I agree. The interesting question is not when robots will be equal or even superior to humans. The interesting question is when they will be advanced enough to take over a significant portion of labor for cheaper than even a chinese slave worker could.
The physical, mechanics part seems to be mostly sorted out. Robots can walk, run, climb stairs, avoid obstacles, get up when they fall, lift heavy things or operate at incredible precision. It won't be long until they exceed us humans in most physical regards (with a few notable exceptions like smelling or touch-sensitive skin, but imho even that is only a matter of time).
In my opinion the really interesting research is now going into the stuff you see in the video above. Making robots discover and interact intelligently with their environment. This is still a far cry from real intelligence but try to imagine the impact when robots become able to execute simple instructions like "Make me a coffee", "Drag the couch from A to B" or even "Repair the plumbing" without further handholding.
That will be the tipping point for a huge shift in society, akin to the invention of bookprinting or the internet, likely even bigger.
Looking at what we have today I would say that specific vision is just a matter of time. Whatever follows then is in the pudding.
Last week, I heard a talk from one of the engineers doing this. He claimed that the main thing holding back robotics is liability concerns. If someone builds a machine that causes widespread death and destruction, the usual cop-out is to blame the operator for losing control of it. But if a fully autonomous robot goes postal, the manufacturer can't pass the buck to anyone.
Perhaps this will be a real issue, or perhaps robot engineers are a bit too fond of Terminator and 2001. Fear of it is apparently causing real effects. It would be sad if the ultimate reason to employ humans is that it feels good to kick their arses when things go wrong.
Looking at what Asimo can do today it seems to me we're not far away from the latter; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg
The physical, mechanics part seems to be mostly sorted out. Robots can walk, run, climb stairs, avoid obstacles, get up when they fall, lift heavy things or operate at incredible precision. It won't be long until they exceed us humans in most physical regards (with a few notable exceptions like smelling or touch-sensitive skin, but imho even that is only a matter of time).
In my opinion the really interesting research is now going into the stuff you see in the video above. Making robots discover and interact intelligently with their environment. This is still a far cry from real intelligence but try to imagine the impact when robots become able to execute simple instructions like "Make me a coffee", "Drag the couch from A to B" or even "Repair the plumbing" without further handholding.
That will be the tipping point for a huge shift in society, akin to the invention of bookprinting or the internet, likely even bigger.
Looking at what we have today I would say that specific vision is just a matter of time. Whatever follows then is in the pudding.