Comment on Automated catalyst testing uses two coordinated robots, cutting 32 days of work to 17 hours
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 weeks ago
Weird article. Is this some domain specific breakthrough? Because I’m fairly sure laboratories and researchers use some ultra precise experimental setups and sampling machines for like half a century now? For example an elaborate machine that loads 200 blood samples at a time and it’ll return the lab results to the hospital within a few hours. For what used to be a time consuming, labour intensive job with a higher error rate before… But we have these machines for quite some time now… They didn’t include any AI in the advertising, though.
But what’s newsworthy about this in 2026?
It’s about framing the debate of “robots doing work” in terms of being a positive thing (“see? they’re helping us do important SCIENCE!”) so that people will be just a little less combative when they get a BigMac handed to them by a robot arm.
Hehe. Sure. I mean it’s a blessing or can be problematic… I think most people appreciate a TV set is a few hundred bucks these days. Or the availability of smartphones and home computers. That’s only possible because of modern pick and place machines. I think our world would look a bit more like the victorian age if we didn’t have those modern perks. Each computer would be hand-soldered by a workforce of hundreds of people. Fill several rooms and be slow and unaffordable for anyone except the government…
But automation is problematic as well. I mean we’re arguing about it since the Industrial Revolution.
I’m not arguing against the automation used in this particular case; that sounds perfectly reasonable.
I’m arguing that the only reason it’s newsworthy is because companies want to put a positive spin on automation right now, right as the majority of companies expanding automation aren’t doing it to benefit workers.
Ah, thx. Makes sense, now I get it.
HubertManne@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I used to work on those in the 90’s.
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
You still do, but you used to too.
(With apologies to Mitch Hedberg)