From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Sat Aug 25 2001 - 04:25:45 MDT
On Fri, 24 Aug 2001, Brian Atkins wrote:
> Actually where I live, housing construction continues to boom to the
> point where if we didn't have all those Mexicans moving here we'd be
> in a real shortage of labor.
A construction worker does most assuredly not "pound nails" all his life.
They're sophisticated professionals, which use many materials and skills,
and they typically become teachers of novice workers, and then business
owners, which is not at all like pounding nails.
> Strangely I don't see a large movement in the US to replace service
> and labor type jobs with automated methods. So as far as I can tell
Of course not, people are still cheaper. But this doesn't mean the people
you now see pounding nails will continue pounding nails all their life.
> the realistic viewpoint is that manual nail pounding will continue
> right up until Singularity. Hell even my local Subway sandwich shop
Sure.
> still has a crew of 3 humans making my dinner. Webvan failed here
> because 80% of people actually prefer wasting an hour or more pushing
> an old cart around a store and then lugging the food up their house.
> Neo-Luddism or just what consumers really want? -- Brian Atkins
> Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
> http://www.singinst.org/
>
-- Eugen* Leitl leitl
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