Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for December 04, 2024

Wall-e

Or a s the British would say: Oh flippin’ ’ell…

I ate at a CaliBurger with an automated fry station. As soon as my order was completed the machinery came to life, with a mechanical arm to lower and raise the fry basket. There seemed to be only two employees there, and I was the only customer.

You can thank states like California demanding employees getting $20 an hour. There’s not enough profit in it to pay those kinds of salaries.

I’m sure there will be lots of jobs repairing the damage A.I. systems will do after they are hacked by enemy agents.

Was the run really that good, though?

I can’t believe people are using AI to help write books and they’re making money with it. It must be that we’ve been so dumbed-down by the mass-production governmentt indoctrination centers that cheap boilerplate plots are all it takes to satisfy us.

Cartoonists will never be replaced!

They’re talking about White Castle foodandwine.c0m/white-castle-fry-cooking-robot-flippy-8383969

“We had a good run”… you know, it’s not too late!

Good thing Brewster is set in the future and not the now!

Speaking of computers and the writing process, let’s jump back a few decades to spellcheck. Didn’t anybody but me see the typo in the last panel? Clearly Mr. Rickard didn’t. Of course, handwrittten text doesn’t get spellchecked by a computer, but apparently human spellcheck didn’t happen either.

Don’t worry Brewster you’re safe, AI can’t replace stupidity.

Yeah, I’ve heard of the burger-flipping robot – back in 2018.

Surprised no one mentioned “Did your read”…

Freeing Mankind to seek and solve problems artificial intelligence can’t.

First on the list: how to teach artificial intelligence how to seek and solve previously unidentified problems.

“AI will take everybody’s job”… sounds like “Robots will take everybody’s job” that I heard back in the 1980s… and yet here we are forty years later and robots haven’t destroyed the job market…

Heading into the age of “Wall-E”

Recently had my first encounter with AI, in connection with an online chat where I wanted to get a price reduction on a subscription service. Ever since I signed up for the one-year introductory rate, they triple that rate when the year ends. Every year I chat online and tell them I won’t continue at that price, and every year the person I’m chatting with offers a new deal for another year, typically at just $1 a year more. This year, AI took over. When I typed the issue into the chat, the AI assistant immediately offered me the same deal as I’d gotten in the past from a human. Pleased to have the situation resolved for another year, but a little scary too.

There was such an experiment in San Francisco a few years ago. You built your burger and a machine/robot would cook it.

They will never make a robot that can make a good okonomiyaki.