Sure although my example does involve programming the specific skills necessary into the robot. Generalization is certainly a problem although advances in machine learning have made incredible progress in this area. Computers have no difficulty identifying cats in visual data, for instance, provided they have been trained on enough images of cats. The challenges from what I can tell are mainly a matter of marshaling the necessary resources rather than any technical or conceptual obstacle.Raphael wrote:You might be falling into the fallacy where people thing "This robot can do X. People who can do X can usually do Y, too. Therefore, this robot should be able to do Y!" But that's a fallacy, because robots aren't humans, and their skills don't work the same way as human skills.
And, you underestimate how difficult generalizing has traditionally been for robots and computers. For instance, if a robot can walk through a specific parcour, that doesn't mean it can work everywhere, under real-world conditions.
Whether we like it or not, humans are rapidly becoming superfluous to civilization with more efficient and competent alternatives under development. If present trends continue, humans will find themselves unemployable and either dependent on lifelong welfare for survival* or more likely condemned to extermination as "useless eaters". Even maintaining influence in politics and administration will prove increasingly difficult since humans will have to compete with ever smarter and more rational computers for administrative positions.
*Although the concept of UBI has gained increasing traction in recent years, the notion that our increasingly reactionary governments would embrace it is prima facie absurd.
