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I was thinking this over the other day. When humans employ other humans, it seems to me that the most common things people are employed to do are "robot tasks". Stuff that doesn't really require much creativity, but for which someone needs to be there to physically move things around. The job I had at Fed Ex loading packages onto trucks probably fits this description most obviously, but probably every job I ever had has aspects of it.

Of course, I'm talking about cartoon robots -- for a real robot to work at Fed Ex, it would have to have excellent locomotion (never be tripped up if there was a gap between the truck and the bay, or packages that might be strewn about), it would have to be able to see things and make sense of what it is seeing, and make decisions based on what it is seeing (where is the best place to put a package so the truck can be packed tightly?). Those are incredibly challenging programs, and I don't believe that any real robots would be close to solving them.

On the other hand, other than that it can be exhausting to lift packages that weight on average 40~50 pounds all night, some of which may be awkward to carry, and at a fast pace, it's not stimulating work for a human.

It kind of reminds me of this post -- on the one hand, humans have creativity and intellect and curiosity and all sorts of traits that don't come into play when working at Fed Ex. On the other hand, humans are common and by far the easiest way to get physical work that is not completely repetitive done. (For tasks that are 100% repetitive, real robots can work)



Bringing this back to Honen, Honen lives in a cartoon world where autonomous robots exist. I am sure that many of Honen's robots could load packages at Fed Ex. They don't get exhausted like a human, and they are capable of moving similar to how a human moves.

The point I'm kind of getting at, the long way, is that I think what Honen would, or should, really appreciate about Samantha is her artificial intelligence. She has nearly human intelligence (or maybe human-like intelligence -- perhaps she's smarter than humans in some ways, but might lack some emotional qualities). That is an amazing thing. Imagine if you had a worker with human intelligence! Personally, I am still amazed on a daily basis that a calculator like the TI89 can solve some calculus problems, which seems like a problem in artificial intelligence (in fact, there are some problems it can't solve unless a human intelligence prods it in the right direction) But something with real human intelligence could do all that and more.

Now, in our reality, one reason employers employ people to do robot tasks is because humans also have their own goals and dreams. Chances are, those goals and dreams do not coincide with the employer's. My greatest goals and dreams were not to see Fed Ex trucks loaded with packages. In robot terms, this shows up when robots in fiction rebel against their creators. But one thing I don't think I have seen much (any?) of in fiction is a robot that a) does not rebel but b) is used for applying human level intelligence to its creator's problems (as opposed to just brute strength or whatever).

For someone who is an inventor and yet kind of a loner like Honen, even having an intelligent companion to brainstorm with would be a huge advantage.