“Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job”*…
Researchers at Oxford University and Deloitte suggest that about 35% of current jobs in the UK are at high risk of computerization over the following 20 years (as, one imagines, are similar jobs in other developed nations).
The BBC has developed a handy tool one can use to learn just how much peril one is in: “Will a Robot Take Your Job?”
* Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312
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As we revisit Asimov’s Three Laws, we might recall that it was on this date in 1909 that Thomas M. Flaherty filed for the first U.S. patent for a “Signal for Crossings”– a traffic signal. His signal used a large horizontal arrow pivoted on a post, which turned to indicate the right of way direction, and was activated by an electric solenoid operated by a policeman beside the road.
Flaherty’s was the first U.S. application for a traffic signal design, later issued as No. 991,964 on May 9, 1911. But though it was filed first, it was not the first patent actually issued for a traffic signal: Ernest E. Sirrine filed a different design seven months after Flaherty; but his patent was issued earlier, and thus he held the first U.S. patent for a “Street Traffic System.”
