R.I.P. Scout26
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY: It’s Time To Welcome Our New Robot Underlings.
Yesterday Boston-based startup Rethink Robotics unveiled Baxter, maybe the only factory robot in living memory to generate prelaunch buzz.Baxter is a vaguely humanoid model—a legless, two-armed, tablet-headed line worker. Its primary selling points are its low price—$22,000, exponentially less than most manufacturing bots—and the assurance that it won’t kill anyone. Baxter can perform a range of repetitive tasks without the need to retrofit assembly lines and with minimal investment. It can even be trained, with operators initially guiding it through specific motions. It’s the closest thing anyone has seen to a general-purpose blue-collar robot.
While they tout the relatively low initial cost, they fail to mention the endless supply of malt liquor they'll need to keep functioning properly.
It is going to get real interesting when technology becomes advanced enough to replace the overwhelming majority of repetitive tasks. It's happened in America. We still manufacture a LOT of things. With fewer and fewer people.
The UAW is going to *expletive deleted* itself.