Weird article. Is this some domain specific breakthrough? Because I'm fairly sure laboratories and researchers use some ultra precise experimental setups and sampling machines for like half a century now? For example an elaborate machine that loads 200 blood samples at a time and it'll return the lab results to the hospital within a few hours. For what used to be a time consuming, labor intensive job with a higher error rate before... But we have these machines for quite some time now... They didn't include any AI in the advertising, though. Same with material sciences, I believe. Either they're doing something very specific and it's a lot of manual labor. Or they have to test a lot of samples, or handle things very precisely, and someone is going to build a jig with robots or actuators. But that's kind of what people always did? I mean they did palletizing robots in the 60s, and the KUKA robot arm was patented in 1973. And this article reads a bit (to me) like the job description of such a KUKA robotic arm... But what's newsworthy about this in 2026?
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But what’s newsworthy about this in 2026?
It's about framing the debate of "robots doing work" in terms of being a positive thing ("see? they're helping us do important SCIENCE!") so that people will be just a little less combative when they get a BigMac handed to them by a robot arm.
Hehe. Sure. I mean it's both a blessing and problematic at the same time... I think most people appreciate a TV set is a few hundred bucks these days. Or the availability of smartphones and home computers. That's only possible because of modern pick and place machines. I think our world would look a bit more like the victorian age if we didn't have those modern perks. Each computer would be hand-soldered by a workforce of hundreds of people. Fill several rooms and be slow and unaffordable for anyone except the government. It wouldn't have a screen... We couldn't sustain billions of humans on the planet without all the machines and science in agriculture...
But automation is problematic as well. I mean we're arguing about it since the Industrial Revolution. I think they painted a dark picture of the future in the early 20th century. Like the movie Metropolis. I think these days, we've solved some of the issues that come with industrialization. But we're doing stupid things as well. And it's an everlasting struggle not to end up in some machine dystopia. Not sure if machines are the root cause of everything, though. I mean scientists use them, they're on every assembly line and in logistics centers. And not even the handyman with a more down-to-earth job renounces their modern battery-powered power tools... I mean sure we could use a handsaw and the hand drill from my grandpa... But I don't think that's the point?
But I value the human aspect as well. I mean I don't need soylent green out of a dispenser. I'd rather have a cook and waiter.
I used to work on those in the 90's.
You still do, but you used to too.
(With apologies to Mitch Hedberg)