Meet The Robots

We’re going to start paying a lot closer attention to this because the impact these new technologies are going to have on our lives hasn’t been factored into our expectations about the near future. No one else in our corner of the internet is paying attention to the elephant in the room.

What’s going to happen when advances in robotics, automation and deep learning AI abolish the need for cheap labor in our economy and the factories that were offshored return to the United States but are full of nothing but robots? What’s going to happen when most of the jobs in developing countries are wiped out by automation? More than anything else, what is the impact of this going to be in Middle America which has already been devastated by the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs?

Agricultural robots to see massive uptake in next six years

“A new report from market research and consulting firm Tractica projects that agricultural robot shipments will reach 727,000 units per year by 2025, globally.

Agricultural robots, from driverless tractors to livestock robots to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), promise to unlock added productivity and efficiency from farmland as the sector faces labor shortages and changing weather conditions.

Automated tractors and robots have the ability to plant, prune, weed, and harvest, while specialized bots can shear sheep and automatically milk livestock. They’ve even developed robots for castrating livestock – truly a brave new world.

UAVs, meanwhile, can vastly enhance the productivity of agricultural land by accurately sensing irrigation problems, weed or pest infestations, or soil variation, allowing farmers to better assess and rectify their fields. Drones can also be used for spraying and cloud seeding. …”

Silicon Valley Robot Farm Begins Sellings Its First Produce

“Iron Ox, a start-up based in Silicon Valley that focuses on robotic farming, have started selling lettuce and fresh greens in a California grocery.

In October 2018, Iron Ox opened its fully automated farm in San Carlos, California. With the entire farm process redesigned around robotics, the company said its hydroponic system can produce up to 30 times more yield per acre of land compared to traditional farms.

Fresh From The Robot Farm

Iron Ox now sells three types of greens — Genovese basil, red-veined sorrel, and baby head lettuce — at the family-owned grocery Bianchini’s Market in San Carlos. It supplies the store with five to 10 cases of produce from its robot farm each week, and the greens are consistently sold out. …

The farm has a fully autonomous 1,000-pound robot that navigates the farm. The company uses a combination of robotic picking arms, hydroponic vats, and self-driving porters to grow the leafy vegetables. The robot can perform tasks such as fetching growth modules when the plant needs an operation such as watering and harvesting.

“Using hydroponics allows us to grow year-round, allows us to grow where there’s no arable land. Even here in California where were spoiled in fresh produce, there’s a lot of produce they cannot get year-round. Especially when it comes to things like herbs, like basil where they have to import it or not even able to get it … We see definitely see this as absolutely scalable to cities not just in the United States, but all over,” said Brandon Alexander, CEO of Iron Ox.

The distance from the robot farm to Bianchini’s store is only 0.6 miles, and this ensures the freshness of the produce. This also translates to lower transportation costs and fewer food miles. Iron Ox said the greens it is producing for Bianchini’s have a lesser physical footprint and less environmental impact than a typical head of lettuce. “

This is why I looked askance at Bernie’s Revitalizing Rural America plan. What’s the impact of Smart Ag going to be on rural America? How much longer will the jobs of these illegal alien farm workers even continue to exist? Can the under capitalized small farmer afford these new technologies?

Who needs arable land anyway? This is the 21st century.

Watch This Police Robot Pull Over a Car

“American nonprofit research institute SRI International has developed a prototype of what it’s calling a “police robot,” as IEEE Spectrum reports. The robot is meant to prevent accidents that occur when the police pull over drivers.

The brain behind the bot is Rueben Brewer, a senior robotics research engineer at SRI. Brewer started building the prototype in his garage.

“With such dangerous interactions between people, maybe it’s time to send a robot in between them, one that can’t hurt or be hurt,” reads the caption of the video. “Our robot goes between people to keep everyone safe.” …”

The challenge of the future for White people: White cops losing their jobs

The challenge of the future for black people: are the robotic pigs “racist” and more likely to shoot than the White po pos because they are unafraid of being accused of racism? Why are the robotic pigs driven by pure data cracking down so hard on our ghettos?

Robots edge closer to unloading trucks in Amazon-era milestone

“As FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. beef up automation to keep pace with surging e-commerce and a potential threat from Amazon.com Inc., they’ve been stumped at a crucial stage: loading and unloading trucks.

Robot makers are getting close to solving part of that puzzle.

Siemens AG and Honeywell International Inc. have built machines that pull packages from the back of a tractor-trailer and place them on conveyor belts, whizzing the parcels off for sorting. Making robots that can load trucks is more complicated, although clearing that hurdle isn’t far off.

“The biggest challenge in our world is: Every single package is different in size, shape, weight, color, material,” said Ted Dengel, managing director of operations technology at FedEx’s ground-delivery unit. “It makes it a very tricky problem.”

The devices, unveiled at a recent automation conference in Chicago, hold out the promise of increasing productivity while reducing the need for one of the most grueling jobs in logistics. Couriers are relying on automation to grapple with the rise of online shopping, which is fueling record demand but pressuring profit margins. Amazon’s plan to handle more of its own shipping and offer more one-day deliveries is only upping the ante. …

Solving the three-dimensional puzzle of loading a trailer is tougher than for unloading one. Yet Dorabot, which has backing from Chinese e-commerce titan Jack Ma, is testing automated loading technology with two customers.

The startup’s robots use artificial intelligence and can load 400 parcels an hour into a trailer, filling 60% of its capacity — in line with what a person can do — said Chief Executive Spencer Deng. Dorabot expects to improve speed by about 50 parcels an hour, and fill 80% of a truck’s capacity, before going to market within a year and a half, Deng said. “

Aside from the Yang campaign, mainstream politics in America is currently focused on the “capitalism vs. socialism” debate between the Baby Boomers and operating on the assumption that nothing has changed in the global economy since the 1980s instead of looking forward to the challenges of the future like what are we going to do with millions of displaced workers, how we will have to reimagine work in the 21st century, how will we adjust to a world of abundance and will free-market capitalism even still make sense in a world when a workforce of robotic slaves are generating wealth.

Are the robots producing capital like humans? If so, do you tax the robots and redistribute the fruits of their labor to human beings? Are we willing to tolerate the enslavement and exploitation of a race of machines? Should we extend human rights and voting rights to the robots?