technology replacement??

Question

do we have the technology to completly revamp our country's service industry and eliminate back breaking heavy labor? do you see this technology arriveing any time in the future? what kind of machines, computers would be able to accomplish these things?

Answer 1

yes the technology is there to remove the back breaking part. However the tech is not there to replace the human hand/eye control part.
Any physical job could be made easier with tech. for example google 'power assist suit'.
however it takes a huge, fast computer to even approach the rudimentary shape recognition abilities of the human eye and mind. a baggage handler can spot a tag on a suit case and read the destination in less than a second. in recycling plants humans can spot a glass bottle in a pile of plastic jugs almost instantly. we are a long way from duplicating that with machines.
Will it come, yes. machine vision is the hot topic in robotics today. it is a major focus of software engineers. when can it be at a level to be of any use... maybe 5~15 years. face recognition software is useable. the trick is to take that concept and apply it to recognizing desired objects. will it ever be as good as human, probably not. but machines could have an advantage in that they could be built to see infrared or ultraviolet range, or other...
what kind of machines... well that is as varied as the minds of inventors. anything from sci-fi is possible, and things that are not yet thought of. it's probably best that you consider that for yourself.

Answer 2

You need to look a little deeper. What back-breaking labor are you thinking of? If it is still being done manually, it is probably because (1) a union requires a human to do it, or (2) a human is willing to do it for a lower price. The global labor market is making major changes in this balance. Think about these things from a broader perspective.