Robots will eventually become an integral, essential part of the world economy. But today, robots are still primitive and pre-scripted, pre-programmed and they cannot ?think? for themselves. By artificial intelligence (AI) we mean autonomous self-decision making robots where non-repetitive jobs are difficult to replicate.
Robots are sophisticated toys for now ? the DARPA (within the Pentagon) robotics challenge will award a multimillion dollar prize to anyone who can develop a robot to clean up the Fukushima reactor. However, robots are unable to do autonomous non-repetitive jobs but truly autonomous robots are now slowly entering the market place, which can actually make independent decisions.
Robots are good at repetitive work, eg, cooking simple dishes. A receptionist?s job is largely repetitive; hence, can be reduced to simple algorithms. Robots may eventually become as big as the car industry in the future. In nations with an aging population/low birth rate and low immigration, one potential solution would be robot nurses.
