if corporations are people, too, my friends, then people, even if they're time-shared via a corporate-owned server someplace, are people, too. Those robots will have total rights endowed by a mere sliver of human telepresence - and heaps of corporate cash.