Why we will rely on robots
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0:01 - 0:02Well, Arthur C. Clarke,
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0:02 - 0:05a famous science fiction writer from the 1950s,
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0:05 - 0:09said that, "We overestimate technology in the short term,
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0:09 - 0:12and we underestimate it in the long term."
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0:12 - 0:14And I think that's some of the fear that we see
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0:14 - 0:19about jobs disappearing from artificial intelligence and robots.
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0:19 - 0:21That we're overestimating the technology in the short term.
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0:21 - 0:27But I am worried whether we're going to get the technology we need in the long term.
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0:27 - 0:33Because the demographics are really going to leave us with lots of jobs that need doing
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0:33 - 0:38and that we, our society, is going to have to be built on the shoulders of steel of robots in the future.
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0:38 - 0:41So I'm scared we won't have enough robots.
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0:41 - 0:45But fear of losing jobs to technology has been around for a long time.
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0:45 - 0:49Back in 1957, there was a Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn movie.
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0:49 - 0:51So you know how it ended up,
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0:51 - 0:55Spencer Tracy brought a computer, a mainframe computer of 1957, in
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0:55 - 0:57to help the librarians.
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0:57 - 1:00The librarians in the company would do things like answer for the executives,
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1:00 - 1:04"What are the names of Santa's reindeer?"
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1:04 - 1:05And they would look that up.
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1:05 - 1:08And this mainframe computer was going to help them with that job.
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1:08 - 1:12Well of course a mainframe computer in 1957 wasn't much use for that job.
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1:12 - 1:15The librarians were afraid their jobs were going to disappear.
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1:15 - 1:17But that's not what happened in fact.
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1:17 - 1:22The number of jobs for librarians increased for a long time after 1957.
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1:22 - 1:25It wasn't until the Internet came into play,
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1:25 - 1:28the web came into play and search engines came into play
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1:28 - 1:30that the need for librarians went down.
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1:30 - 1:34And I think everyone from 1957 totally underestimated
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1:34 - 1:39the level of technology we would all carry around in our hands and in our pockets today.
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1:39 - 1:45And we can just ask: "What are the names of Santa's reindeer?" and be told instantly --
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1:45 - 1:47or anything else we want to ask.
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1:47 - 1:52By the way, the wages for librarians went up faster
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1:52 - 1:55than the wages for other jobs in the U.S. over that same time period,
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1:55 - 1:59because librarians became partners of computers.
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1:59 - 2:02Computers became tools, and they got more tools that they could use
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2:02 - 2:04and become more effective during that time.
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2:04 - 2:06Same thing happened in offices.
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2:06 - 2:08Back in the old days, people used spreadsheets.
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2:08 - 2:10Spreadsheets were spread sheets of paper,
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2:10 - 2:13and they calculated by hand.
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2:13 - 2:15But here was an interesting thing that came along.
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2:15 - 2:17With the revolution around 1980 of P.C.'s,
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2:17 - 2:22the spreadsheet programs were tuned for office workers,
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2:22 - 2:24not to replace office workers,
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2:24 - 2:28but it respected office workers as being capable of being programmers.
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2:28 - 2:31So office workers became programmers of spreadsheets.
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2:31 - 2:33It increased their capabilities.
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2:33 - 2:36They no longer had to do the mundane computations,
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2:36 - 2:39but they could do something much more.
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2:39 - 2:42Now today, we're starting to see robots in our lives.
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2:42 - 2:45On the left there is the PackBot from iRobot.
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2:45 - 2:48When soldiers came across roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan,
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2:48 - 2:52instead of putting on a bomb suit and going out and poking with a stick,
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2:52 - 2:54as they used to do up until about 2002,
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2:54 - 2:56they now send the robot out.
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2:56 - 2:58So the robot takes over the dangerous jobs.
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2:58 - 3:03On the right are some TUGs from a company called Aethon in Pittsburgh.
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3:03 - 3:05These are in hundreds of hospitals across the U.S.
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3:05 - 3:08And they take the dirty sheets down to the laundry.
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3:08 - 3:09They take the dirty dishes back to the kitchen.
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3:09 - 3:12They bring the medicines up from the pharmacy.
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3:12 - 3:14And it frees up the nurses and the nurse's aides
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3:14 - 3:18from doing that mundane work of just mechanically pushing stuff around
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3:18 - 3:20to spend more time with patients.
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3:20 - 3:25In fact, robots have become sort of ubiquitous in our lives in many ways.
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3:25 - 3:30But I think when it comes to factory robots, people are sort of afraid,
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3:30 - 3:34because factory robots are dangerous to be around.
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3:34 - 3:39In order to program them, you have to understand six-dimensional vectors and quaternions.
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3:39 - 3:42And ordinary people can't interact with them.
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3:42 - 3:45And I think it's the sort of technology that's gone wrong.
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3:45 - 3:48It's displaced the worker from the technology.
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3:48 - 3:52And I think we really have to look at technologies
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3:52 - 3:54that ordinary workers can interact with.
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3:54 - 3:57And so I want to tell you today about Baxter, which we've been talking about.
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3:57 - 4:02And Baxter, I see, as a way -- a first wave of robot
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4:02 - 4:06that ordinary people can interact with in an industrial setting.
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4:06 - 4:07So Baxter is up here.
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4:07 - 4:10This is Chris Harbert from Rethink Robotics.
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4:10 - 4:12We've got a conveyor there.
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4:12 - 4:15And if the lighting isn't too extreme --
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4:15 - 4:19Ah, ah! There it is. It's picked up the object off the conveyor.
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4:19 - 4:22It's going to come bring it over here and put it down.
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4:22 - 4:25And then it'll go back, reach for another object.
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4:25 - 4:29The interesting thing is Baxter has some basic common sense.
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4:29 - 4:31By the way, what's going on with the eyes?
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4:31 - 4:32The eyes are on the screen there.
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4:32 - 4:35The eyes look ahead where the robot's going to move.
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4:35 - 4:37So a person that's interacting with the robot
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4:37 - 4:41understands where it's going to reach and isn't surprised by its motions.
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4:41 - 4:43Here Chris took the object out of its hand,
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4:43 - 4:46and Baxter didn't go and try to put it down;
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4:46 - 4:48it went back and realized it had to get another one.
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4:48 - 4:51It's got a little bit of basic common sense, goes and picks the objects.
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4:51 - 4:53And Baxter's safe to interact with.
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4:53 - 4:56You wouldn't want to do this with a current industrial robot.
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4:56 - 4:58But with Baxter it doesn't hurt.
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4:58 - 5:02It feels the force, understands that Chris is there
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5:02 - 5:05and doesn't push through him and hurt him.
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5:05 - 5:08But I think the most interesting thing about Baxter is the user interface.
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5:08 - 5:11And so Chris is going to come and grab the other arm now.
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5:11 - 5:17And when he grabs an arm, it goes into zero-force gravity-compensated mode
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5:17 - 5:19and graphics come up on the screen.
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5:19 - 5:23You can see some icons on the left of the screen there for what was about its right arm.
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5:23 - 5:26He's going to put something in its hand, he's going to bring it over here,
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5:26 - 5:31press a button and let go of that thing in the hand.
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5:31 - 5:36And the robot figures out, ah, he must mean I want to put stuff down.
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5:36 - 5:37It puts a little icon there.
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5:37 - 5:43He comes over here, and he gets the fingers to grasp together,
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5:43 - 5:47and the robot infers, ah, you want an object for me to pick up.
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5:47 - 5:49That puts the green icon there.
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5:49 - 5:54He's going to map out an area of where the robot should pick up the object from.
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5:54 - 5:59It just moves it around, and the robot figures out that was an area search.
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5:59 - 6:01He didn't have to select that from a menu.
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6:01 - 6:04And now he's going to go off and train the visual appearance of that object
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6:04 - 6:06while we continue talking.
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6:06 - 6:08So as we continue here,
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6:08 - 6:10I want to tell you about what this is like in factories.
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6:10 - 6:11These robots we're shipping every day.
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6:11 - 6:13They go to factories around the country.
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6:13 - 6:14This is Mildred.
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6:14 - 6:16Mildred's a factory worker in Connecticut.
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6:16 - 6:18She's worked on the line for over 20 years.
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6:18 - 6:21One hour after she saw her first industrial robot,
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6:21 - 6:25she had programmed it to do some tasks in the factory.
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6:25 - 6:27She decided she really liked robots.
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6:27 - 6:32And it was doing the simple repetitive tasks that she had had to do beforehand.
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6:32 - 6:33Now she's got the robot doing it.
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6:33 - 6:36When we first went out to talk to people in factories
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6:36 - 6:39about how we could get robots to interact with them better,
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6:39 - 6:40one of the questions we asked them was,
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6:40 - 6:43"Do you want your children to work in a factory?"
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6:43 - 6:47The universal answer was "No, I want a better job than that for my children."
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6:47 - 6:51And as a result of that, Mildred is very typical
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6:51 - 6:52of today's factory workers in the U.S.
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6:52 - 6:55They're older, and they're getting older and older.
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6:55 - 6:57There aren't many young people coming into factory work.
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6:57 - 7:01And as their tasks become more onerous on them,
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7:01 - 7:04we need to give them tools that they can collaborate with,
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7:04 - 7:05so that they can be part of the solution,
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7:05 - 7:10so that they can continue to work and we can continue to produce in the U.S.
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7:10 - 7:14And so our vision is that Mildred who's the line worker
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7:14 - 7:17becomes Mildred the robot trainer.
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7:17 - 7:18She lifts her game,
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7:18 - 7:23like the office workers of the 1980's lifted their game of what they could do.
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7:23 - 7:27We're not giving them tools that they have to go and study for years and years in order to use.
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7:27 - 7:31They're tools that they can just learn how to operate in a few minutes.
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7:31 - 7:35There's two great forces that are both volitional but inevitable.
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7:35 - 7:38That's climate change and demographics.
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7:38 - 7:40Demographics is really going to change our world.
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7:40 - 7:44This is the percentage of adults who are working age.
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7:44 - 7:46And it's gone down slightly over the last 40 years.
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7:46 - 7:50But over the next 40 years, it's going to change dramatically, even in China.
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7:50 - 7:56The percentage of adults who are working age drops dramatically.
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7:56 - 8:01And turned up the other way, the people who are retirement age goes up very, very fast,
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8:01 - 8:05as the baby boomers get to retirement age.
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8:05 - 8:08That means there will be more people with fewer social security dollars
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8:08 - 8:11competing for services.
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8:11 - 8:15But more than that, as we get older we get more frail
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8:15 - 8:17and we can't do all the tasks we used to do.
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8:17 - 8:21If we look at the statistics on the ages of caregivers,
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8:21 - 8:26before our eyes those caregivers are getting older and older.
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8:26 - 8:28That's happening statistically right now.
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8:28 - 8:34And as the number of people who are older, above retirement age and getting older, as they increase,
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8:34 - 8:36there will be less people to take care of them.
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8:36 - 8:38And I think we're really going to have to have robots to help us.
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8:38 - 8:41And I don't mean robots in terms of companions.
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8:41 - 8:45I mean robots doing the things that we normally do for ourselves
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8:45 - 8:46but get harder as we get older.
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8:46 - 8:49Getting the groceries in from the car, up the stairs, into the kitchen.
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8:49 - 8:52Or even, as we get very much older,
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8:52 - 8:55driving our cars to go visit people.
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8:55 - 9:01And I think robotics gives people a chance to have dignity as they get older
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9:01 - 9:05by having control of the robotic solution.
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9:05 - 9:08So they don't have to rely on people that are getting scarcer to help them.
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9:08 - 9:15And so I really think that we're going to be spending more time
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9:15 - 9:17with robots like Baxter
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9:17 - 9:24and working with robots like Baxter in our daily lives. And that we will --
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9:24 - 9:26Here, Baxter, it's good.
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9:26 - 9:31And that we will all come to rely on robots over the next 40 years
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9:31 - 9:33as part of our everyday lives.
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9:33 - 9:34Thanks very much.
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9:34 - 9:37(Applause)
- Title:
- Why we will rely on robots
- Speaker:
- Rodney Brooks
- Description:
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Scaremongers play on the idea that robots will simply replace people on the job. In fact, they can become our essential collaborators, freeing us up to spend time on less mundane and mechanical challenges. Rodney Brooks points out how valuable this could be as the number of working-age adults drops and the number of retirees swells. He introduces us to Baxter, the robot with eyes that move and arms that react to touch, which could work alongside an aging population -- and learn to help them at home, too.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 09:56
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Why we will rely on robots | ||
Valérie Boor commented on English subtitles for Why we will rely on robots | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Why we will rely on robots | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Why we will rely on robots | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Why we will rely on robots | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Why we will rely on robots | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Why we will rely on robots | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Why we will rely on robots |
Valérie Boor
Dear fellow-translators,
Would someone please be able to comment on what Mr Brooks could have meant with "volitional" when he (seems to have) said:
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@7:31 - 7:36
"There's two great forces that are both volitional but inevitable."
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I'm very curious, and can come up with four explanations, but would like to see what you all think, in order to choose a fitting translation.
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The first explanation being that we should see it as a metaphor, as if climate change and demographics seem to have a will of their own - since we cannot control them single-handedly.
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I have a hard time believing the second possibility, where he actually thinks there is an element of will-power to these forces, though that does seem to be what he says.
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The third possibility, is there another meaning to volitional, that I'm unaware of?
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Finally, it could be we heard wrong, and he could be saying something else entirely.
Anyone? I'd be very grateful!
Kind regards,
Valérie