The invention of the transistor gave rise to the digital revolution that is still ongoing today. As digital technologies are developed and improved, an increasing number of applications are found for these technologies. An example is the industrial robot that will completely replace humans, unlike current robots that can only perform part of human tasks. “Welcome, Robot Overlords” by Kevin Drum. Please don't fire us?" explains how this robot paradise will become a reality and explores its impact on society as labor participation declines.[1] He also estimates when certain development milestones will be reached for these industrial robots. This article will support Drum's view that the creation of industrial robots is inevitable, but will argue that the timeline he provides is too optimistic Say no to plagiarism Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned." ?Get an original essay A precondition for industrial robots is sufficient processing power put the pace of technological advances into perspective. Moore's Law notes that "computing power doubles approximately every 18 months."[2] Using as a starting point the current state of computers with one-thousandth of processing power that of a human brain, he applies this exponential curve to extrapolate It will only take until 2025 for computers to reach computational parity with the brain. Although Moore's Law has been corrected for the past fifty years, computer chip makers such as Intel now face difficulties in meeting these expectations. The roadmap published by the chip industry has already been modified to account for a slowdown in performance improvement due to limiting factors such as heat dissipation and physical size limitations.[3] Perhaps Drum's claim that the processing power of the human brain can be achieved within a decade is too optimistic when considering the limitations on how conventional computer chip technologies can be improved. Keeping up with Moore's Law will require employing new technologies, such as changes in materials or manufacturing processes, and their success is not guaranteed. It may seem foolish to say that such progress can never be achieved. However, creating a computer with the processing power of a human brain may be more distant in the future than Drum might think. In addition to computing power, the robots that will eventually take our jobs will need to use their computing power efficiently to perform their assigned tasks. Drum provides numerous examples where current computers have already demonstrated some semblance of human intelligence. Even before the 21st century, the IBM supercomputer had managed to defeat the world chess champion, long considered the benchmark for artificial intelligence. More recent examples are Google's autonomous vehicle program and another IBM supercomputer that was able to beat the first two Jeopardy! players. To accomplish these increasingly complex human tasks, many researchers aim to model the human brain. Drum mentions Henry Markram of the Federal Institute of Technology as one such researcher. This neuroscientist is leading a project to model the entire brain by 2020, which also Drumhe admits being too optimistic. However, it appears that limiting the development of artificial intelligence to the narrow confines of the human brain may not be the best use of new supercomputers. This sentiment is echoed by Drum with his analogy of the Wright brothers not modeling their plane after a flapping bird. He rightly says, “Just as there is more than one way to fly, there is probably more than one way of thinking.”[4] This approach is logical given that computers use radar, cameras, and global positioning systems to gather information around them, which differs from what humans perceive using their five senses. Since the inputs are different, one would expect the process that uses those inputs to be different as well. Drum sees this move away from human mimicry as a step in the right direction and makes a final prediction that 2040 will be about the time when artificial intelligence is fully ready to replace humans from the workplace. However, he does not provide an explanation as to how this date was derived, making it rather difficult to agree with him. Furthermore, the fact that there has been no discussion of how robots will acquire the motor skills needed for a wide range of jobs casts doubt on his prediction. In any case, the creation of industrial robots is irrefutable, but the timeline provided by Drum is once again overly optimistic given current technology. The advent of industrial robots will likely cause the vast majority of the working class to lose their jobs. Unlike the industrial revolution, these robots will replace both physical and cognitive functions, leaving no replacement jobs available for humans. Therefore, any discussion about whether robots can take over jobs must also examine the economic impact of this issue. As companies begin to replace more and more employees with robots, the entrepreneurs who own these robots will become more powerful. The share of income belonging to capital investment will increase while the share of labor will decrease, and this phenomenon is known as capital-oriented technological change (CBTC). Drum lists the five characteristics associated with CBTC and indicates that they all began appearing in statistical analyzes more than a decade ago. An important consequence of this is the collapse of the consumer society. Just as the Industrial Revolution allowed the working class to generate surplus cash for discretionary purchases, the Digital Revolution will cut wages and reduce the appetite for these non-essential products. Drum's observation that “robots may be able to produce goods and services, but cannot consume them” is congruent with this sentiment.[5] Therefore, it is necessary to establish a new system of wealth distribution, which is not based exclusively on the exchange of work for payment. It will be the government's responsibility to tax capital gains at high rates in order to support its social welfare programs as more and more people begin to rely on them. Drum presents some interesting twists on how wealth might be redistributed. Since everyone currently has a body and brain exchanged for income, perhaps an endowment of capital is also needed to level the playing field. To further this idea, he hypothesizes that everyone could also be guaranteed a share of overall robot production, or even ownership of some robots. Although these methods are plausible in theory, the main challenge in their implementation will be the government's inability to sufficiently tax owners.