The Advent of Bots - Poker, WoW and Beyond....

[Xzin]

Interesting article about Poker Bots

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/poker-bots-on-the-rise-a-guest-blog/

Not EXACTLY a 1:1 to WoW but whenever you have capital to be made and you can create a program to do it - people will.

Same thing is happening to WoW - bots are cheaper to put into place than even the cheapest of China farmers.

My point here is not to foster botting or even online gambling but rather to being these topics up so people who multibox legitimately are aware of the changing dynamics of play.

[Oathbreaker]

Amusing for sure. This really reminds me of the deep blue vs human chess matches:

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/watch/html/c.shtml

[Xzin]

What do we do as a nation once cheap robotic labor with basic visual acuity replaces rank and file employees at places such as McDonalds? We are already seeing self checkouts. I give it 5 - 7 years before this starts to become a serious concern (at least for those who work for minimum wage in the US). When we shifted to a service based economy (and lost a ton of manufacturing jobs), the manufacturing jobs moved to service jobs. When we lose service jobs.... where do we go? Who absorbs the "excess" labor market?

I don't see a complete replacement of the workforce with robots or anything but robots will eventually be cheaper, more consistent, never strike, work 24/7, etc. When they have the ability to do basic tasks like prepare food.... as in operate an entire McDonalds completely robotically - do you really think competitors will be able to compete with that using traditional human labor?