Friday, February 14, 2014

TECHNOLOGY - 'The Second Machine Age' of Robots

"In ‘second machine age’ of robots, it’s time for humans to get creative" PBS Newshour 2/13/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (Newshour):  All week this week, we have been stepping into the future with stories about robots in the opera and the coming revolution in 3-D printing.

Now Paul Solman gets in on the act with a look at the economics of this latest machine age.  It’s part of his ongoing coverage Making Sense of financial news.

PAUL SOLMAN:  Sorry to see you do that.

A robot that plays Connect Four.  First one to get four in a row wins.  My grandkids thrash me at 10 times this speed, but after decades, as promised, robots like Baxter here are finally replacing humans at a breakneck pace.

Really?

Or so say MIT Professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andy McAfee.

ANDREW MCAFEE, Co-author, “The Second Machine Age”:  Where we have always needed human beings, suddenly, we have digital alternatives to all of them that are already pretty good and getting better very, very quickly.

ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON, Co-author, “The Second Machine Age”:  Andy and I have been astonished at how rapidly things are happening, whether it’s self-driving cars, computers that can place “Jeopardy” and beat the best champion.  We are seeing a wave of technologies that can automate all sorts of cognitive tasks.

PAUL SOLMAN:  In their new book, “The Second Machine Age,” Brynjolfsson and McAfee argue that industry is facing a revolution as radical as the one powered by the steam engine.

ANDREW MCAFEE:  The Industrial Revolution was about overcoming the limitations of our individual muscles.  What is going on right now in the second machine age is overcoming the limitations of our individual minds.

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