For people who are intrigued by the idea of a changing future, it’s always interesting to meditate on the situations when machines can help man. In the movies, it’s always a gamble whether machines are going to help humanity or destroy it. But in real life, everything tends to be a lot vaguer and doesn’t wrap up in a two-hour feature narrative.
A few of the times specifically where machines can help man include when it comes to industrial manipulators, self-driving vehicles, artificial intelligence, and the entire medical field. Finding a few examples from each of those categories may help you think about the cohesion of man and machine in the coming future.
Industrial Manipulators
When there’s too much weight to move around concerning commercial and industrial applications, many companies use industrial manipulators. This is a classic example of where machines can do things that a person simply cannot. When it’s impossible or unsafe to move something heavy from one place to another, why not figure out how to make a machine that can do it for you? Engineers have been improving these kinds of tools for decades and will continue to strengthen them in the future.
Self-Driving Vehicles
Machines are faster than human reaction time. Even though a person may appreciate their autonomy as far as decision-making goes, there is no question that a properly-programmed machine can react exponentially more quickly than a person in the same situation. Your best example right now is when you look at the reaction time of self-driving cars. In a fraction of the time that a human could try to break or speed up to avoid an accident, a self-driving vehicle has done that process automatically and safely.
Artificial Intelligence
And artificial intelligence is improving as well, which relates directly to helping humankind. Whether it’s trying to find trends in lots of data, or creating pleasing artwork and music, or figuring out the best way to retouch photographs, artificial intelligence is here, it’s here to stay, and it’s improving all the time. As artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in our digital assistants, you’ll start to see more mainstream acceptance as well.
The Medical Field
And then we get to the medical field. As far as the human timeline goes, this is the safest and healthiest time ever to be a human. And a lot of this is because of technological advancements in the medical field. And many of those advancements relate directly to the ability of machines to help keep people healthy. It doesn’t matter if the focus is on the health of premature babies or the health of people with debilitating diseases. As the human body is becoming better understood, machines are right there to automate the healing process.