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Originally Posted by New Era
There are "some" posters in this thread who are advocating for it right now. Most are discussing it and whether it will ever be feasible.
When does this future of robots doing all manual labor and menial jobs arrive? I know I'm still waiting for my flying car that was promised to me in the 80s.
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It's hard to say. Things are moving fast right now and it seems to be accelerating. That doesn't mean it will stay that way of course.
At the current rate, I can see there being a real issue in about 50 years. Of course, it won't be sudden like one day everything is fine, and the next everyone is unemployed. It will be a gradual enough creep that people will adjust for as long as they can.
Right now, the technology exists to possibly cause an employment crisis, but it isn't being implemented everywhere. For example, there is a brick laying robot that can lay 6,000 bricks in a day compared to the 500 or so that a human can do - and it only takes one worker to work it. In my view, if you can automate something like that, then most manual types of jobs will be in danger. There are even automated toilet cleaners now. Once it becomes cost effective, it will happen IMO. The whole thing is on rails now, if a human can do it, you better believe that someone is trying to make a machine or computer that can do it.
There is one way I can see a future crisis being averted though, and that is allowing or forcing the population to decline. Of course that opens up a whole new can of worms. But that is also a tough sell as capitalist economies are also dependent on population growth.