Human controlled robots

In my recent post about the minimum wage, I pointed out that “you can’t buy a Big Mac from a guy in China if you’re in Virginia.”

Well, it may be that I was too hasty. Michael Higgins writes about human controlled robots. He calls them by the acronym HCR. What’s an HCR? Well, there’s a mechanical humanoid device in the McDonalds in Virginia, and on the other side of the world, in India or China, there’s a guy wearing a special suit and goggles who’s controlling the robot! Of course the guy in China is getting paid some ridiculously low wage.

If the rapid state of advancement in electronics and computerization continues, I bet it won’t be too many years off before we start seeing HCRs replacing American workers.

Comments

[Michael H]

Hi half-sigma
Thanks for the link to my post. Wait and see, in a few years, someone (maybe a small player that can afford the negative plublicity) will use one of these HCRs to do some simple task (my guess is cleaning toilets) and the nation will be abuzz about it. But they might as well think about it now because you can see it coming.

[Scott S]

A robot controlled from China? Didn't they try that already with Al Gore?