Well, if you're thinking sentient, AI beings, then no-- they are still a long way off. Unless we can give any meaning behind why a robot should do something, for example, have and use this kind of dexterity, it's all mechanical tricks. Cool tricks, nonetheless.

I agree with the person you replied to but I'm not thinking about intelligent machines. I'm just thinking about the automation of everything. Look how close we are to self driving cars without needing a sentient robot behind the wheel. Mechanical tricks are going to eliminate the jobs of a lot of people.

> Look how close we are to self driving cars without needing a sentient robot behind the wheel. Mechanical tricks are going to eliminate the jobs of a lot of people.

Let’s say we’re close to self-driving cars, i.e. it’ll happen in 10 years or so. How much will it cost? How much the maintainance will cost? How many years will be needed until everybody owns a self-driving car? Unless more than a handful people have that kind of car you won’t kill a lot of jobs.

With this kind of dexterity, I would say Las Vegas croupiers should be getting a little worried and thinking about re-skilling.

David Copperfield should be OK a while longer though

indeed. the world 200 years from now will be as unrecognizably different as today from 1818.

That seems unlikely. One way or another, I'd expect 2218 to be much, much more different from today than is 1818.

The history of innovation compounds. One cannot improve on what hasn't been invented yet, but afterward, it can happen at any time afterward, even if the unimproved original has since been rendered obsolete.

If you think of it in terms of "200 years ago" versus "200 years from now" you might think there would be equal magnitudes of progress. But now is 200 years since 1818, and 2218 is 400 years from 1818 AND 200 years from now. The future has more to build on, and taller shoulders to stand on.

The center of history, at the exact moment where as much has changed since the idea "maybe we could just plant some seeds between the Tigris and Euphrates, and maybe not wander around so much," and from then until the present, may be shorter than 50 years ago, and getting closer every year. Thousands of years on one side of the balance, and tens of years on the other. With that in mind, today may be as different from 1818 as 2038 is from today. 2218 would be just inconceivable.

Exactly.