Thursday, December 1, 2016

Robotic Food Delivery Now a Reality

It's here. The robotic pizza delivery person. There are lots of advantages to such a technology; it will be cheaper than humans, faster, will make less errors and will be better at keeping food hot. Trouble is, it will also send those that deliver food for a living to the unemployment line. Technology is a double-edged sword indeed. Technological unemployment is a serious problem and will only broaden to other jobs and get worse as we advance and technology becomes more capable.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2304330/just-eat-makes-history-with-worlds-first-takeaway-delivered-by-robot/

Interestingly, the problem of technological unemployment has been known for a long time even though it's not really talked about in the mainstream media much. Here's a blast from the past, a strange paper authored by John Maynard Keynes in 1930 where he takes a rather rosey approach to the human race going unemployed at large.

http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

He saw technological advancement as man solving his "economic problem". I'm no luddite or other such anti-technology type, but I can't help but think that the process of technological unemployment is going to to hurt. Big time. Pizzas only sell when there is an employed population that can afford them.

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