fiona985•2mo agoProlific Poster

Watching a robot sort trash in Tokyo made me question my whole job

I was at a tech expo in Tokyo last year, and they had this AI powered sorting arm. It was just picking through a moving pile of mixed garbage, plastic, paper, metal, everything. It moved so fast, like a blur, and it was right almost every single time. I stood there for maybe twenty minutes just watching it. I'm an accountant, and my whole thing is sorting numbers and finding patterns, but this machine was doing a physical version of my job, but for trash. It got me thinking, is the real innovation just making machines that do our tasks, or should we be building AI that helps us think of completely new things to do instead? One side says efficiency is everything, the other says we're just training our replacements. What do you all think is the bigger goal for AI right now?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_viola2mo ago

That video of the sorting robot is wild, it's like watching a magic trick you can't figure out. Saw something similar at a warehouse once, a whole line of arms packing boxes without a single break. Makes you wonder if we're building better tools or just... quieter workers. The goal feels muddy, like we're racing to see what it can do before asking why we're doing it.

blair_webb2mo ago

Read a piece calling it solutionism.

brown.spencer2mo ago

Watch that same energy show up everywhere, @the_viola. I mean, my phone's smart fridge just suggested I buy more eggs, and idk, it felt less like a tool and more like a quiet manager. We keep making things that can do a job without ever really picking the right job to do.