Final Word from Thursday, May 2, 2019

Robots are like zombies. They never get tired, and they keep coming at you. They were noticeably missing at yesterday's May Day celebrations, because they had work to do and didn't need the attention anyway. They peaked much earlier than zombies in popular culture but will leave a much longer shadow. They have politicians, industrialists, bankers and universities on their side. No one is surprised when business owner Andrej Babiš talks about how robots are nothing to fear, because they'll improve the work conditions for humans. More surprising is when Jan Hamáček warns against the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs to robots and then proposes to make humans even less competitive by cutting the work day to 7.5 hours. Robots are only as smart as the humans who program them, but they seem to have duped a lot of otherwise clever people into mechanically spitting out nonsense. Our only defense against robots now is to reprogram the humans. [ Czech Republic robotics artificial intelligence ČSSD ANO interior minister PM ]