We're setting our youth up for failure it seems.... Whether it be "helicopter parents" bubble wrapping their kids and not allowing them to do anything (because son "you might get hurt") to media scaring us with robots taking our jobs.... What incentive do our kids have to try anymore? They are all entitled from birth anyway, right? Necessity drove me when I was young, what do we use to motivate the youth of today?

I got a little off topic, but it sounds like a good program... I'll have to see if I can track it down....

@DJ.

I see this advertised all of last week and thought it loooked like one to watch. Couldn't watch it last night so recorded it on my DVR and plan to watch it tonight.

Yes, I saw this advertised here in the UK last week, I too haven't watched it yet, clashed with another program my wife wanted to watch, and will watch it on catch-up sometime this week.

As JD has said from a social prospective it looks interesting!

Watched this last night, wasn't Impressed!

You weren't impressed? I know it's slow moving - but you have to admit the underlying story about robots taking our jobs is realistic and frightening.

Imagine two or three years from now when self driving cars hit the road. Say good bye to the millions and millions of taxi drivers. That's a HUGE economical disaster for that industry. Parallel to that, semi deliver trucks and train drivers vanish. Another huge economical impact!

That's just two of the easiest jobs which robots are near to replacing - in only years from today.

That will kickstart a huge revolution of robot companies making robots to replace jobs. It isn't a pipe dream - think about it... If all of you already have the power to make robots do impressive things, even at a small scale - imagine what the future of large funded corporations can do!

It's the message in that show - something to be conscience of.

Jobs have been replaced for thousands of years. I am sure that when the abacus came a long, people saw it as a disaster. I remember in the 1980s people said computers were going to put us all out of work and that we had better build leisure centres ... yet by 2015 we are all working much harder and longer hours than we have ever done before. What has happened is that quality and quantity of work produced has simply increased. To my mind, robots will take many jobs but new and more interesting roles will become available .... of course further down the line computers and robots will take those jobs too ... or may be they won't because they will be so human that they will turn their robotic noses up at them!

This is a little different - actually a lot different. Let's do some simple math with what's going to happen in the next 2-3 years.

So all these self-driving car companies - one of them finally launches their first car. If I owned a taxi company and someone told me that my cars can drive 24 hours per day without paying an employee... that's an easy one.

According to Wikipedia there were 233,900 taxi drivers as of 2012 in the USA. Each taxi driver at the time made average of $23,000 with a 16% increase over 10 years. So it's 2015 (3 years later), and I would guesstimate the salary is now $25,000 and that there are more than 233,900 taxi drivers - but let's just use their numbers.

So that's 233,900 employees out of work in the USA alone in the next 2-3 years, totaling $597,500,000 in lost yearly wages that USED to go to employees but now are going entirely to taxi companies and the self-driving robot companies.

Now, would you like to do that same math on Canada, Germany, UK, China, etc... You're looking at billions per year being shifted from salaries to profit.

Take the same application that we just applied from Taxi's and paste it on the delivery/semi/transport truck industry - that's gonna hit hard as well.

We just looked at 1 industry which will be the first to become affected by the advancement in robotics. The difference between robotics and every other industry is we're aiming at making robots entirely replace a human at a specific task. Computers were never meant to replace the physical actions of humans - the computer is only 1/10th of a robot. Sure people in the 1980's were afraid of computers taking jobs, but that's just the outcome of no education and fear of the unknown.

With robotics, we know the capabilities and limitations. It doesn't need to start with robots walking around painting homes and mowing lawns. It starts with reasonable and obtainable functions - such as the taxi and transport industries.

By the time a self driving taxi is announced, every taxi driver in the USA will be out of work within 6 months. If you're a taxi company, why the heck would you keep humans employed when you could have a taxi drive itself 24 hours a day - it literally pays for itself in less than a year and from that point forward... pure profit.

So, what is you solution to find work for the 233,900 taxi drivers by 2020?

This is why STEM education is so drastically important. By the time a high school student graduates from college, the jobs available to them will be far more of the technical nature.

Honestly, how hard would it be to replace elementary education teachers? Now, how hard wold it be to replace care givers? Both of these are huge industries that are "non-technical". There is a shortage of educators and care givers. Robots are already being tested for these industries because of the shortages. How many students are in college now working on degrees in these fields because of the shortages? These students may be the last human employees in these industries. The students in elementary school probably will need to have a knowledge of robotics during their lifetime in order to make a good living. The good news is that this group of people are probably the group that is the most excited about robotics.

I am not saying that all employees in these industries could be replaced in the next 10 years, but there are many working jobs that could be replaced pretty easilly in the next 10 years.

Look at the military and how many jobs could be reduced with all of the robotic development we have had in the last 5 years. Will we need feet on the ground, yep, just far less of them.

Anyway, do the next generation a favor. Take an hour a week and go volunteer at the school in your area. The school will appreciate it and you might inspire a group of kids. You have a unique skill set that is more relevant to these kids than their parents or teachers realize.