Robots and the school year?

To the editor;

“OK, robot waitress.  Your first recommendation was the slow baked salmon with lemon and thyme.    I’ll try that.  With the peas and carrots.  By the way, that is a snazzy outfit you’re wearing…. You’re welcome. ”  

In a few years conversations like this will become common.   More broadly, robots will increasingly perform many jobs now performed by humans.   We may expect that the robots generally will first be used to do repetitive physical jobs.   Jobs remaining available to humans will involve greater complexity and skill.  Less skilled humans will have a harder time finding work.   New kinds of human jobs will be created more slowly than traditional jobs disappear.

Today’s smart homes are still a far cry from the futuristic visions of the last century. Home automation has certainly advanced over the last one hundred years. Think about the washer and dryer, and even the personal computer. But what about robots? If you’ve seen episodes of the 1960’s TV show "The Jetsons," you remember how Rosie the Robot cooked, cleaned and was a companion for Elroy.  Rosie’s legacy has set the bar very high for domestic robots – and we are approaching that standard rapidly!

Many erroneously describe Gordon Moore’s prediction as the doubling of computing power every two years. “Moore’s Law” is more accurately described as the doubling of transistors on a chip every two years. The point is that computer power is on a steep path of improvements; and the prediction has been accurate since Moore’s 1965 paper “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits” (Electronics; April 19, 1965). What does Moore’s Law have to do with real estate? Everything. Many industries have benefited as computer processing power increased – including real estate.