What We Get Wrong About Technology

Part of the problem is that we actually don't know what tomorrow will be like, so it's hard to pick the right soothsayer, if you will. Maybe another movie got the smartphone thing right but you never watched it.

Rather than Blade Runner, I think Children of Men will turn out to be a much more prescient vision of what's to come. (Not the main plot line but everything surrounding it.) But like I said... we don't know.

> Jennifer and the many other programmes like her are examples of a “voice-directed application” — just software and a simple, inexpensive earpiece. Such systems have become part of life for warehouse workers: a voice in their ear or instructions on a screen tell them where to go and what to do, down to the fine details. If 13 items must be collected from a shelf, Jennifer will tell the human worker to pick five, then five, then three. “Pick 13” would lead to mistakes. That makes sense. Computers are good at counting and scheduling. Humans are good at picking things off shelves. Why not unbundle the task and give the conscious thinking to the computer, and the mindless grabbing to the human?

I remember reading in Scientific American a few years back, about a study that was very striking and against common intuition. In manufacturing, robots had overtaken humans at a particular task by a long shot. They were able to perform the completion of assemblies much quicker and with higher accuracy; humans coming in afterwards and applying finishes that required small hands, light touches, or hard to explain measurements.

Robots > Humans. Humans finished what robots couldn't.

What wasn't foreseen, however, was that there was an additional step to shave off even more time. Given some artificial intelligence, the robots could actually tell the humans when, and how, to do assembly during and as part of the assembly process. The robot figuring out the most efficient assembly, and instructing the human to do what it couldn't, was a third step of assembly efficiency not foreseen.

It turned out:

Robots + Humans > Robots > Humans.

I think that was a thread in I, Robot.

My favorite is how the robots on the space colony don't believe the humans could have created them, due to how sophisticated they are.

I believe this is the story with Cutie (nickname for QT-1) who invents a religion to justify its existence. The amusing thing was that the rituals of its religion consisted of making sure the space colony functioned properly, so the humans decided to leave the robot's faith alone. And the robot thought that the humans were mindless religious fools for believing in Earth:

"""The robot approached softly and there was sorrow in his voice. “You are going?”

Powell nodded curtly. “There will be others in our place.”

Cutie sighed, with the sound of wind humming through closely spaced wires. “Your term of service is over and the time of dissolution has come. I expected it, but -- well, the Master’s will be done!”

His tone of resignation stung Powell. “Save the sympathy, Cube. We’re heading for Earth, not dissolution.”

"It is best that you think so,” Cutie sighed again. “I see the wisdom of the illusion now. I would not attempt to shake your faith, even if I could.” He departed -- the picture of commiseration."""

--"Reason" by Isaac Asimov