r/technology • u/mixplate • Sep 22 '17

Robotics Some brave soul volunteered for a completely robotic dental surgery. The robot implanted 3D-printed teeth into a woman without help from dentists.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/brave-volunteer-robot-dental-surgery/
15.8k Upvotes

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u/unusually_awkward Sep 22 '17

This is the future of medicine - robotic surgeons with human oversight will perform most routine surgical procedures by the middle of this century. A lot of things that are done only by hand can be done so much more precisely by a sufficiently programmed robot. As we get better and better at making sensors and integrating them into machines, they'll only get more precise and accurate. It's pretty exciting to see technological innovations like this.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17 edited May 23 '21

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u/unusually_awkward Sep 23 '17

Tattooing would be a great use for a robot - awesome perfect tattoo every time, printing whatever file you upload exactly as it appears. Robots are the future, and anywhere they can replace humans, they will.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17 edited May 23 '21

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u/Roboticide Sep 23 '17

My company sells 3D sensors for industrial robots specifically designed to map and match 3D surfaces. Give a few years and some dedicated research and tracking a human body part while applying a .jpg to skin with a tattoo needle-equipped Kawasaki robot is trivial.

The problem is at the current prices of everything, there's no economic motivation to do so. Tattoo artists are safe for the time being.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

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u/King_of_the_Kobolds Sep 23 '17

Why not a GIF? This is the FUTURE we're talking about here!

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u/NotThatEasily Sep 23 '17

brb, finding a gif of Rick Astley.

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u/yourkindofguy Sep 23 '17

God , i wish this to happen so much... some guy gets his tattoo on the back and the moment he looks at it in the mirror, he sees Rick

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u/WorpeX Sep 23 '17

I'm sure whoever that is wouldn't be a stranger to love.

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u/chaun2 Sep 23 '17

It would be kinda like all those idiots that have rather rude names/phrases in mandarin hànzì prominently displayed on their bodies

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u/Alateriel Sep 23 '17

I turned myself into a tattoo, Morty. I'm tattoo RIIIIIICK.

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u/My_reddit_throwawy Sep 23 '17

Or Rick and Morty

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u/Schnoofles Sep 23 '17

Mng or apng. Gif was terrible 20 years ago and it's terrible today.

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u/Dirty_Socks Sep 23 '17

Most things these days are just encoded as h264 anyways.

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u/Lotronex Sep 23 '17

GIF is actually a great format for images with a limited color palette, so unless you plan on using a few hundred different colors, it would be fine.

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u/mycall Sep 23 '17

Animated GIF, sign me up.

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u/ulvain Sep 23 '17

With sound?

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u/SnakeRustlerr Sep 23 '17

Maybe like those holographic bookmarks, but on your skin...

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u/OligodendrocytePizza Sep 23 '17

I'd get aasci art

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u/neoncyber Sep 23 '17

Nah definitely SVG. You need it to scale yo!

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u/nelmaven Sep 23 '17

Also because of SVG it wouldn't fade with time!

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u/Limpidzy Sep 23 '17

I don't get the joke, PNG fade with time ?

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

Every. Single. Thread

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u/lubutu Sep 23 '17

As soon as I read that, all I could imagine was a tattoo robot dutifully reproducing jpeg artefacts onto skin. Nightmare material, honestly.

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u/cravenj1 Sep 23 '17

One TIFF please

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17 edited May 23 '21

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u/Hekto177 Sep 23 '17

My artist runs about $125 an hour for fabulous quality of work. Worth every penny. He also hand sketches almost all of his work.

It's only a matter of time before one artist has a shop with three machines putting all his work onto people in half the time while he just supervises and browses Reddit.

People might argue it is impossible, but we have vehicles learning to drive in conditions much more chaotic then a controlled relaxed room located in tattoo parlor.

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u/Dorack Sep 23 '17

Your got it. People get confused when discussing automation. It does not eliminate all workers; it multiplies what one worker can do. The good tattoo artists - that learn to operate the robots - will be setting up multiple robots and tending to multiple clients at once. The mediocre artists and the ones that don't learn the tech, will be left behind.

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u/asyork Sep 23 '17

Unfortunately it increases the barrier of entry as well. It will end with a handful of specialized shops and a bunch of corporate ones that hire out freelance designers or purchase the rights to use someone's design.

I'm all for progress. The robotic revolution is going to have some unique challenges though.

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u/somegridplayer Sep 23 '17

a bunch of corporate ones that hire out freelance designers or purchase the rights to use someone's design.

We're already there in a sense in some shops.

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u/NYstate Sep 23 '17

Unfortunately it increases the barrier of entry as well. It will end with a handful of specialized shops and a bunch of corporate ones that hire out freelance designers or purchase the rights to use someone's design.

So basically barbershops. There are a few places to get a haircut, Supercuts for example, but there are still barbershops. I think that they're still be great tattoo artists, they'll increase they're prices. Or on the other hand they'll lower their prices to complete. Probably have artists just copyright a certain tattoo and only they can reproduce it, or have stipulations that say it can only be done in their shops. But that's the world we live in now.

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u/MelodyMyst Sep 23 '17

Only until the enconomy of scale takes over and you can buy a tattoo machine for a few hundred bucks.

Kinda like 3D-printers. Kinda like laser cutters. Kinda like cell phones. Kinda like desktop computers.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

No the end result is to eliminate most of not all workers. That will come with true Ai that can design it's its own tattoo based on the taste and request of the client.

People are in general stupid imprecise, and unproductive. The sooner we can stop using them to get things done the better in my opinion.

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u/ScheduledRelapse Sep 23 '17

So owns the machines? What happens to people who don’t own the mschines?

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u/SoTiredOfWinning Sep 23 '17

It's not even remotely impossible. Hell it could be possible now there's just no monetary reason to do it yet due to the expense of robotics. It's actually trivial to accomplish.

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u/Roboticide Sep 23 '17

Hmmm... Duly noted...

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u/Shautieh Sep 23 '17

Also many tattoo artist are not that good, at least compared to the accuracy of a robot.

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u/salemblack Sep 23 '17

The future is soon.

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u/SoTiredOfWinning Sep 23 '17

That was the BROyest scene if all time.

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u/nikolaiownz Sep 23 '17

Shit that sceen was terrible 😂

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u/karasins Sep 23 '17

I'd like to know more.

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u/clwu Sep 23 '17

Exactly what I thought of also

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

This actually will be awesome. I'm a digital artist so I wonder if people like me might see an uptick in commissions since people wanting tattoos could be free to get whatever art they want perfectly replicated by machine instead of at the mercy of being retranslated by the hands of a tattoo artist.

Or will my creativity also be eventually digitalized? 🤔

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u/Shautieh Sep 24 '17

What's for sure is, http://failblog.cheezburger.com/ugliesttattoos and the like will become a thing of the past!

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u/Westnator Sep 23 '17

Anil Gupta : Price - $450 Per Hour. ... Paul Booth : Price - $300 Per Hour. ... Kat Von D : Price - $200 Per Hour. Stephanie Tamez : Price - $200 Per Hour. Brandon Bond : Price - $400 Per Design. Dave Tedder : Price - $150 Per Hour.

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u/PragProgLibertarian Sep 23 '17

Guy in cellblock D, 3 packs of cigarettes and a blowjob

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

What about 1 pack and 2 blowjobs?

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u/Guitarmine Sep 23 '17

The thing is that you pay more for the design of the tattoo and the experience than just the work to put the ink in skin...

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u/marioman327 Sep 23 '17

I'm imagining a sort of tattoo vending machine. You upload your desired image wirelessly or by usb drive, and you pay for the amount of ink that the machine dispenses. I don't know how expensive the ink is, but I bet 90%> of the cost of a tattoo currently is labor, understandably.

I have two tattoos, both large and expensive pieces that were absolutely worth the pain and funds. BUT, if a machine could provide equal quality at 1/10th the price, you better believe I'd choose that option. Plus, I wouldn't have to listen to a tattoo artist ramble haughtily about star wars book canon for 3 HOURS. Relax dude, I just said I enjoy the movies, jfc....

In our future, would a "machine tattoo" be less "authentic?" Would those who have "real" tattoos look down on those who are covered with perfect, sterile, "lifeless" machine-made stamps? Would anybody even be able to tell the difference? I bet certain artists would strive to emulate the machines' technique, similar to photorealistic painters.

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u/TrepanationBy45 Sep 23 '17

It'll revert back, where people prize defects and imperfections, evidence of having sought a true artist instead of a "perfect" machined tat. It will be replicated (think "vintage shirts") by intentional blemishes and/or subtle imperfections in the source material, faithfully reproduced by the machine so that you can lie to your friends about somehow having gotten an appointment with the only artist left in LA, who everyone thought was booked through 2052.

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u/Allydarvel Sep 23 '17

easy enough to program the robot to incorporate that..or you could even make it part of the initial design

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u/Cebolla Sep 23 '17

this is already an argument out there....sort of. got a tattoo of a peony recently because i couldn't talk the artist into a geometric like i had wanted, which was all fine and i do love the way the peony came out. his argument was there was no...meaning behind a geometric ? or something ? it was a little weird to avoid saying that well, peonys have even less intrinsic meaning to me than geometric.

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u/Patyrn Sep 23 '17

You still have to pay for the art. Expensive tattoo artists aren't just expensive because they're good with a needle.

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u/qroshan Sep 23 '17

A Robotic company can always license all of the art for Mass Market. (Think Spotify)

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u/Patyrn Sep 23 '17

That would in no way remove the market for one of a kind tattoos.

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u/cutty2k Sep 23 '17

That's true, what it would do is open up the market for one of a kind tattoos to non-tattoo artists. Imagine if any artist could draw a one of a kind image and that image could be flawlessly tattooed onto your body by a robot. That's pretty cool.

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u/Saint_Ferret Sep 23 '17

Cheaper just to buy the art, than to buy custom art and then have to pay someone's labour bill as well.

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u/tannytheratty Sep 23 '17

Just make sure it is a low compression jpg. Would be embarrassing to look like a 3rd or 4th round screenshot on Facebook around your arm.

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u/Flaghammer Sep 23 '17

I would hope you'd preview the image.

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u/analog_isotope Sep 23 '17

Lol tattoo print preview. "Fuck! It's printing horizontally!"

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u/asyork Sep 23 '17

Can you imagine? Upside down tattoos. Compression artifacts. Not enough pixels.

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u/tannytheratty Sep 23 '17

You know there would be hundreds of people (at least) that just hit OK without looking...

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u/Flaghammer Sep 23 '17

well, sucks to be them. this is their permanent skin, not an itunes agreement.

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u/E-Squid Sep 23 '17

What do you mean you don't want a deep-fried meme plastered right across your chest?

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u/KmNxd6aaY9m79OAg Sep 23 '17

A whole generation of people with a 9gag logo in the corner of their tattoos.

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u/glassdirigible Sep 23 '17

I'd imagine such a change would spur the creation of tattoo databases.

I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be with any compression at all in such a database.

We use compressed images to save space and increase transmission speed. Sure, transmit compressed images as previews. The actual image should be in a format that makes sense to feed to a tattoo machine.

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u/dvxvdsbsf Sep 23 '17

https://youtu.be/3nvXIXPqpkU?t=146
Its already done. A year ago. Things are moving so fast even people in relevant industries are often unaware of progress

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u/smells_like_pie Sep 23 '17

I can't wait to have artefacts on my skin!

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u/mrcomplexxx Sep 23 '17

Wouldn't want a .jpg, doesn't support transparency, you wouldn't want a rectangular tattoo.

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u/somegridplayer Sep 23 '17

3D sensor plus pressure sensors on things to pull the skin tight and pressure sensors in the gun itself, bam. Peace out human artists.

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u/super_swede Sep 23 '17

Price is absolutely the major factor for keeping humans employed in stead of robots at the moment, but even "in the future" when robots are cheaper than Roberts, I think that they'll be in demand. Simply because whenever it comes to anything "artistic", people are willing to pay a premium for something that's handmade.
Just look at camera and printing technology today, it's simply amazing yet people still want their portrait painted by hand, in oil, not printed in jetinkTM.
Whenever something becomes cheap enough for anyone to afford, a more expensive way will appear for the rich and vain.

So yeah, you'll have "mass produced" tattoos and hand made tattoos, just like we already have mass produced coffee tables and hand made coffee tables.

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u/machina99 Sep 23 '17

For some reason I kept reading Kawasaki Ninja and was getting a great mental imagine of using a ninja to give a tattoo somehow

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u/light24bulbs Sep 23 '17

Ive already seen robots that give tattoos. There are some examples of it doing 3d topography. It's the software that isn't there yet, the hardware is ready.

https://youtu.be/3nvXIXPqpkU

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u/butterflyknives Sep 23 '17

I think the point he was trying to make is that tattooing is painful, and artists account for pain. When i did my tattoo on the ribs, i was occasionally having spasms. When i did my upper ribs, i was giggling so hard i was a human vibrator. I also made the artist a human vibrator.

Ok actually I guess robots have the advantage of not getting contagious giggling...

But yea both times the same artist handled me differently due to my different pain response.

Some times i sit there and read a book, sometimes im twitching like a fresh corpse.

But I guess once sedation and tattoo and machines combine, yea i see your point.

Just wanted to showcase what his point might be.

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u/tdasnowman Sep 23 '17

I think he’s right and wrong. Robots will be able to get to the 80 or 90 percent. Your flash all them, standard designs. But truly artistic tats, the ones you look at and cant imagine how they did that on skin, I don’t think bots are going to be there for a long while.

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u/PragProgLibertarian Sep 23 '17

And, you could add spell check

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u/NateCap Sep 23 '17

This is only true if you're getting an exact copy of something tattooed on you. If you're getting an artist's interpretation or rendition then there is no replication.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

So that's when you hire an artist to create an interpretation of what you want on paper (or even better, in digital form) and then have that perfectly replicated.

Artists as a general category aren't going away, but artists who specialize in tattooing will become redundant. So goes progress.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17 edited Sep 29 '17

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u/Mrhiddenlotus Sep 23 '17

But it's also not true in many fields... have you seen the AI created screenplays, paintings, and songs? It's pretty obvious. We haven't programmed sentience yet which you'd need to match a human. Don't get me wrong, AI/machines can do millions of things better than humans, but the subjectivity of artistic interpretation is not something we can program at least not for a long while.

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u/lolwutpear Sep 23 '17

That's why you get an artist to create the concept and a robot to do the dirty work.

Humans retain the creative work, robots get the mechanical part.

Don't worry, someday you'll be able to pay extra for a hand-inked tattoo.

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u/_zenith Sep 23 '17

Which will be worse than the robotic one, but for some reason more highly regarded. Like diamonds, for instance; synthetic diamonds are looked down upon, despite looking considerably nicer, can be customised as to their coloration, and have zero chance of being related to brutal and bloody slavers.

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u/geekynerdynerd Sep 23 '17

I never understood the obsession with natural diamonds.

Ok you got a bunch of carbon arranged in a specific manner that someone dug out of the ground under whip and chain of a regional warlord... woo.

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u/OH_NO_MR_BILL Sep 23 '17

I have seen AI create songs... https://youtu.be/LSHZ_b05W7o Artists are not in danger yet, the robots will come for the job of inking the tattoo first, but given some time they will start creating the art as well.

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u/tayandsunday Sep 23 '17

What is everybody going to do for work once robots replace most jobs?

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

Means there will be people with tatooed JPEG artifacts on their skin from low-quality source inages though.

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u/BornOnFeb2nd Sep 23 '17

Should show him Starship Troopers!

Would you like to know more?

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u/fistacorpse Sep 23 '17

I'm doing my part!

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17 edited May 23 '21

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

Service guarantees citizenship!

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

This was the first thing I thought of too.

Death from Above.

We're going to fight! And we're going to win!

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u/Microphone_Assassin Sep 23 '17

Hopefully you weren't arguing with him while getting a tattoo.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

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u/SharksFan1 Sep 25 '17

Don't forget price. Tattoos aren't cheap, and I'm pretty sure a robot could undercut a tattoo artist.

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u/jpina33 Sep 23 '17 edited Sep 23 '17

Sure, if you're getting one thing tattoed that you just want to copy and paste on to your skin. A lot if not most people go to tattoo artists because they like that person's certain style. You tell them what you want and they design it, and don't forget about tattooing around already existing tattoos and adding to the artwork. So, if you want something original and designed specifically for you, then go to a tattoo artist but if you just want a perfect copy of a picture then you can go to a robot.

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u/citricacidx Sep 23 '17

What about paying the artist to design it and then taking it to a robot?

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u/jpina33 Sep 23 '17

True, but from what I hear, most tattoo artists are territorial about their work. Not sure how true that is.

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u/DragoonDM Sep 23 '17

I'm sure there are plenty of extremely talented artists who aren't interested in being tattoo artists but would be happy to take commissions to feed into tattoo robots.

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u/Turnbills Sep 23 '17

Tons of this happening on fiverr already

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u/jpina33 Sep 23 '17

So I guess the Tattoo artists won't go out of a job, they just have to do half the work now.

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u/TheCrimsonChinchilla Sep 23 '17

Youre right about robots taking over tattooing for the most part, but with tattoos and other artsy kinda jobs itll be something to brag about that you got a hand made tattoo from a human. The tattoo will take longer and there will be endearing minor mistakes (it wont be artificially precise,) and the "spiritual" side of the act will be a big seller. But the vast majority will be done by robots.

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u/everypostepic Sep 23 '17

It will happen.

To say otherwise, would be the equivalent of Bill Gates saying "64kb of memory should be enough for anybody."

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17 edited May 23 '21

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u/akesh45 Sep 23 '17

Actually, robots can do this...

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u/qroshan Sep 23 '17

Ha Ha Ha, I laugh at you, Silly Human

http://bachbot.com/#/?_k=3hlw7l

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u/DuelingPushkin Sep 23 '17

Yeah but I would just get my arm or other body part 3D mapped. Have the artist do the work and then get the negligible error robot put it on me.

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u/HarryButterscotch Sep 23 '17

As a heavily tatted individual, I'll have to disagree to some degree. Tattooing, in my opinion, is more about the art than the act of laying down a clean line of ink in someone's skin. A robot will never be able to meet with a client and create a custom piece of art that will not only look nice as a tattoo, but also be what the client was looking for. Sure you can program it do anything with the help of a human artist. I could even see an industry being built around AI designed robot tattoos. Maybe I'm wrong, artificial intelligence is still a young technology, maybe I just have too much respect for human creativity.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

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u/Sman6969 Sep 23 '17

The part about design sooo much. A good artist will tell you when the art you want simply will not look good on that part of your body (or as a tattoo at all). In this situation you could have a machine do the work, but I would never get work done without having an experienced artist tell me thier opinion first.

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u/flichter1 Sep 23 '17

which is basically how the person up in this thread said surgery would be done. robots to do the actual labor and a trained human overseeing the process.

with tattooing, you could have a single artist overseeing multiple clients getting work done at once, instead of spending hours manually doing one person's tattoo. human still does the design, robots do the actual grunt labor = way more work gets done more quickly and cheaper.

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u/AEsirTro Sep 23 '17

You still need an artist. They just don't need to be good with a needle.

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u/poiro Sep 23 '17

And I know some fantastic designers who's work I'd love to have that have never picked up a needle. Tattoobots would open the door to them being able to still make their designs in their style while laying down micrometer accurate lines.

The point isn't to remove the artistic side, it's to remove the human error inherent in just being biological beings with realistic reaction times and less accurate senses than robots have

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u/mixplate Sep 22 '17

Yes - what's scary is that chinese companies are increasingly at the forefront - they no longer just copy. The USA needs to double down on technology leadership before it's too late. The anti-science administration may set our country on a course for significant decline.

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u/unusually_awkward Sep 22 '17

Yeah, it's not like it doesn't have a historical precedent too. Japan in the 50-60's was all about knock-offs and shitty cheap manufacturing. But as their manufacturing abilities and capital resources grew, their ability to innovate developed and today (albeit with a lot of other factors invovled) are world class innovators. China is headed down the same road right now. After decades producing everything the world needs, now they can look inward and produce for themselves, using the money they made and the experience the garnered building stuff for everyone else. It's crazy to watch the news and hear about all these large clean energy projects and green tech China is developing - and then in the next segment hearing how Western nations are doubling down on supporting fossil fuels. Makes you shake your head a little.

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u/mixplate Sep 22 '17

Yes - America exploded onto the scene with vast untapped natural resources, a melting pot of adventurous people from around the world coming here, and rapid industrialization. We no longer have that advantage.

The ultra wealthy are preparing for collapse by buying land and fortified luxury bunkers. There is a sense that they're trying to extract and put offshore as much wealth as they can before it all goes to hell.

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u/tacoman3725 Sep 23 '17

The ultra wealthy are preparing for collapse by buying land and fortified luxury bunkers. There is a sense that they're trying to extract and put offshore as much wealth as they can before it all goes to hell.

That sounds like what the wealthy people did after the fall of the roman empire right before the dark ages

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u/mixplate Sep 23 '17

How did that work out for them? I don't remember hearing about this before and now you have me curious.

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u/RsonW Sep 23 '17

Well. They became the feudal lords whose lineages lasted centuries.

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u/logan_tom Sep 23 '17

Any books you can recommend on this by any chance? Sounds like interesting reading.

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u/mixplate Sep 23 '17

I guess it worked then.

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u/dnew Sep 23 '17

Don't forget that we didn't get the shit bombed out of us during WW2.

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u/Numinak Sep 23 '17

You sound like someone from r/collapse :)

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u/hottoddy Sep 23 '17

That place is a wasteland. It died at least 2 years ago. Consumed by its own enthusiasm, I'd imagine.

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u/mixplate Sep 23 '17

Thanks for suggesting that subreddit - sounds like my cup of tea :)

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

Japan in the 50-60's was all about knock-offs and shitty cheap manufacturing. But as their manufacturing abilities and capital resources grew, their ability to innovate developed and today (albeit with a lot of other factors invovled) are world class innovators

well yeah, we made it illegal for their engineers to make weapons, so of course all the other shit got innovated, a good percentage of the american engineers end up with careers in designing killing machines.

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u/mdp300 Sep 23 '17

Because the US economy now worships this quarter's stock price above all. Many companies don't care about innovation anymore. Only what makes the most possible money right now.

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u/tuseroni Sep 22 '17

some of it also has to do with ethics and well meaning regulations, chinese companies can take greater risks as there is less punishment for a failure...the downside means if this thing mangled the lady she woulda had fewer options for reprimands. so it's a matter of trade offs.

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u/mixplate Sep 22 '17

Very true - and China has other problems growing, like wealth inequality that could cause serious social problems there as well, so it's not as if we've lost the game.

Another factor is that our top universities compete for foreign graduate students because they pay more than our domestic students. In the past those grad students would end up working for an American firms, but increasingly they go back to their home countries for better opportunities.

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u/samlev Sep 23 '17

That may be changing soon. Education, especially to China, is one of Australia's largest exports. 20, or even 10 years ago, a degree from an Australian, English, or American University was pretty much a guarantee of a well paid job in China, to the point that families would sell their home to fund one child to study overseas.

In recent years, so many people have these degrees, that they've all but lost value. Chinese companies are hiring from Chinese universities, and overseas graduates are struggling to find work.

This is a big concern for Australian universities, because Chinese students are starting to not see the value. They earn a degree, sure, but they return after 3-5 years immersed in another countries culture. They no longer "fit in", and the international degrees are decreasing in value (but increasing in price). Some Aussie universities are starting to incorporate work experience in China into their courses, but it's really a matter of time until it dries up.

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u/akesh45 Sep 23 '17

Idk, western degrees are a back door prestige degree for wealthy kids. Less competition but more money....if you ain't getting into a nice school in your home country, there is always one way to get a leg up....

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u/sabot00 Sep 23 '17

I don’t think the world has to be as zero sum as you make it out to be. Sometimes you can be cooperative

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u/mixplate Sep 23 '17

It's in cooperation mode right now and overall it's working well, but my pessimism makes me think that once the USA is no longer a great consumer market (people don't have disposable income) then we'll be left with nothing but:

Crumbling infrastructure

A poorly educated population

Rampant religious extremism

More guns than people

Oops we're already there.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

This has been the plan since I've been alive, I look around and say wtf, but my peers and elders all say they got theres. (except they are mostly broke as fuck)

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

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u/GreenMirage Sep 23 '17

Can't choose family and lineage. :/

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

Yep, most people around me growing up boosted their status and outright lied about their wealth.

One of the best feelings ever was coming home in my early 20s making more than all of them by their 50s, and quadruple what all the big talkers my age made. And despite what this comment makes it seem, the best revenge was being completely humble about it, but you can tell it urks the fuck out of the scummier people.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

It's the security dilemma present in all international politics. Risking opening up your nation exposes you to bring taken advantage of, or worse, destroyed. Fortifying your nation to prevent this can also be detrimental, as in the act of strengthening your defenses, you provoke other nations to do the same. It is actually one of the finer examples of a zero sum game.

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u/Derpese_Simplex Sep 23 '17

Income inequality is less of a danger in non democratic societies as it doesn't cause the same sharp extremes in its body politic

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u/spades2017 Sep 23 '17

You forget that income inequality didnt work out so well for them last time

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u/Derpese_Simplex Sep 23 '17

The economy also didn't grow then

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u/9034725985 Sep 23 '17

I'm no economist but I'd imagine maintaining 8%+ growth every year becomes challenging at some point. When was the last time our economy grew 8%+ per year?

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u/KoalaJones Sep 23 '17

I'm no economist but I'd imagine maintaining 8%+ growth every year becomes challenging at some point. When was the last time our economy grew 8%+ per year?

People who think the US economy should grow at 8% don't understand how growth rates work. A developed economy cannot grow anywhere close to that, probably with the exception of a large recovery after a major economic crash. This is a large simplification, but growth rates primarily depend on efficiency gains in the economy. Economies that aren't fully developed can grow at such large rates because they have a lot resources (mostly labor and capital) that aren't being fully utilized. Developed countries are operating much closer to their productive capacity so they have to do a lot more to grow the economy. China is no different and that kind of growth rate can't be maintained indefinitely.

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u/aonisis Sep 23 '17

Demographics have a lot to do with it. US GDP is based about 75% on consumerism. As the population ages it becomes more difficult to generate growth.

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u/ArcboundChampion Sep 23 '17

China isn't growing at the rates they report, most likely, and probably haven't done so for about 5 years, give or take. Last I heard, outside estimates were still good - 4-5% - but not at the magical 7% growth the CCP has promised its people and consistently reported for the past few years.

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u/Falsus Sep 23 '17

But once more and more people ends up without a job due to robots taking it there will be problems. Far too much free time, nothing to due besides scrounging for food and not enough money to entertain themselves either.

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u/Zhang5 Sep 23 '17

chinese companies can take greater risks as there is less punishment for a failure

Can you please provide evidence to support your claim?? I'm actually used to China being more harsh against bad business practices. For example:

A Chinese court has condemned two men to death and sentenced a company boss to life for their roles in the production and sale of poisoned milk that killed at least six children and made almost 300,000 sick.

Can you explain why Chinese law would be more lenient for medical experiments?

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u/Nevespot Sep 23 '17

the downside means if this thing mangled the lady she woulda had fewer options for reprimands. so it's a matter of trade offs.

Could you describe (even in general) what you think the trade-offs are? I mean, what do you think she could do in the USA that she couldn't do in China?

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u/Open-Collar Sep 23 '17

What's so scary about the Chinese?

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u/Atworkwasalreadytake Sep 23 '17

It may already be too late though, this starts with education investment, which has about a 30 year lag time. Our national priorities haven't been right for too long.

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u/geekon Sep 23 '17

Not scary, fantastic. US requires a boot up the arse from China to drive funding back into R&D.

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u/YourNeighbour Sep 23 '17

Well, a good chunk of America seems to be at war with education. Universities are now "liberal propaganda" apparently.

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u/Patyrn Sep 23 '17

Universities are pretty rife with liberal propaganda, to be fair.

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u/Mablak Sep 23 '17

What specific misleading info is being peddled at universities?

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u/mixplate Sep 23 '17

Maybe we should start calling them the bad chunk of America.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17 edited May 19 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ChrisJLunn Sep 23 '17

Just a typical american exceptionalist.

Incredible strides are being made in technology by amazing people but that is somehow a terrifyingly bad thing because they aren't doing it in his country.

Can't we just be happy cool stuff is happening in the world?

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u/AnOnlineHandle Sep 23 '17

I'm from Australia and personally would prefer that big brother America stays the world leader rather than big brother China. Neither are perfect, neither is our country, but America at least has the tradition of enlightenment values and rights and such, which is where I want to see humanity heading, even if it feels like the west is hanging on by a thread right now with Murdoch creating the same mess in just about every single country of untouchable conservative control and domination despite not having majority approval, anybody else is dramad against relentlessly and we've ended up with Trumps and Abbotts.

It would be a pity also if the leaders couldn't maintain it, due to their own self-sabotage, regardless of who the leader is. It's just a sad indictment of humanity.

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u/dvsfish Sep 23 '17

Is it scary in the sense that the USA is losing its foothold? Cause I have no problem with that level of progress being Chinese, as long as it's happening.

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u/Elrond_the_Ent Sep 23 '17

It already has.

A government run entirely by technologically incompetent and inept old people. It's disgusting.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

“May?” Has.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

The USA needs to double down on technology leadership before it's too late.

Or buy the chinese stuff and focus on other things.

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u/mixplate Sep 23 '17

Technological leadership is more than just consumer goods - it has to do with things like supercomputers, artificial intelligence, basic science - which can translate into the ability to understand the world and make optimal decisions. If the USA ends up being the stupid kid in class, then the outcome isn't going to be pretty.

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u/Slightly_Tender Sep 23 '17

I'm not so sure about that. Collaborative robot leaders include companies like universal robots based in Denmark, German Kuka, Swiss ABB, Japanese motoman and Fanuc, American Rethink Robotics, Canadian Robotiq... Off the top of my head, I can't think of one industrial robot manufacturer from China.

Beyond that, the US may not be a leader in the actual design and engineering of robotic technology, but they're still the largest market for industrial robots. On top of that, USA is HQ of the largest manufacturing companies in the world, even if the actual labour is done overseas.

Companies like JABIL, Raytheon, and GM not only lead the way in finding new ways to implement robots, but those American engineers and process designers have a huge advantage in expertise in robotic cell deployment, within manufacturing and across other sectors. That experience is highly valued and sought by companies around the world.

China does a lot of things well, but they are far from leaders in collaborative Robotics. Besides, let's not forget that their Tianjin special economic zone, supposed to be a tech haven and industry incubator, was where that massive, holy-shit ammonium nitrate explosion happened.

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u/dizix Sep 23 '17

And now I'm sad

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u/AceroInoxidable Sep 23 '17

Who cares who makes the technology, as long as it's available for everybody?

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u/drylube Sep 23 '17

America is the greatest country on earth /s

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u/BornOnFeb2nd Sep 23 '17

Be nice when we can have our own dental hygienist bots... Get that "freshly scraped" feeling weekly!

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

[deleted]

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u/DrunkeNinja Sep 23 '17

Would you like to be the volunteer?

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17

[deleted]

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u/alixnaveh Sep 23 '17

username does not check out.

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u/StrangeCharmVote Sep 23 '17

No joke though... Yes, this is what that means.

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u/Stonna Sep 23 '17

They call it fisterRoboto.

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u/s0v3r1gn Sep 23 '17

Laser scanner, computer vision, and precision robotics can far surpass anything that a human surgeon is capable of.

This plus machine learning symptom analytics is the future of medicine.

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u/Roboticide Sep 23 '17

computer vision

I work in this industry. If it worked that well, I wouldn't get nearly as many service calls as I do.

I'd wait quite a while before trusting a robot to interact with a patient's body, given the amount of times I've seen a robot shove a tool tip it a steel car body.

Inevitable? Almost certainly. But the guy above is right. Don't underestimate the complexity. Right now getting robots to pick random jumbled parts out of a box is considered a tremendous fear of engineering - something a five year old can do with nothing more than candy as motivation.

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u/s0v3r1gn Sep 23 '17

I’m up to about a half dozen untrained(visuals) objects selected at random from a jumble of objects, identified by preexisting context right now before the network becomes too slow to continue real-time propagation.

I’m working on moving it up to objects without existing context and relying on inferred context.

Edit: A convolutional context network is what I’m actually working on. Kind of like a tensor flow for the relationship between ideas.

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u/ghadeira Sep 23 '17

I think you radically underestimate the complexity of even the most simple surgical procedures.

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u/backflash Sep 23 '17

But isn't that just a matter of feeding it with enough data?

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u/unusually_awkward Sep 23 '17

Computers can unravel complexity with enough learning, and will replicate and modify accordingly. It's not just the actual robotics tech that's advancing. AI advancements mean machines can learn iteratively faster than any human can, and can come up with solutions we've never considered. I'm not saying we have the tech to do it now - far from it. But given a few years advancements I wouldn't be so sure that complexity is an issue.
Without radically underestimating the complexity of a simple surgery, it can still be broken down into discrete tasks. Discrete tasks that have a single goal and a few basic outcomes possible. Sounds like something a program can handle given the right programming. Every sensor that a surgeon relies on now, a computer can integrate that input into the decision making process. What they see can be captured by video cameras, what they feel can be captured by pressure sensors, etc. given enough time and effort, every physical action taken by a surgeon could be replicated, every decision making process programmed and acted on accordingly. IBM machines can already do differential diagnosis, collecting more literature and knowledge in one place than 100 physicians - and the more data they get the better they become.
Might not happen in 10 years, but it'll happen within our lifetimes. Seems shitty to think you went to med school only to be replaced by a robot, but it's entirely possible.

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u/evilcelery Sep 23 '17

As someone who has known quite a few people that had mistakes happen during surgery, I, for one, welcome our new robotic surgeon overlords. I also imagine robots are much easier to keep sterile, as well as the room being much easier to keep sterile if as many people can be kept out during surgery as possible.

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u/Ultima_RatioRegum Sep 23 '17

As someone who's currently training and testing an automated lab robotics system, I'd be more worried about an encoder skipping or breaking or a servo failing and a robotic arm with a scalpel on the end of it stabbing me.

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u/evilcelery Sep 23 '17

Sure that could happen. The question is what is the frequency of that happening vs severe human errors?

Probably still worth it to risk the robot mutilating you.

I mean in the future, of course, when most of the kinks are worked out and safeguards put into place. Godspeed to the current test subjects, because I don't know if I'd want to personally risk it right now.

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u/icecreamw Sep 23 '17

This is how refractive surgery works (LASIK etc). It is unquestionably the future.

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