Surgeons, Line Technicians, Construction Workers, Programmers, Librarians and Toilet Cleaners. Eventually, all these kinds of jobs will dissappear to robots. Why? Because its cheaper. Far cheaper.

So where do all the people turn to for jobs? Heres the exciting bit. The entire population will choose from only four jobs.

1) Research & Development - The world will form as one collective R&D department to improve the robots and technology. A staggering majority of the population will work purely and simply as brain-stormers. Innovation, Design, Prototyping. Why? Because robotics is the largest single market on the planet.

2) Sport - As human as we are, there will be a phenomenal rise in sporting proffessionals. These people will love their job and people will love watching them. Sport is an essential to us.

3) Art - Again, like sport, we need art like we need air for breathing. Expect a flourishing mass of talent on a scale you have never seen before.

4) Managament - The whole world would we so taken by all this free time and quality of life that we will need hardly any government. The people will no longer need to be governed. Politics will simply become a matter of management.

Well, that leaves out a great amount of people I think.

Thats the beauty of it.

I think there are many jobs which will never go to robots, because robots lack creativity and foresight. Maybe alot of menial, crappy jobs will, but nothing that requires intuition or creativity. Which I think is more jobs than you may credit.

Also...we need people to fix all these robots. Unless you want robots to fix the robots...but robots aren't very good at fixing complex things...too logical. A human is much more efficient (at least once they've wrapped their heads around the job)

Not just that...I don't agree with your initial points anyway Derf. I think art is very much a secondary element of our society. I'm very marxist in that department.

Sports are an extension of our primal instincts (victory, hunting, domination) and as such is a much more 'human' aspect than art. But with sports robots take over too. Or science, anyway. In this and 100 years -if we're still here- athletes will be 'specialized' freakshows. Genetic doping is a not-so-distant reality, and very hard to prove.

So, I think robotic future is a realistic one, but not to be regarded as a robot/human division. I think it'll be more about robotic humans.

Im talking about waaaaay into the future. For example when the whole world will be completely globalised. In other words, bloody ages from here.

The points you and Sat make are valid, but only for the near future. Satis mentions the limitation of the capability of robots, but he doesnt realise that essentially there is no functional barrier that robots hold toward the kind of jobs i mentioned.

Anyway, the whole point, is to take humans off these jobs and make robots our bitches. They do all real work, while we ALL figure out how to improve it.

Another way to look at it from my point of view is to look at how i got to this idea. I was thinking about todays robotic technology and how its replacing humans in the car manufacturing industry. Now multiply that by how many jubs there are in the world and put everyone in R&D.

The advantages are astounding, something like everyone having to work only 4 hours a day at a stupidly high wages. Why? Because the robots work!

Havent you seen I Robot?

yea...the robots will just go crazy and try to pwn us. Say no to robots!

Anyway...assuming no technical limitations....of any sort....why would robots not be able to do art? If you're talking about robots that have all the capabilities of man, they should have all the capablities with no exception. Of course, we have no idea what really causes creativity or talent, but if we're to the point that robots can make value decisions, then why not artist robots? Imagine a Rembrandt robot that could crank out 1,000 paintings a day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Finally, high quality art accessible to the masses.

Anyway, I think that, if you go far enough into the future, anything will be possible that we can dream of. Any limitations imposed on robots will probably be societal in nature. Are robots 'human'? Do they have rights? If they can think, feel, create, procreate...do we treat them as equals, or slaves?

Mr. Data did art. He painted. Also, there was an episode of ST:NG where Data was on trial for his rights. Was he property or free, he ended up being free and not the property of the Federation.

@ Satis - 1) Art is valued not only by the image itself. There are many issues that determine artistic value. The unique genius who created it, how, why, when, etc... Robot art will never be appreciated and valued overall superior to human art because it has no sense of genuinity.

2) I am not trying to define THE definite route that robotics and employment will eventually reach. Instead, i think this is very likely, for me.

@ 11b - I dont agree with there being any connection between my idea and tv. They seem much too primitive.

saying that noone will ever appreciate robot art is a bit restrictive. What if you don't know it's from a robot?

Take lab-created diamonds and rubies. They're not as valuable as normal ones, but, as time goes on, they're indistinguishable from the real thing. In fact, they're better than the real thing. Higher quality, less imperfections, great carat weight, and, best of all, they're significantly cheaper.

Besides, you say that robot art has no sense of genuinity. How do you mean? If a robot can think and feel, why can it not create "genuine" art? Besides...what's genuine art? Is a kid in Venezuela drawing stick figures on the back of a piece of trash any less art than some guy in Manhatten throwing paint on a canvas?

- Maybe i wasnt clear. I didnt mean to say robot-art wouldnt be appreciated 'fullstop'. I meant, robot art would never be appreciated 'as much as' human art.

- The emotion i linked to the use of the word 'genuine', was to describe a kind of sense of authenticism. Which is the same difference we make between a Van Gogh, and a print-out of a Van Gogh. A robot will be able to paint pictures yes, and create music, but essentially without Aritifical Intelligence, the robot is simply doing what it has been programmed to do. Another thing, I didnt say anything about robot AI. My idea of their decision making involves the use of advanced algorithms, not AI. AI is a big no no.

In other words, even if using advanced-algorithm, a robot will be able to create a unique painting, this is true. But what im saying is that the overall market for robot paintings will be always lower than human, and always be generally appreciated less. For the reasons i mentioned in the earlier post.

I still maintain that your definition of art is too 'arty' Derf. A robot using advanced algorithms could create art, for art is a skill like another.

Anyhoo, if you fed an advanced robot program certain thematic ingredients, a writing style and a few variables when it comes to the plot, I'm sure one could write a book that I could consider good. So I don't see the problem.

being human we like to think that we're special, but we're not really that special. Good music, good stories: they depend on very basic principles that are really more of an automatism than a divine creation process. In fact, we're probably sucky at it because we lack the processing speed and efficiency, a robot would actually be better at it. Algorithms are based on our thought processes (in fact, they are copies) so a robot -being more skilled at processing them- would pwn is badly at it.

For the record, I consider music and written art to be more 'real' art than visual art. Visual art is a fashion industry nowadays, not something inspiring.