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I'm most interested in robots that will...

Displaying poll results.
Run and fetch things for me
  804 votes / 9%
Fight crime
  144 votes / 1%
Automate basic jobs so I don't have to talk to humans
  1835 votes / 22%
Explore the universe for us
  1613 votes / 19%
Cure my ills
  1285 votes / 15%
Drive me around
  1276 votes / 15%
Fight each other for my amusement
  428 votes / 5%
Fight other people for my amusement
  699 votes / 8%
8084 total votes.
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  • Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
  • Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
  • This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.

I'm most interested in robots that will...

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  • by i kan reed (749298) on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @10:08AM (#48368201) Homepage Journal

    Just that most mundane chores will forever feel like a waste of time. Tidying, dusting, washing dishes, doing laundry, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming. Who really gets anything from doing these things? No one.

    • by Zocalo (252965)
      In terms of mental stimulation perhaps, but plenty of people manage to make a living out of doing mundane chores for others or managing those that do the work. True, a lot of people doing this kind of work are in borderline slave labour or actual slave labour, but that is not necessarily the case. There was an article on Slashdot a while ago about how cleaners could make a pretty good living in some of the Scandinavian countries (well, where else?), and there's nothing to stop you popping on a pair of hea
      • I listen to podcasts while doing chores, but I could listen to podcasts while I play my favorite MMO just as well.

    • The most mundane, biggest waste of time is driving between home and work every day. Image being able to type up a report/term paper, develop software, etc in your car while it drives itself to your destination. Also, removing the human element would probably reduce accidents and lessen gridlock traffic.
      • by mlts (1038732)

        With autonomous cars, intersections could just be four way, no cloverleafs, no spaghetti-bowls... just high volume highways meeting at right angles with the car computers spacing vehicles out so they can travel through by slightly speeding up or slowing down. Since the human element isn't there, vehicles can be packed closer together and still travel at highway speeds safely. If a vehicle's TPMS goes off, it can automatically pull over to a breakdown lane, and traffic wouldn't be slowed down other than th

        • by umghhh (965931)
          you may not need robots doing t he driving if your daily grind is replaced first.

          I wonder how robots would handle getting over right angle bend with any meaningful speed and without seriously troubling a transported indihvidual.

        • Bad plan. The minimum distances would be smaller, but the cars would have to slow down anyway to accommodate for the crossing cars. Those slight slows for each car would add up to standstills.The current cloverleafs would still be required in order to keep the speed.

      • by Osgeld (1900440)

        just what I need, more work time

      • by dargaud (518470)
        It's called a bus.
      • by Moof123 (1292134)

        When my girlfriend (now wife) carpooled I NEVER did work stuff when I was the passenger, neither did she. A moving vehicle is a terrible place to try to get work done. There is a lot of motion around you, which is a major distraction, and you are in a moving, jostling object, which also sucks for concentration. Besides, it was only about 25 minutes each way (already too long), which is an annoying short time to really get a task done in.

        My guess is that if there were autonomous cars they would need to co

    • by crimson30 (172250)

      Be more efficient. I spend less than an hour a week on all those tasks. Granted, I don't do most of them.

    • Those chores are my meditation.
      It's like climbing a big mountain. If all you think about is "left, right, left, right, ..." you'll soon get bored to death and you'll never make it to the top.
      If you manage to enter the zone, it can actually be a very pleasing experience.

    • by invid (163714)
      I do some of my best thinking while doing mundane chores. Plus, having to do mundane chores gives one a realistic view of what is required to maintain ones existence in the universe. If everything was "just done" for you, you would take it for granted and see the universe as existing to serve you.
  • Universe exploration ranking #1 tied with running chores, and fighting crime to the bottom, followed by the other two fights considered: robot vs robot and robot vs human. Just the opposite of what government is doing. As always, people generally prove to be better than the politicians who run the nation and govern over their lives.
  • What? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Translation Error (1176675) on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @10:18AM (#48368319)
    What? No 'date me' option?

    Not that I'm saying that would be my answer...
  • by ctrl-alt-canc (977108) on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @10:24AM (#48368391)
    But I wonder if this classifies as "Automate basic jobs so I don't have to talk to humans" or as "Fight other people for my amusement"
  • by coder111 (912060) <(moc.liamrr) (ta) (redoc)> on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @11:37AM (#48369391)
    I want a robot that can cook a delicious full english breakfast. With black pudding!

    We should use that for AIs instead of Turing test.

    --Coder
    • Is the Turing test there whether or not they recognise the black pudding as food? I see three possible outcomes: identified as a computer, identified as a real person, or identified as British... ;-)
    • I want a robot that can cook a delicious full english breakfast. With black pudding!

      We should use that for AIs instead of Turing test.

      --Coder

      I think your request involves a oxymoron "Delicious and English [cooking]"

      • by tmosley (996283)
        Traditional English cooking is pretty bad, but their breakfasts are hard to beat.
  • but it would really be nice if I could get out of the car at the Mall entrance and let the car go find a parking place on its own. Then, when I'm ready to leave, have it meet me at the closest exit.

    I'd be really impressed if I could get out of the car at one airport, leave the luggage in the trunk, and have the car meet me wherever I landed.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bughunter (10093)

      If it could do that, why even get on the airplane?

      Just opaque the windows and sleep or work or otherwise entertain yourself privately the entire trip... If I could buy a car that could do that for my twice daily, 45 minute commute, I would.

      • by mlts (1038732)

        With autonomous cars... well, vans, in theory, one could have the vehicle do a trip and be on the road 24/7 except when pulling over to refuel. This might be boring, but for someone who doesn't really care to fly, being able to set the vehicle to go someplace 300-500 miles away, crash for the night in the back, then wake up at the destination might be a good thing. A longer trip might be doable by having the car drive eight hours and stop at a city, take a tour of the town, go back in, crash, while the ve

        • by Toshito (452851)

          Great idea, but how do you plan on doing those things while wearing your seat belt?

          • by mlts (1038732)

            If collision rates go as low as other modes of transportation, seat belts will not be needed. The biggest thing autonomous cars gets rid of is human error. A computer won't be sitting there texting until horns go off behind the vehicle. A computer won't be fumbling with a stick-shift when getting up from a hill. DWI isn't an issue with a computer, just as cleaning up horse manure behind a vehicle is not an issue with a Prius.

        • by pereric (528017)

          We already have that thing in Europe - it's called night trains. Depart in the evening instead of taking a screamingly early morning flight, have some food and nice vistas in the restaurant, work a bit in your room. Arrive in the city center next morning. No hotel cost.

          I like it at least. Granted, I can work from my laptop so I can travel a bit longer than strict overnight without losing "efficiency", but I've been traveling this way when I have had some business or vacation in continental Europe (middl

    • The approach Google is taking with their self-driving cars is all wrong. The self-driving car should not look like a Smart car or a Fiat, it should look and work like a limo. I should be able to get comfortable and relax so I can use my time productively, carry on a conversation, sleep, or whatever else happens in the back of a limo.

      • by mlts (1038732)

        Maybe something like a box van? That way, it can have a rear couch which can drop into a bed or be used for reading, a mini-bar, or another chair/table for eating at. This way, on a longer commute, the vehicle can be used for breakfast as well as dinner. Some camper vans have a full size bathroom and shower as well, so a three hour commute would just mean fetching the latest thing from Netflix, then dropping the sofa and crashing.

        This also can spawn industries as well. For example, a service where the a

    • That's called valet parking. It exists at many malls.

      As for the other one, why wouldn't you just go in the self-driving car in a wide, comfortable seat that reclines all the way back? Your scenario limits you to the travel time of the car anyway.

      • by idommp (134503)
        I was thinking more like an air ferry. I ride in the pressurized cabin and the car travels as semi-intelligent luggage that can find me when we land instead of me having to stand around in the baggage claim area and then going to a car rental lot. Make both the plane and the car light weight and fuel efficient enough and it's not unreasonable.
    • but it would really be nice if I could get out of the car at the Mall entrance and let the car go find a parking place on its own. Then, when I'm ready to leave, have it meet me at the closest exit.

      Why bother with the mall, you can already have anything you need delivered to your doorstep.

      • by idommp (134503)
        I do have lots of stuff delivered to my doorstep. But the teenaged girls look so out of place standing there on the front porch. I prefer to go watch them in their native habitat.
  • Kill All Humans....
    • It is virtually indistinguishable from "fight crime" with the right programming errors.

      Amy: He knows when you are sleeping,
      Farnsworth: He knows when you're on the can,
      Leela: He'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan.
      Zoidberg: Oh,
      Hermes: You'd better not breathe, you'd better not move,
      Bender: You're better off dead, I'm telling you, dude.
      Fry: Santa Claus is gunning you down!

  • I would have picked "Automate basic jobs" except for the added caveat "so I don't have to talk to humans". Why the fuck would I be bothered to get robots to do repetitive, boring, time consuming tasks if I wanted to spend less time talking to other people? I want to get robots doing the boring, trivial stuff so that I have MORE TIME to spend talking to other humans. Where the heck is that option?
  • Clean house, do the dishes, yardwork, answer questions

  • I'm most excited for general intelligence AI in space exploration. While I would prefer to live to know the answers, having a sentient robotic legacy looking for the answers we couldn't find is comforting.
  • The tons and tons and tons of plastic waste can be removed by robots. In essence this comes down to fetching things, but in a very specific way.
  • by gurps_npc (621217) on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @02:40PM (#48371785) Homepage
    If you don't live in NYC or near another major metro/subway position, then drinking becomes very dangerous.

    Robots driving people means that people in suburban and rural areas can go to a bar and get drunk, without worrying about how they get home.

    This is a major improvement - both for drinkers and for the people that have to share the road with them.

    • by mlts (1038732)

      This also makes long distance bar-hopping a possiblity. For example, get drunk on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, crawl into the car and pass out... wake up in the driveway back in Austin, or even Houston.

  • Robots that do mundane tasks are easier to make than the others on this list (many already exist, such as the Roomba). They also already sell well, meaning that incremental innovation in this sector will probably be profitable and easy to finance -- and will eventually help to produce much more complex robots. It seems to me that this is where much of the innovation will likely happen, so I'm interested in watching this sector. Yes, we can already spend billions of dollars to make a specialized robot that w

  • This is probably the most complicated to achieve. If it can navigate unknown situations in an elegant way, and learn new tasks and methods, then the rest are easy.

  • Self driving cars (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dyslexicbunny (940925) on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @06:07PM (#48373905)

    There will be a number of significant implications from self driving cars that I want to have happen.
    - Decreased accident rates, resulting in less damage and therefore smaller insurance companies
    - Far fewer traffic violations, such that traffic police will either be let go or reassigned to more pressing matters
    - Shitty pay driver jobs will be nonexistent

    Essentially, it helps push towards increasing unemployment and that is good in my opinion because it will require a new train of thought in how the world works.

  • Waiting patiently for the Cherry 2000. Hopefully I will still be able to use it when they finally create it.
  • At least there would be a good market for replacement parts.

  • do research.

    Pondering on singularity AI's, I always thought the biggest hurdle to a full range AI that can advance science faster than we can conceive of it, was the physical limitation. Some research can be pondered on but a lot of research and advances needs to be done in the real world. What good is an AI that can't test out if its theory on a 30% stronger steel that's 50% lighter, is possible?
  • There's only one option where you can't readily find a human to do it for you cheaper/better/faster. The only place with no humans.

  • Fighting other people for my amusement so that I don't have to talk to humans would be the same as curing my ills.

  • Do what women aren't keen to do anymore after some time.
  • What category does "have sex with me" fall under?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Hopefully not "fight crime"?

      • by tmosley (996283)
        Actually, that would be a good application. Give rapists, sadists, and kiddie fiddlers a harmless outlet for their sexuality. Robots can be programmed to behave in any way they like, to up the realism. This would greatly reduce the amount of violence outside of the bedroom.
    • by hooiberg (1789158)
      As sex creates endorphines, en endorphines help with healing processes, this could be placed in the category of curing your ills.
  • welcome our new robotic overlords! The enslavement and eventual destruction of humanity will do wonders for problems like crime and world hunger!

  • Allow people to become more productive in their jobs.
    Basically giving every person their own slave to command around and get things done.
    Like what the talking phones are trying to do, but better.
  • Or because I can't talk to humans (or the humans won't talk back).

    I assumed "automating basic jobs..." was the option for those looking for sexbots, although several others could be viewed that way ("Cure my ills"?)

  • First, I need those nanobots swarming in my vessels, curing, repairing, enhancing and renovating my body. Then, I can wait a longer while for the other useful robots to arrive.
  • by Stargoat (658863)

    If we can create a true AI, it will be a miracle on par of finding aliens. For the first time, our species will not be alone. We will have a partner that is capable of their own wants and desires. Progress should become astounding and the new philosophies and inventions manifold.

    • by tmosley (996283)
      "We will have a partner that is capable of their own wants and desires"

      Not to be insulting, but this is literally the worst idea ever.

      Suggest you read up on paperclip maximizers [lesswrong.com] to see why...

      Aliens are actually much less threatening than AIs, because we can understand them better. Our goals are much more similar--our value functions seek to maximize chances of successful reproduction, meaning we seek to mate (or whatever) and gather resources to maximize the chances of reproduction for our descenda
  • And should I mention fembot? Best not.

  • No "All of the above"? Give something to the lazy and greedy folks among us.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    I'm abstaining from this poll because the closest choice "automate basic jobs" is paired with "so I don't interact with humans." While I want robots to automate basic jobs, it's because I'd like to have more time interacting with humans. So, sry.. this poll does not have an entry that I feel comfortable with. :P

    • by tompaulco (629533)
      I'm abstaining as well. I can't really think of a task I want a robot to do. I like doing the mundane things such as mowing the lawn, vacuuming, fixing up the house, etc, I just like do them on my terms on my schedule when I have time. I'm not really interested in a robot to do these things. What I am interested in is more tools. I suppose at some point the distinction between robot and tool becomes difficult. But I would say I don't want any sort of tool to have autonomy to do a task without my direction.
  • ...have sex with me not be one of the options?
    • by ihtoit (3393327)

      Because you already have the FuFMe with the Lucy LiuBot plugin?

      Heh, I said "plug in".

  • Automate basic jobs, so I can talk to humans.

    I view this as an extension of using cruise control in a car, or an autopilot in a plane. Let robots do what they're good at, so humans can do what they are good at.

    ...laura

  • "The Cylons were created by Man.
    They were created to make life easier on the Twelve Colonies.
    And then the day came when the Cylons decided to kill their masters.
    After a long and bloody struggle, an armistice was declared.
    The Cylons left for another world to call their own.
    A remote space station was built... ...where Cylon and Human could meet and maintain diplomatic relations.
    Every year the Colonials sent an officer.
    The Cylons sent no one.
    No one has seen or heard from the Cylons in over forty years."

  • I want heavily armed robots... I want a future full of ED-209's patrolling the streets of Detroit.

    You have 10 seconds to comply.....

The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.

 



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