From: Chris Hind (bholat@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 01 1996 - 02:10:20 MDT
>Hmm, I failed to notice a dramatic increase in the use of robots just
>lately. Manual labor has still a fair niche. Only large hardware ANNs
>will change this situation, and these are unlikely to appear too soon.
I have too failed to notice a dramatic increase in the use of robots.
>> at many brainless tasks, and better machines will(be able) to out perform
>> them in the remaining drudgeries.
>You know, most people don't like being unemployed. Trivial things like
>housing, food, clothing, and such. They might get pissed sufficiently to
>start an insurrection.
Jobs will need to be eventually of the information & research type ONLY, due
to the lack of grunt labor jobs. This will probably be one of the steps in
the years pre uploading when jobs will move from grunt labor type to
information & research type. The people with the brains will survive and
people who don't have the brains to keep up will end up homeless
unfortunetly. Unfortunetly many people won't have the brains to survive the
21st century. You will see alot of people getting REALLY smart REALLY fast
in order to survive in a world where if you don't know all the little
technical details someone will screw you over.
>> A big question is how much will it cost to maintain a drone work force.
>> I'm sure that genetic engineers could make more efficient organisms than
>> those currently available, but they'll still need food and waste
>I know a bit about DNA tinkering, and I think this damn unlikely.
Why? Combination bio & tech could enable many more elements into the genetic
mix allowing many new and different combinations and structures to be built.
What if we could build silicon or flourine-based lifeforms?
>> removal. Who will provide the mindless service of feeding and clean up
>> after the drones-- machines, humans, or more drones?
>If they are sufficiently smart to operate the machinery, they sure are
>smart enough to feed themselves.
True
>> Moral Question: How is bulding an race of drones in a laboratory for
>> labor different from just building designer humans to perform those same
>> tasks? Would these humans be created or enslaved?
>This is pure slavery, of course. Tinkering with human DNA to produce a
>race of slaves is immoral as hell, imo.
Why? They'd just be mindless animals running only on preprogrammed
pleasure-driven instincts to do their desired task.
>Currently, _any_ tinkering with
>human DNA is a strong no no since the yield is so low. Site directed
>mutagenesis or DNA snipping/insertion is easy on bacteria where you
>select automagically e.g. by ampicillin resistancy, but just try this on
>human embryos. 99.999 % nonviable. Hoo, boy.
So far they have been able to nearly cure hemophillia and that "bubble boy"
syndrome. One kid was a hemophilliac and the other had that syndrome. So
they infected them as a fetus and allowed the virus to spread through their
system, replacing a single gene in each cell.
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