Your replacement has found a body.

The We Are So Done take

We had a comforting sentence ready. Fine, the computer can write the email, make the image and build the software. Somebody still has to pick the thing up and put it somewhere else. We said this with the confidence of people who had not personally enjoyed picking the thing up.

So naturally we want the robot. We want the counter cleared, the repetitive job finished and the afternoon returned to us. A machine that can acquire a useful skill without an entire new engineering project is exactly the sort of progress we would like delivered quickly.

The slightly less restful thought is what happens when the skill travels. If the knowledge of how to do something becomes available through a connection, a new pair of arms might start with more than an instruction manual. We have become accustomed to downloading an application. Downloading a reason to need fewer hands will take a little longer to feel ordinary.

We should keep watching the actual attempt. An impressive movement is a start. A completed task is better. Doing it again, around the things we forgot to tidy away, is where the promise has to earn its place. The floor does not accept a persuasive explanation of why the bowl should still be intact.

That gap does not make the direction boring. It gives us a very concrete way to follow it. Fewer failed grasps. Less teaching for the next machine. A longer stretch of useful work before somebody intervenes. Each improvement will arrive with an entirely reasonable reason to welcome it.

We will probably be standing there with a parcel, delighted that the hardware has arrived. Our own hands will remain essential for opening the box.

For now.