

FRIDA Robot Could Appear in an Assembly Line Near You - redgirlsays
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/frida-concept-robot/

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anigbrowl
This is both admirable and highly desirable; I can see applications in many
other spehres besides the factory. Furthermore, it's inevitable; many manual
tasks are just not that complex, and technology has gotten good enough that
they can be quickly taught to a machine.

There's a problem, though; while it makes enormous economic sense to deploy a
device like this once the marginal costs become competitive with those of
human workers, what are the human workers to do with themselves? Study and
learn new skills, in theory, but that in an educational institution has become
unaffordable for a great many people, and doing it at home doesn't yield the
certification which many businesses now demand of potential employees. As we
move towards a postindustrial technological model, our socio-economic models
have failed to keep up.

