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Sunday, Jan 11, 2015 - 22:30 SGT
Posted By: Ham H. Let

Slow Week Out

Mr. Ham: *peeks into cubicle* Mr. Robo? You there?

Mr. Robo: Argghhh! Who's that?! *makes to switch monitor off, succeeds only in knocking his coffee over* I'm sorry! Please don't fire me, boss! I won't do it again!

Mr. Ham: *sighs* Mr. Robo, everybody browses cute critter pics at work. It's alright, as long as you complete your tasks. Speaking of which, what are you on now?

Mr. Robo: Ah, you gave me some time off to help the human with his thesis.

Mr. Ham: Oh yes, that. And finally, if I may say so. Say, any interesting sites you've found these couple of days?

Mr. Robo: Erm, on the tech end, automation's got to law document templates, robot jockeys and a claimed perfect poker player, at least over the very long term. And full-featured desktop computers are down to US$150 and fit in the palm of your hand now, peripherals not included.

Mr. Ham: *puffs on cigar* Actually, I've been wondering how long it'll be before call center jobs are fully mechanized. I mean, Siri, Cortana etc have been working with free-form speech for awhile now, and most callees follow a script anyway. "Yes, we'll waive your credit card fees." "Have you tried switching it off and on again?"

As an added plus, the bots could speak in the clearest, most accent-free voice you could hire, and there'd be no holding on the line for half an hour. Of course, if this takes off, that's millions more out of a job. But then we're already partway there with those "press X to..." options; I just hope they won't grow too cheeky...

Mr. Robo: ...and Singapore's apparently got a local historical MMO. Not sure how populated it is, though. Other than that, it's another small foreigner storm, as a radiographer got hauled up for unwise Facebook comments. The employer tried to smooth it over as a hacking case, but unfortunately for the fellow, he had a rather long history of such posts.


(Source: telegraph.co.uk)


Mr. Ham: Personally, I thought a stern reprimand would have sufficed, but firing seems to be the S.O.P. here now. It's especially unfortunate for underdogs that Subhas Anandan has passed on - innocent until proven guilty, after all - but at least there's a successor of sorts.

Diverting a bit, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, we might consider the nature of free speech and inquiry. The tragedy has brought everyone onto the cartoonists' side... at least in name, that is.

At the risk of being unpopular, this brings to mind James Watson hawking his Nobel medal a couple of months back, after being fired for continuing to make assertions about intelligence. As the human noted previously, and reasonable commentators have conceded, there is actually no good reason why geographically-separated populations must have selected for identical development of traits, which is borne out in those that are obviously physically observable.

At the very least, results of adoption studies suggest that there is at least a hypothesis to be had, and refutations appear to be mostly based about "intelligence" and "race" being constructs that do not truly exist... at least until it comes to medicine, where it would suddenly be irresponsible not to consider genetic predispositions when assessing risks.

Still, with within-group variance dominating the between-group measure by all accounts, and the humans' pretty atrocious record of utilizing such research, one understands if many are not eager to have the question raised. Watson having his medal purchased for US$4 million and duly returned looks to me like a fair enough ending to this affair.

Mr. Robo: In the local context, being unpopular with who matters does remain hazardous to your academic health, but on the bright side, you're completely free to employ euphemisms, with the latest fashion being to refer to a "columbarium" as a "Chinese temple" - bonus points if it's weaseled into the fine print.

Mr. Ham: Hey, there is free speech here... just that it's all recorded. But enough, back to work now, boyo. And oh, that's half a day's pay docked for breaching the terms of your employment contract. Tsk tsk.






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Next: A Deserved Break


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