AI is coming on strong. I read about this creepy-looking robot two years ago. And in the mean time is has allegedly taught itself how to walk. And in another two years it will have learned how to speak short sentences. This robot is essentially a 33kg baby and it works by mimicking the emotions and the behavior of subjects it observes. In short, it sits there watching and observing. It takes sensory information and clusters it based on an associated emotion. This little CB2 is supposed to be leading the cutting edge of AI.
According to scientists, we could have armies of machines working alongside factory workers in only a decade if society would want that. The problem with that is that machines can work faster, longer hours, and not get lazy and slack off. At the end of the day the bottom line will be money. It is easy to see that you do not have to pay humanoids benefits. The pessimistic view is of course that when these hit the market, and start serving humans, humans will get lazy, and dumb. Machines will be employed to do things for humans. Even think for humans. And easy to see that eventually machines will be doing the discoveries as some robots are already doing. I know what you are thinking. But let me paraphrase Peter Griffin: “trying to [prevent the rise of the machines] is like sex with Kobe Bryant, you can kick and scream all you want but…uh…..it’s gonna happen.”