Artificial Intelligence is from a technical point of view a complex domain. There are lots of papers with theories about neural networks and all sorts of robot control systems available. Even experts are not sure, which of them is a well written paper and which is providing boring information. A better idea is to judge about the status of robotics by take a look into commercial available products. Some brandnames are available like Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Waymo, Moley robotics. They have in common that more than a single youtube video are available in which the engineers are demonstrating what is possible today.
The latest series of Agility robotics is able to walk on two legs, can climb stairs and is able to hold a box in the hands. The Waymo car is able to drive on the street alone, while the latest robot from Moley is able to cook a meal. All of the videos have someting in common. They are very new which means, that the videos are uploaded in the last 2 years and all of them showing robotics not available before. That means, the technology has made a big progress and it seems that all the difficulties are solved.
What will happen, if only the robotics from the mentioned companies are used in reality? Lots of human work can be done with these machines. There is no need for human truck drivers, for human cooking chef and for a human postal service. The main problem with this development is, that it is much faster than even experts have assumed. And what will happen in 2 years or even 4 years from now? Under the assumption that the trend is valid, the robots get improved and the result is, that the robots in reality have more skills than the robots from movies.
The interesting situation is that the current society isn't prepared for this kind of technology. What is expected by science fiction authors is, that in around 30 years from now some small progress is made towards fully autonomous production. But if the revolution is available within 2 years it will become too fast for the world. The only hope for critiques of technology is, that the videos of Boston Dynamics and Agility robotics are fake. That means, that the robots are performing great in a staged scenario but struggle on real tasks. This will make it impossible to use robots in real life condition.
Analyzing if robots are useful in practical application can be done by monitoring two parameters. First, the price of goods and second how important human work is for a society. If a robot revolution is there, the price for goods will drop to zero and human work becomes a low priority, because all the work is done by robots which are working for lower cost. If the engineers are struggle to introduce robots in the real world, the price for goods remains constant and human labor can't replaced by machines.
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