Sunday 30 June 2013

Robot rock band performs live in Tokyo

It is expected that robots will replace human workers in the future; I have recently read an article about Moshe Vardi, an IT professor at Rice University claiming that it may happen by 2045 and it could put millions out of work permanently.

Some people claim that before the end of this century, 70 percent of today’s occupations will be replaced by robots and some jobs such as ballerinas, musicians, mathematicians, athletes, fashion designers, yoga masters, fan-fiction authors and folks are considered those that only humans will be able to do.

Well, I’ve got some news for you, Z-Machines, a band made up of 3 robots, Mach on guitar, Ashura on percussion and Cosmo on keyboard made their debut in Tokyo featuring Japanese group Amoyamo, so I guess this people were wrong about those jobs that can be done only by humans.

According to digitaltrends.com, the robotic band has been created by Yoichiro Kawaguchi, an IT professor at the University of Tokyo, and mechanical designer Naofumi Yonetsuka.

The band is composed of a 78 fingered guitarist fitted with 12 picks, an electronic octopus of a drummer who can wield 21 drum sticks and make a sound that, according to Yonetsuka, is "the equivalent of four people playing drums" and a keyboardist that can shoot laser beams from its eyes.

I don’t want to sound pessimistic but I would say it will be hard for musicians to compete against robots with these super abilities, and it seems to me that the replacement of humans by robots has already begun. 


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