Humans driven out of the service industry

But, if the education of our young doesn't keep pace with the loss of menial labor jobs; we'll end up with even more of an 'entitlement' sector (for want of a better term) than we have now. Like now, it will be mostly made up of people who can't find a job because the only skill they have is flipping a burger, running a cash register, doing housekeeping, etc. Also, what do we do with the sector now who are employed in some of these types of jobs. I'm thinking of those folks with mild to moderate Downs Syndrome, or other developmental disorders who are mostly self-sufficient and live in group homes? Yes, I can see 'cure them' but what if the bots come before that--which I can plainly see happening. It might be a good idea, but it's not a panacea.

Loss of jobs in the manufacturing industries (not all can be done by machines, but a vast majority can.) is also a burden on the undereducated. Growing up in a community where manufacturing jobs were king (Anderson IN--General Motors Corp), and wages for manufacturing jobs were well beyond even what many professionals made it didn't surprise me that when the jobs left, the town deteriorated. They're trying, but it's just never going to be like it was---yet everyone wants that. I recall that a friend of mine from High School attended GMI (Now Kettering University), and his father with 25 years on the assembly line could easily make quite a bit more money in a year than Drew did with an Engineering degree, working for the same company. That's where the major failure in the manufacturing sector has been.

I'm not completely convinced that these 'sex bots' would eliminate prostitution. There will always be ladies who would prefer that line of work, and frankly I could see a cottage industry coming about where a live woman would be an expensive commodity; ergo only the wealthy could afford it.

I mentioned some places where it is already happening, but what I meant were some more non-obvious places where Chatterbot tech could increase the penetration--things that require better interaction than you get in the run-of-the-mill ATM machine or self-checkout aisle. Your synthesizer example was also a good one. I remember a service a few years ago, and I don't know if it is still extant or not, but you called a number and asked a question in natural language and voice recognition software and something like chatterbot tech would formulate an appropriate response and speak back the answer to you. Think more sophisticated than the automated message about your balance from your credit card company. Ask "How do I get to the airport" and that sort of thing. A lot of customer service and tech support stuff could be handled this way using basically the FAQ with a little vocal query capabilities. The realism is the 'bot's ability to understand what the person really wants and deliver the appropriate information in the correct context. Another aspect of realism is giving the person on the other end the perception that they are really talking to a person--a lot of these people simply want to vent and get some sympathy.

Another related concept I forgot to mention earlier was the Turing Test. It's basically a test for a machine to demonstrate intelligence. From what I heard from the podcast I originally posted, some chatterbots are coming pretty close.