Thursday, November 17, 2011

Robots: The solution to the one-child policy demographic crisis

Today I started a discussion about the one-child policy and its impact upon Chinese demographics.  Namely, that in 40 years, most of the population will be of pension age and will need to be supported by a smaller workforce.  The Chinese people in this discussion took the argument down a path that I would have never foreseen: the future robot population in China.

No, I'm not kidding.  This group spent an entire hour discussing not if robots could fill in the workforce gap, but when, and what type of robots would be used.  Would the robots be machines or artificial intelligence? would the robots be able to make critical thinking decisions?

Oh China, everyday you surprise me.