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Comment by _ibu9 | Hacker News Reader

Most of this seems fairly uncontroversial. This, however

> But a lot of service workers are doing jobs that are unlikely to ever be fully automated. Nobody wants a robot for a teacher or a nanny, for example. And even if we get software with advanced diagnostic capabilities, patients are still going to want doctors to explain the recommendations and nurses to provide hands-on care.

Maybe the author is taking a very short term interpretation of "ever" but I don't know why these jobs are unlikely to be automated of general AI arrives.

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We're social creatures. We like interacting with other people more than we like interacting with machines, even if machines are more efficient in a narrow technical sense. I think this is especially clear for nannies--the main job of the nanny is to cuddle and interact with the baby in ways that only a human being can do.

There are plenty of fitness videos and apps, but people still pay a lot of money for in-person fitness classes. People wouldn't stop going to Starbucks even if someone invented a vending machine that could produce coffee that tastes identical for half the cost.

> We like interacting with other people more than we like interacting with machines

I remember a '70s article in which Bank of America, I think, said that they wouldn't be rolling out ATMs like one of their competitors because customers prefer interacting with a warm friendly pretty teller, not a machine.

We know how the ATM vs human teller preference worked out. (I even have to stick the word "human" in there for clarity because "teller" is almost an archaic word.)

> People wouldn't stop going to Starbucks

People go to Starbucks or similar coffeehouses for many reasons. Better coffee than at home, chance to get away from home or the office, solitude (yes, ironically, you can have more privacy or alone time in a Starbucks than at home or office).

I figure that a Starbucks that was completely automated with no employees and little social interaction, but otherwise identical to a normal Starbucks, would still be quite popular.

Starbucks has these machines and I find it awesome to get my coffee and even chilled latte there for 2,50 instead of 5 or 6 $

The machines taking our jobs is already happening and it is due to our human nature that we are not seeing it: We extrapolate the past into the future and we are seeing physical robots

As some of you (technical people) can better imagine it is and will be much more 'just' software (but a journalist can't that well)

The "reduced" demand for nannys is 'kids playing with their iPhones' and it is already here and going stronger

What will we pay people for in the future? That they are likeable, sympathetic and because 'we like to "interact" with them'?

Seems like this would split the world into very hard skilled people programming the machines and a lot of people catering "what's left" (on the human side, that machines can't do / didn't replace yet) to those

Luckily I am a software developer

"Doctors to explain the recommendations": You could also say "Selling the pills of the Pharma Industry with low regards to side effects"

"Nurses to provide hands-on care": I see "Human Issues" like: She's telling you all her problems she has at home and you have to listen

Tell me the Internet isn't better in quality (than "real random people") already?

I think it is important here to draw a distinction between equivalence without type conversion (eg, ===) vs. equivalence with type conversion (==).

While it may be the case that a robonanny can change a diaper or administer a bottle with a precision greater than or equal to a human human nanny (==), it is not the case that the robonanny understands viscerally what its connection to its charge is (===). Humans are a product of biological evolution and as such, there are certain features of our cognition that are very, very difficult to overcome, not least of which is our collective hangup on our own internal categories (ie, types). This is precisely the reason many people experience possiveness, nostalgia, a fear of the "other", etc., and I believe it also goes a long way toward explaining why so many folks speak of interacting with robots as if they were human as 'icky' or otherwise suboptimal.

That said, I personally believe that we are doing ourselves a disservice by dismissing the humanistic value of providing, on a cultural/societal level, a means for most of us to keep ourselves occupied, fed, and sheltered, regardless of whatever impact such activity may or may not have on the finances of giant corporations.

To quote Daft Punk, "We are human after all".

You must live in a world where people don't make coffee at home due to cost considerations.

The main point of a nanny is to have someone else deal with your kid so that you don't have to.

Machines will almost certainly provide a worse experience than a human at the beginning, but the lower price expands the market significantly to those who could not afford those things before.

Teachers probably won't get replaced for the longest time since they're not paid out of your pocket.

I agree. I think robot nannies will become pretty commonplace as many of the people who can't afford human nannies take advantage of the cheaper mechanical option.

No, the main point of a nanny is to enable both partners to work, which is often a financial necessity, not a luxury.

I was probably projecting, but I'd say day care, in a home or a centre, is a financial necessity, and a nanny is when you have too much money or too many children :)

But the larger point I was trying to make is that most people who need child care are looking for someone to make sure it doesn't die while they're away, not provide some special level of care.

A robot nanny might not be as good as the best humans, but it will be much better than the worst, and people don't like to expose their children to avoidable risk. It's like how I'll eat at McDonalds if I travel somewhere new instead of a possibly superior local restaurant. Consistent mediocrity can beat unreliable quality.

This seems worth dividing into a couple of concerns. One is: Can it provide an accurate enough simulation for the baby? I think we would definitely get there with advanced enough AI, since the level of sophistication needed for cuddling and interacting with babies is lower than, say, having an intelligent conversation.

The other concern is that even if the simulation is good enough, there's still an ick factor to "tricking" a baby into forming an emotional connection with a machine that doesn't have real human feelings.

If we build caretaker robots with software that closely models the internal function of human brains, to the point that we're satisfied that their outward behavior is accompanied by complex and human-like feelings of caring, that problem goes away too. Whether that's even possible is more of a philosophy of mind question; depends on whether you think internal experience depends on the exact nature of the physical substrate.

(Of course if it is possible, there's yet another layer there with the ethical issues of designing a slave race of beings with real feelings, see e.g. Robin Hanson's ideas about "ems.")

Have you ever heard of a Harlow Monkeys? Basically, even monkeys go insane when raised by a "robot"

http://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/studies/HarlowMLE.htm

Those aren't robots, they're inanimate objects. Animate robots are often treated like living beings:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel...

http://www.newsweek.com/japans-robot-dogs-get-funerals-sony-...

Maybe nanny is a bad example. I'd pay good money to get impartial therapy from an AI (guaranteed non-abusive) and then when it comes to solving the problems of humanity in general, a sufficiently smart AI seems like our best bet, on the basis that human nature is yet to be fully understood by humans after centuries of trying...

>We're social creatures. We like interacting with other people more than we like interacting with machines

speak for yourself.

While a human nanny is surely superior, it wouldn't surprise me if people use robot nannies anyway.

Because teachers and nannys are mechanisms of cultural reproduction. We could give those jobs to AI, but they're also some of the few jobs that are actually interesting in an economy where we have no material need for work.

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