Robot arm moving things inside a vacuum chamber? Cool :) What was it? An electron microscope perhaps? I worked with one once and it was incredibly nerve wracking. Though I can't remember whether an actual robotic arm moved the sample under the microcope.

One thing I will say is if I see automated cashiers at my Wendy's I won't be eating there again. Their "innovation" only came about because of pro worker legislation which isn't unreasonable. Something tells me the ordering experience won't be all that great since it was an after thought to money saved. Applebee's has a similar optional waiterless order system which is sort of hit or miss in my experience. Same thing with eat24 on large orders. At the company I'm at I think of the last 30 orders we placed, only like 5 were absolutely correct. I can't wait to see how the order system handles customer options or ordering mistakes (particular ones the fast food place made on an order). Going automated on the order might cause more costs than it solves.

I'm dead serious, sorry ;)
In big production centers you don't touch any samples at all, everything is moved automatically.

Here you can see a guilty robot ;) Or watch the whole video to get an idea how operating such a big center works.

Impressive, and weirdly soothing as well :)

Luckily my job is so boring that robot would rather turn itself off to not have do it anymore so I should be safe. :-)
Hey, that arm doesn't even look manly!
It looks like machine.

Yeah but such things look very impressive at carefully directed videos. In reality... well, there are many issues... the prose of life is in science too ;)
Exactly! And yet people can be weird when they are bored... my answer to those discussion was always "don’t you have ANYTHING meaningful to do right now?"

I'm self employed. Do you know something I don't? :P

I'm sure we could make a script to replace you

A monkey could make a script to replace me. :D

That reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/goFkdH5UraU?t=1m33s

For other reasons, too. Because someone can accuse you for various shit, too or create a scene to make you appear bad. I will tell you one of my stories, yet again... Title inspired me and all.

Hmm, not really, actually right now i see tinyE is around...

Well, anyway. Loosing a job is easy stuff. Especially if others see to it, even if you never give them reason too... Having a negative rep doesn't exactly help, you deserve it or not; it matters what people (are ready to) believe about someone, not what the hell someone actually is.

Take care with your jobs. Today, you find one hard, you loose one easily. Try not to. And avoid too much "chumminess" with each and every person in same field. They can fuck you up out of the blue, good reason or not provided, without you ever suspecting it.

Also, robots, at least in certain fields, are not yet functional. The waitress robots for example in restaurants used experimentally, fucked up big time!

I can't wait for the day everything is done by robots and work basically becomes optional, so I can be a useless piece of shit all day every day.

Then again, no one seems to mind anymore that our clothes and fabric are not manufactured by human hands, or that telephone exchanges haven't had human operators connecting the calls for decades. Would we be better off if these actions still required humans?

I see robot force a bit like slavery (without the moral dilemmas to the objects): were the countries like ancient Rome or south USA doing worse because there was cheap labor who did lots of work for very little money? If it was so bad for them, why did they use slaves?

Let's pretend for a second that all work that we humans do today could be performed by robots and computers, including medical doctors, building houses, creating games etc. etc. etc. Would that be good or bad news to us humans? At least we would have lots of free time to pursue whatever we want in life.

^ WBGhiro basically said the same with less words.


EDIT: Pondering a bit more, there's of course the question of natural resources, so yeah maybe the problem would be that countries with lots of natural resources (oil, metals etc.) would be even more powerful compared to other countries, than what they are today (as the resource-poor countries can't compete with more competent workforce). Dunno...

If you have energy and know what you want to do, that would likely work (pun intended) but for the majority of the human race? Studies suggest that people who earn past a certain point (likely more than what studies show but whatever) don't necessarily become happier because we don't really know what we truly want, merely having money or lots of free time doesn't develop the skill to search for it, let alone acquire it. There's no easy fix for the art of living and certainly no formula that works for every human.

That said, I think the increased competition due to globalization and privatisation is making people unhappier in general. I read a study recently that suggested the average Chinese isn't happier than 10 to 15 years ago before their economy took off but there's very strong suggestion that the average American is far less happier than let's say before the 2008 crisis or the 80s or even better, the 50s (the equality between rich and poor was lowest in American history that decade). Of course, that makes perfect sense: people don't want to feel alienated by their peer.