Look, I’ve seen some weird stuff through the bottom of a whiskey glass, but watching a robot sort laundry while venture capitalists nearly wet themselves with excitement is a new one. Welcome to Web Summit 2023, where the future apparently smells like fabric softener and desperation.
Let me set the scene: I’m nursing the worst hangover Lisbon’s wine culture could deliver, watching a humanoid called Digit (real creative name there, folks) sort T-shirts by color. The crowd’s going wild like they’re watching the second coming, when in reality, it’s doing something my grandmother mastered sometime around the Truman administration.
But here’s what’s actually interesting - and trust me, I needed three bourbons to see it clearly: we’ve gone from “AI will cure cancer” to “AI will fold your gym shorts” in record time. It’s like watching a Harvard grad take a job as a professional sock matcher. Sure, it’s honest work, but something got lost in translation.
The robot’s powered by Google’s Gemini AI, which is a fancy way of saying it can tell red from blue most of the time. The crowd at Web Summit acted like they were watching the moon landing. The only thing missing was someone planting a flag on a pile of dirty underwear.
Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room - jobs. They’re saying entry-level positions are going to vanish faster than my sobriety at an open bar. Sarah Franklin from Lattice (another company with a name that sounds like a fancy IKEA shelf) warns that the workforce pyramid is turning into a diamond. Which means if you’re starting out, you’re basically competing with R2-D2 for a living wage.
The real kick in the teeth? They’re suggesting displaced workers can become “robot managers.” Yeah, because nothing says career advancement like supervising a team of mechanical arms folding shirts at Amazon. It’s the kind of solution that only makes sense after a three-martini lunch.
But wait, it gets better. These AI systems are energy-hungry bastards. The datacenters running them are sucking up more juice than my neighbor’s Christmas display, and that guy thinks he’s visible from space. Microsoft’s Brad Smith is worried about it, which is like your alcoholic uncle suddenly expressing concern about your drinking habits.
The venture capital folks? They’re throwing money around like drunk sailors at last call. One investor, Shawn Xu, sees the massive energy consumption as an “opportunity to expand clean energy.” That’s like seeing your house on fire and calling it an opportunity to redesign your living room.
The cherry on top of this dystopian sundae is Prof Max Tegmark from MIT, warning we might all be dead in 10 years from artificial general intelligence. Funny how that works - we perfect folding laundry and suddenly we’re on the express train to extinction. Though honestly, if the robots are starting with laundry, we probably have time for a few more drinks before the apocalypse.
Even TV producers are getting in on the action. Steven Knight, the Peaky Blinders guy, claims AI can’t create the unexpected. Meanwhile, ITV’s advertising for a £95,000-a-year position to use AI in content creation. That’s like paying someone a fortune to teach a calculator how to write poetry.
Here’s what nobody at Web Summit wanted to admit: we’re so desperate to prove AI is the future that we’re celebrating achievements that would’ve been embarrassing a decade ago. Remember when we thought AI would solve world hunger? Now we’re applauding it for not mixing whites with colors.
The truth is somewhere between the hype and the horror, probably right next to where I left my dignity last night. AI isn’t going to kill us all, but it might make us wish it would, especially when we’re watching robots do tasks we mastered as teenagers while venture capitalists applaud like proud parents at a kindergarten play.
Time for another drink. At least the bourbon still knows what it’s supposed to do.
Yours truly from the barstool of truth, Henry Chinaski
P.S. If anyone needs me, I’ll be teaching my toaster to write poetry. Seems like there’s good money in that these days.
Source: ‘A fork in the road’: laundry-sorting robot spurs AI hopes and fears at Europe’s biggest tech event