The time-frame for auto driving cars is actually more difficult to predict than that for general adaptive robotics because of the regulatory and social issues involved. I'm sure it will be decades not centuries though.
My prediction is that robotic servants will be common place in homes by the 2020's and that almost all manual occupations will be replaced with automation during that decade. I have no idea how society and the economy are going to adapt to that reality however.
Decades I can accept, centuries seem a bit too pessimistic. If we really need centuries I would expect technical and not social issues to be the holdup.
Automation has slowly been creeping into cars over the last decade or so. Lights and wipers turn on and off automatically, cars brake and belts tighten when danger is detected, systems help you keep the lane and cars can park all by themselves (brake and gas are controlled by the driver, the car steers).
All of this is a far cry from a truly self-driving car but all of this has been implemented without much fuss. All the imaginable horror scenarios did not scare citizens or politicians. I think that’s good sign and I also think that many debates about potential social problems of the introductions of self-driving cars are driven by overly negative stereotypes of political systems.
I also think that it doesn’t really matter all that much if the US doesn’t want to do it. There are more than enough other rich nations out there.
I pretty much agree with you. I just think that acceptance of automation in non-life critical situations will come easier and probably first.
It's also true that we already depend on many life-critical software systems, in aviation and medical devices notably. In a rational world all that one would need to show is that statistically a self-driving car is safer than a human driver. That bar is probably not that hard to achieve. I'm just not sure how to predict how the general public will react to automated systems that can and will kill people in rare circumstances and whose correctness can at best only be defined in probabilistic terms.
If we can make food, medicine, and shelter almost free with the help of automation, then people would no longer need jobs to meet their survival needs.
I agree. What I have trouble seeing is how we will transition from a society where most people's share of economic production is based on employment to one that really doesn't need many humans to produce goods.
Humans will produce culture and luxury instead. We're already halfway there: Think of the percentage of people directly involved in producing first necessities compared to a thousand years ago.
At most unions only have any power whatsoever in traditional manufacturing corporations. They're practically non-existent in the service sector. If someone wants to start a company that fully automates the manufacture of iPhones or an automobile, how could unions stop him ?
Technical obstacles, financial obstacles - sure. Government obstacles - maybe. But unions ?
My prediction is that robotic servants will be common place in homes by the 2020's and that almost all manual occupations will be replaced with automation during that decade. I have no idea how society and the economy are going to adapt to that reality however.