The Expanse : WHere are the robots?

WHere are the robots?

This is set 200 years in the future, yet I can't recall seeing a single robot. There may be some somewhere in the background of scenes, but nothing prominent. Why would they use humans for mining when robots would be cheaper, and far more efficient? There wouldn't be many dockers for Dawes to boss around, because ... robots.

Re: WHere are the robots?

Maybe you can't foresee the future as well as you think you can?

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Maybe you can't foresee the future as well as you think you can?


Now that we've heard from the village idiot, anyone with a real idea?

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I was replying to the village idiot, genius. You already have your answer. It's just too complicated for you to understand.

Re: WHere are the robots?

I'll miss you most of all, semi-aggressive poster who's actually in the right.

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I've been on the interwebs since dialing up to CompuServe. ... This is one of my favorite internet comments of all time.

I'll miss you too. Hope to see ya on the next road.

Re: WHere are the robots?

AHahahahaha, you know.. the village idiot never knows he's the village idiot.

To clarify, it is, in fact, YOU.

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the village idiot never knows he's the village idiot

I most emphatically disagree. I am acutely cognizant of my role as the village idiot.

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Hahaha!

I agree with you that it's implausible there are not more robots. I have some insight and it's very clear to me that we'll see self replicating robots that could just go to town on an asteroid or moon or planet and mind and build whatever you want in the next 100 years. We could live in virtual reality if we wanted then and have robots do all the boring work, while people will still want to explore and push out and have fun. Over-abundance in the future is very very likely in my professional opinion.

Problem is that it doesn't make for good drama, or story.

You could apply the same to the space combat scenes, computers and sophisticated AI would take control and be far more efficient and decide and react in a battle in nanoseconds instead of shouting "turn the PDC on bla bla hard starboard!".

It just no fun. And everybody lived happily ever after in the future, the end :D

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Problem is that it doesn't make for good drama, or story.
This is true but there is an easy way to explain their absence. i.e. Include a backstory where progress in Robotics and A.I. stalls or is even actively suppressed!

We're currently headed for another wave of automation which will result in another round of job losses. This could be used as motivation for a social rebellion in the near future against such technologies which are subsequently suppressed/controlled by governments to protect the jobs (and hence the living standards) of their voters.

Alternatively, the writers could come with a reason for why A.I would be too expensive to use off-world. Perhaps all the tech is owned by Earth or Mars and they'd rather use cheap "Belter" slave labour instead of sharing it with the Asteroid Colonies?

There are plenty of intelligent ways to explain the absence of A.I (e.g. Frank Herbert's Dune saga is based in a universe where a jihad against intelligent machines occurred and computers are now outlawed). Unfortunately this series doesn't bother to do this.

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Ah Dune touched on that, the Butlerian Jihad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad - oh nvm you mention that :)


Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."


The second or third book of the expanse also touches on this - half of earths 30 billion population is on basic income, so they do try to create jobs by limiting automation even if it would make economic sense.

But of course, even if you had literal slaves with the belters, it would still be prohibitively more expensive than automatic facilities. Even without AI, just with automation and machinery able to manufacture more robots. Just the costs of life support, heating, air, water, recycling, food, medicine, education, entertainment, government, policing, waste management... the costs even for slave labour would easily be two orders of magnitude higher even without superhuman AI. Slaves have costs as well and are not cheap. Humans are just very inefficient machines in space.

But I agree that it's a social thing - if I lived in that time I would want to be a belter living in space as well. Maybe it's a question of aesthetics. Of course it's also that the belters already there don't have a place to go back to - even if they were allowed back to the overcrowded earth they couldn't live in 1g. So they have to make a living there.

Or that ultimately it's an asset for humanity to spread out to avoid extinction.

I just read "Blue Remembered Earth" and it shows a pretty plausible scenario where the ort cloud is mined like that, while on the other hand you have a big faction living underwater that opposes these robotics and transforms their own human body to adapt to the environment (underwater or even to living in space).

But from a purely technical and economic standpoint, it's just not plausible you would have fully automatic ice haulers and mining facility that just shoot ice packages back to the belt etc.

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But from a purely technical and economic standpoint, it's just not plausible you would have fully automatic ice haulers and mining facility that just shoot ice packages back to the belt etc.
Agreed. What the show is missing however, is the prevalence Robotics and A.I. all over the place, assisting humans in their day-to-day tasks.

Miller has a manually operated front door which is transparent to the street outside.
Julie has to physically smash all the electrical devices in her hotel room when a single word/phrase should suffice. There is a single person manning the hotel reception when several virtual avatars or a robot A.I would be more likely. The police would almost certainly be accompanied by drones, if not individual robot "guardians", who would record everything and also watch their back (as portrayed in the TV series Almost Human). I could go on...

The Expanse deliberately presents us with a low tech future which is what makes everything feel so realistic and believable. However, in doing so it underestimates the future impact of (specialised, not generic) A.I and Robotics on society.

Ironically, Star Wars droids come closer to this than anything we see in his series!

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Miller has a manually operated front door which is transparent to the street outside.
What does that have to do with robots? No matter how cheap a robot door might get, a slab of material on hinges will be cheaper. You might not even want an AI door.... http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=135

Julie has to physically smash all the electrical devices in her hotel room when a single word/phrase should suffice.
Huh? Even if every electrical device could be turned on and off with voice control, that means that even when it is "off", it is still listening to everything you say for the command to turn itself on again. If she actually wanted them off, she had to disable them, and if they had batteries or wireless power, she had to destroy them.

The police would almost certainly be accompanied by drones, if not individual robot "guardians", who would record everything and also watch their back (as portrayed in the TV series Almost Human). I could go on...
Drones, perhaps, but cops today are resistant to body cams, and that attitude may last. There doesn't appear to be real AI (as in Almost Human), and that is an extremely valid choice in SF; true AI may well be "ten years off" for a long time.

There were a bunch of drones in the background on the Earth scenes, though.

<*>

Re: WHere are the robots?


What does that have to do with robots?
We already have automatic doors today. In a hundred years we will probably have intelligent, talking doors!

No matter how cheap a robot door might get, a slab of material on hinges will be cheaper.
Which is completely irrelevant if the price difference is only a few dollars. Old style mobile phones are cheaper than smartphones and probably will be for decades to come yet the ownership of the former is gradually falling as the latter rises. Why? Because price isn't the deciding factor. It's AFFORDABILITY.

Also, consider the poor security of such a setup. Miller is a unpopular police officer on a trouble space station which is known to house insurgents (the OPA) yet he has a transparent, manually operated front door?


You might not even want an AI door.... http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=135
Humour is indeed entertaining but a poor example for serious discussion.

If she actually wanted them off, she had to disable them, and if they had batteries or wireless power, she had to destroy them.
She turned them off because the power they were emitting WHILE THEY WERE ON was being absorbed by the protomolecule.

Drones, perhaps, but cops today are resistant to body cams, and that attitude may last.
Nothing lasts except human shortsightedness.

true AI may well be "ten years off" for a long time.
Given that humanity has colonised Mars I think we can assume this series is set centuries, not decades in the future by which time humans will have augmented (if not completely integrated) themselves extensively with robotics/prosthetics. We won't need robot partners of the kind in "Almost Human" because humans will be the robots - or cyborgs if you prefer.

There doesn't appear to be real AI (as in Almost Human), and that is an extremely valid choice in SF;
I mentioned that series because it at least attempts to address the impact of such technologies on society while this one largely ignores them.

There is only one thing certain about the future which is that it's unpredictable.
Assuming A.I will remain at near current levels of sophistication and usage, as this show does, is myopic.

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She turned them off because the power they were emitting WHILE THEY WERE ON was being absorbed by the protomolecule.
And, as I said, anything that is turned "off" or "on" by voice is always on. And if the items are networked in any way (ie, can be turned on or off by the hotel manager, or voice recognition uses some form of cloud computing), they may also be radio transmitters.


Given that humanity has colonised Mars I think we can assume this series is set centuries, not decades in the future by which time humans will have augmented (if not completely integrated) themselves extensively with robotics/prosthetics. We won't need robot partners of the kind in "Almost Human" because humans will be the robots - or cyborgs if you prefer.

That looks like a prediction.

There is only one thing certain about the future which is that it's unpredictable.
Assuming A.I will remain at near current levels of sophistication and usage, as this show does, is myopic.
If it's unpredictable, then it's silly to criticize them for failing to follow your prediction.

<*>

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And, as I said, anything that is turned "off" or "on" by voice is always on.
So what? That's irrelevant. Julie noticed the light and heat from them was causing her pain so she turned them off, except she should've been able to do so without having to smash them off.

That looks like a prediction.
Nobody can predict the future but you can extrapolate based on the present, which is what Science Fiction is all about.

If it's unpredictable, then it's silly to criticize them for failing to follow your prediction.
Except I'm not. I'm criticising them for not extrapolating logically from the present, which is what good SciFi tries to do.

If this was Star Wars or even Star Trek, I wouldn't bother, except this show at least appears to be attempting to remain grounded and realistic (although perhaps not as much as so called "hard" SciFi). The politics and economics are modelled on our own but extrapolated into the future, envisaging another "cold war" like stand off between Earth and Mars, which is, as always, over resources and influence. It borrows much from our current culture and even the space "science" is reasonably accurate (with no artificial gravity, acceleration couches, Newtonian Physics etc.) so why not also do the same with our current technology?

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So what? That's irrelevant. Julie noticed the light and heat from them was causing her pain so she turned them off, except she should've been able to do so without having to smash them off.
By a wall switch, perhaps, or unplugging them, or removing batteries. But voice control wouldn't actually turn them off. And if they had wireless connections, it wouldn't even dramatically reduce their EM emissions. And even if it did dramatically reduce them, it wouldn't reduce them to zero. She was desperate to reduce them as much as possible, not as much as was convenient, and even what she did wasn't enough (not that anything would be, of course).

Except I'm not. I'm criticising them for not extrapolating logically from the present,
...in your preferred direction, on one particular topic.

<*>

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And if they had wireless connections, it wouldn't even dramatically reduce their EM emissions.
WTF are you babbling on about? When a lamp is off it doesn't generate light or heat. That's why she tried to turn them off... It doesn't make any difference if she uses a her voice, a smartphone or a switch to do it.


...in your preferred direction, on one particular topic.

I never suggested the show follow my prediction.
Also, how technology is portrayed is central to any good SciFi.

Why do I feel like I'm replying to an idiot? I'm starting to think you're just arguing with me for the sake of it, which is rather pathetic.

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WTF are you babbling on about? When a lamp is off it doesn't generate light or heat.
That's because a lamp typically doesn't have an always-on speech recognition system or wireless connection to the cloud. Of course, a typical lamp also can't be turned off by voice control.

Most of the boxes in my entertainment system do generate light and heat even when they're "off". The older ones, because they are waiting for an IR remote signal, and newer ones may also be downloading updates, or doing who knows what behind the scenes.


Why do I feel like I'm replying to an idiot? I'm starting to think you're just arguing with me for the sake of it, which is rather pathetic.
If you view it that way, remember it takes two.

<*>

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That's because a lamp typically doesn't have an always-on speech recognition system or wireless connection to the cloud.
Wireless signals are radio waves, not infrared. They generate negligible heat.

Most of the boxes in my entertainment system do generate light and heat even when they're "off".

When your electronics are off they consume minimal energy and radiate even less.They don't produce enough heat to worry about. Regardless, Julie is still going to turn them off because off is still better than on!

Anyway, as I said, this is irrelevant because we don't know the technology behind the lights in her room. All we do know is she had to manually turn them off, which is primitive.

I don't care much about exactly how the lights work but given that this is the future and she's on a space station in the asteroid belt I'd expect a level of technology which would allow them to be operated remotely and certainly without her having to resort to destroying them to turn them off!

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Wireless signals are radio waves, not infrared. They generate negligible heat.
Light, infrared, and radio are all EM radiation. There's no indication that light and heat are more of an issue than radio. Wiki searching only mentions that ionizing radiation is the most effective.

When your electronics are off they consume minimal energy and radiate even less.They don't produce enough heat to worry about. Regardless, Julie is still going to turn them off because off is still better than on!
Precisely. That's why she would destroy an always-on device. Because actually-off is even better than partially off.

I don't care much about exactly how the lights work but given that this is the future and she's on a space station in the asteroid belt I'd expect a level of technology which would allow them to be operated remotely and certainly without her having to resort to destroying them to turn them off!
This is such a bizarre complaint. Of course normal people in that hotel don't smash and repair their lights to turn them off and on. There IS a control of some type somewhere, even if it's as simple as a switch.

She smashed them for one (or more) of these reasons:

1) Panic, confusion, and frustration caused by the protomolecule. In this case, it doesn't imply anything about how advanced the light controls are; she's not thinking straight.

2) "Almost-Off" isn't sufficient. She could still sense the EM fields and radiation from the low-power-mode. A simple light switch would not have this issue. It would become more of an issue as the light controls got more advanced, not less.

3) One or more lights could have been actual always-on lights, required for safety in a room with no natural light. It doesn't matter how advanced the controls are, if they aren't in the room.

So the fact that she smashed the lights either slightly implies a more advanced system (option 2), or implies nothing at all (1 and 3) about the level of technology.

<*>

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Light, infrared, and radio are all EM radiation. There's no indication that light and heat are more of an issue than radio.
This is irrelevant. Only what Julie thinks and does matters. She could be completely wrong about what is causing her pain but this doesn't change the technology involved, which is what motivated her actions.


Precisely. That's why she would destroy an always-on device. Because actually-off is even better than partially off.
Except there is no evidence they're always on. This is just your speculation. In any case, if any type of EM radiation is harmful then she was screwed from the get go as there were multiple sources aboard the stealth ship, the shuttle and the space station.

She was still thinking coherently when she smashed everything methodically and deliberately, hesitating before destroying her phone, so (1) is unlikely. She even had the strength of mind to drag herself into the bathroom. Smashing them isn't guaranteed to solve (2) and has no effect on the other sources of EM radiation emanating from all around her. (3) only accounts for a single, low power light. No more are necessary for safety. She smashed ALL the lights in the room, the TV screen and even her phone.

All of this is beside the point anyway.
You've turned this into a discussion about light and how the protomolecule is affected by radiation all because you can't accept that this show doesn't take into account the advancement of computers. Ever heard of Moore's Law? That alone should suffice.
Nuff said!

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Except there is no evidence they're always on. This is just your speculation.
No, it was your proposal that if they were voice activated, she wouldn't have had to destroy them. I'm saying that would make her MORE likely to destroy them, not less.

In any case, if any type of EM radiation is harmful then she was screwed from the get go as there were multiple sources aboard the stealth ship, the shuttle and the space station.
Of course. And, as we know, she was indeed screwed from the get go.

She was still thinking coherently when she smashed everything methodically and deliberately, hesitating before destroying her phone, so (1) is unlikely.
That doesn't follow. People who aren't thinking clearly can still be methodical.

Smashing them isn't guaranteed to solve (2) and has no effect on the other sources of EM radiation emanating from all around her.
"Guaranteed to solve" is out of the question, as mentioned above. But it could slightly delay the inevitable; given the inverse square law, nearby sources are strong.

She smashed ALL the lights in the room, the TV screen and even her phone.
More evidence in favor of her issue being with EM fields.

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Good point.

Although economics, politics and culture might have prevented it.

Heck, we went for VHS rather than the superior Betamax medium to watch movies on in the 80s basically because of marketing.

Perhaps robot miners aren't used because we finally wake up to the fact that more robots means less jobs for people...and with an ever growing population that's not a good thing?

Personally I think there would be more robots but also miners and engineers supervising them.

N.

"You are entitled to your opinion but not your own facts"

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Simple answer - budget.

Also the show may be making social commentary on how it's easier to use human slave labor in the colonies but I don't think the writing is smart enough for that.

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The writing is smarter than you think. That is very much a significant grievance and issue that comes up from the Belters perspective consistently.

"From a phylogenetic perspective, we are all fish!"

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I'll explain it. It's reeeaaaalllllyyyyy simple.

Robots, cost money. They are expensive.

Lives are cheap. As simple proof, look at China. It's cheaper to have a factory assembly line manned by humans, then by machines. Whereas in the West, minimum wage laws, make robots cheaper long-term (also OSHA, and other legal rules, liabilities, etc.).

It's just simple economics. We just haven't seen the %1 yet.

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Lives are cheap where air and water and food are cheap and plentiful. In space, they're extremely expensive.

Automating most off-world industrial activities would have made way more sense than the effort required to support an employee population.

They would have still needed people for many tasks, but the macro cost of the off world colonies would have been much less.

I do like the another poster in this thread's idea that the sociology of populsation and unemployment would have minimized automation. In the books a huge amount of the population is on "basic" and so maybe there was a make work element to off world mining and colonization.

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Horrible comma usage.

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Horrible comma usage.

He let his robot proofread it.

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No, robots are far cheaper. They don't need food, sleep, life support systems, education, entertainment, policing for crime etc. Those are things that are independent on "how to pay for them". In the future robots will be FAR more efficient in transforming energy into work.

Maybe you'd have one or two people on a ship like the Canterbury, the rest would be automated. Any task that can be programmed, could be programmed once and then you never have to train a new guy to learn and do the same.

Answer to OP is simple: It wouldn't make for an interesting story.

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Are you retarded?

Humans in space costs millions, air, food, oxigen, medicine, resources.

Robots only needs energy.

Organic robots, even more cheaper... auto generates energy.

TODAY, robots are cheaper than humans, most factories in CHINA are implementing robots... you *beep* ignorant, where do you read your info? North Korea Times ??

Maybe you are one of this clowns who think that knows the Future.. and writes this stupid-for-novels.

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You're partially correct. A.I. may be cheaper but it isn't always preferable because there are some tasks humans do better. The most obvious is waiting on people which is unlikely to be automated for decades but another huge growth area is elderly care. Not all tasks benefit similarly from automation.

Having said that, this series doesn't draw this distinction and the A.I. is surprisingly primitive considering it's set several centuries from now.

Re: Where are the robots?

Cost of development and usage for a single robotic drone (Sojourner) to send outside on Mars: $25 million.

Cost for a vacuum-safe space suit: a hell of a lot less.

Not to mention that there's plenty of docking robots/machinery about (for example, the robotic arms that grasp and secure ships that are docking at Ceres). They're just not generic and humaniform, like you apparently seem to expect.

TL;DR: This ain't Star Wars.

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You are factually wrong here. It costs far more to send a person into space to do something than a robot drone. Sure you need to initially spend on research, but you save on life support, space, entertainment etc.

Robots are far cheaper and more likely, they would also far more boring to watch in this show :D

"The latest oil shortage on Ceres caused all the robots to shut down into standby mode. We are patiently and peacefully waiting for new supplies."

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You are factually wrong here.


At least he's got facts. You just have conjecture.

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He didn't post any facts relating to the argument.

To compare those two, he'd have to compare relatively recent comparison of manned vs unmanned spaceflight, not just scientific research. And then it's not about research, but actual work being done in space and how that will scale.

Right now, it's a fact that unmanned space exploration is far FAR cheaper than manned space exploration. By multiple orders of magnitude more expensive.

And comparisons do exist, just google it, if you are unable to grasp the basic problem of keeping people alive and functioning well in space.

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Exactly, comparisons do exist, SpaceX. Once space flight is as ubiquitous as regular commercial terrestrial flight then the cost will go way down, like it did with said terrestrial flights. It's economics, as I mentioned in an earlier post.

Plus, these people were most likely born in space. They're already there, so costs of planetary takeoff, the most expensive part of the flight, are avoided.

I assume the same thing didn't happen with robots, so humans are cheaper. Considering life seems pretty easily expendable in the show, it's not a stretch.

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Well but robots don't need food, sleep, life support systems, protection from radiation, education, entertainment, medical support, policing for crime etc. A human just needs so much more space and stuff and resources to live. And you will be able to 3D print robots in the future as soon as we figure out how to make artificial muscles. And once you have self replicating robot, the next one only costs the materials, time and licensing costs. They would be dirt cheap.

Besides initial costs and upkeep, robots will be FAR more efficient in transforming energy into work. And even tasks we today think couldn't be done by robots will be done by robots in the future. Scanning and breaking up ice chunks and loading and unloading would be easy.

For the show that obviously didn't happen which is fine. And it would be a pretty boring show as well lol.

Re: Where are the robots?

In the Expanse, they seem to have a deus ex machina for humans in space -- the Epstein drive.

It seems to overcome a lot of problems. Continuous acceleration at a constant G value allows for in-ship gravity during transit as well as developing the super high velocities making flight to the other planets practical. The Epstein also allows for multiple-G acceleration, making escaping gravity wells essentially free. It also seems to get around needing a lot of ejection mass for propulsion, further making long-haul travel efficient.

But even if SpaceX solves some of the re-use problems associated with getting to orbit frequently, it's still an incremental reduction in the cost of escaping the gravity well when you really need exponential improvement.

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I assume the same thing didn't happen with robots, so humans are cheaper. Considering life seems pretty easily expendable in the show, it's not a stretch.
Even historical slavery wasn't cheap because a human workforce is expensive to maintain, which what you are failing to understand. Compared to robots humans are "High Maintenance". They need air to breath, water to drink, food to eat - and that's just the basic necessities. They eventually tire so need to rest and sleep. They fall ill or are injured so need medical treatment or replacing. These operating costs mean that advanced robots (of the kind we're likely to have in a few hundred years, not what we have today) will be cheaper to maintain in the long run.

The caveat to this is that by the time of "The Expanse", genetics and our understanding of human biology may have advanced to the point where we can "grow" humans cheaply, but the series makes no mention of this.

Also, the show doesn't present life as expendable at all. Several times we see the horror and disbelief of the Canterbury crew at individual deaths while injuries are treated with the best medicine affordable (not the best available as this would be utopian).

Space travel is hazardous and mining in space is doubly so. Add this to the political tension of a "Cold War" standoff between Earth and Mars and it's easy to see how the inherent dangers of the situation would result in casualties and deaths. This does not mean that human lives are expendable...

However, we do know Jules-Pierre Mao, magnate of Mao-Kwikowski mercantile, is behind the protomolecule outbreak on Phoebe, so clearly he at least doesn't value the lives of belters at all...

Re: Where are the robots?

maybe you all are missing an important point...

will robots mine your water, grow your crops, cook your meals, then buy it all back from you?

Re: Where are the robots?

Sure, they sell us water, we sell them oil from earth. Everybody knows robots need oil! Fair trade :)

Re: WHere are the robots?

Read the novels! Then go howling online;-(

Re: WHere are the robots?

Well you don't get any robots, but you do get a well known name from The Terminator.
Noticed the name of the electronics store in the 5th episode?
Its named Tech Noir :-)

Re: WHere are the robots?

After seeing the end of season 1, I'm expecting to see that human culture has a distinct disdain for robotics for reasons season 2 will explore.

Also, they spent a great amount of money on detailed sets, animations and cast so I think robotics would break the budget.

That being said, there are robotics in season 1. The ice loading arms were robotic and seemed semi automated, the surveillance drone the camera angle follows at Ceres seemed to be navigating it's course through the tunnels faster than a human could pilot. There was a song bird that looked and behaved completely real until it's batteries died in a later episode.


Criticism of religion is not racism...

Re: WHere are the robots?

The show doesn't have robots because they don't have any significant role in the story. If you mean in-universe explanations for why you don't see lots of robots, there can be a number of explanations.

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All this lame and ignorant excuses:


A.I. is advanced, we just don't see it because it's not what story is about.

Or

Robots are Expensive!!


Doesn't make any sense if you want to portrait the humanity in centuries ahead. Technology is so important now and will be critical in the future. Things like:

* The UN (united nations) of the space, doesn't make any sense, this kind of schema is tribal, archaic, suited for fights between small societies ruled by the human violent behavior.
* Transparent IPHONEs?? FFS!! is this Apple marketing?? Samsung hello?!!. That takes the show to the year 2020!! Prehistoric!! ... There is already helmets with AR (augmented reality) in 2017, in 100 years you are supposed to BORN and be binded to a computer or AI in mental ways more advanced than a Apple style obsolete interface.
* Artificial Intelligence and Robots, are supposed to take over jobs the next years... in 100 years... you must be a *beep* dumbasss to send expensive and inept human astronauts to aid a lost spaceship full of ... Astronaut Workers??? with guns?? are we that stupids to buy this crap??

Those space drones will be handled by AI and loaded with Organic Robots doing this tasks, not humans.

But for the sake of stupidity and marketing... yes we must believe in hundred of years... humans will be traveling to *beep* transport water!! YAY NETFLIX!!

and the list goes on... shall I continue??...

Re: WHere are the robots?

Stop watching. Obviously this show is not for you.


No f@cking sh`t lady does it sound like I'm ordering a pizza!

Re: WHere are the robots?


Why would they use humans for mining when robots would be cheaper, and far more efficient?


It is a common misconception that "automation is always cheaper than human labor" because this ain't always the case. Whether robots or human labor are cheaper depends on how human labor is valued.

Nowadays this calculation is heavily skewed in the direction of "automation being cheaper" because even emerging economies, like China, are starting to build a "middle class" that needs a decent income aka they need to be paid "proper wages" and have safe working conditions, in short: Workers rights are valued and enforced more and more around Earth.

That's why human labor tends to get more expensive, at some point it's reaching a break-even point where even expensive robots/automation becomes "cheaper" than using human labor because we decided to value "humane working conditions and proper wages" much more than we ever did before in human history.

On the other hand robots/automation need certain rare resources to be build and maintained, they also need a vast support network of well-educated people to keep them running, from programmers to engineers and so on, the majority of these "human labor" positions are "high skilled" and as such would be expensive.

Now imagine a future where humanity has regressed back a bit, where we once again have a "slave labor class" of humans that we don't consider worthy of healthy working conditions and proper wages because that's exactly what the Belters are.

At that point, the whole balance shifts back in favor of "human labor" because if you don't need to treat your human labor "humanely" and you can have them living in *beep* living conditions with *beep* pay (or no pay at all, except for giving them food and housing), then they end up being cheaper than automation.

Remember: Automation/robots need certain resources (minerals and metals) that are rather rare and can't be easily reproduced.

In contrast to that humans, treated as slave labor, are rather easy to maintain and replenish, there's also no need for fancy high-skill education that human labor in an automated environment would need. Humans don't need much to survive and reproduce, give them some air and give them fuel (calories, which can be easily grown/farmed) and they are good to go. If some of them get hurt/sick you can simply replace them with others from your vast pool of "slave labor humans" because they are plenty and reproduce easily.

In the end it boils down to the very same supply and demand mechanics that pretty much all economies are based on: If the supply of human labor is vast and it's cost become cheap (because we stopped caring about workers rights), then at one point it will be again cheaper than (rather expensive) automation. Especially if we as humanity decide to go back to the old ways of having a "slave labor class" (like the Belters) that we don't deem "worthy" of humane treatment, at that point human labor becomes just another resource that needs to be produced and maintained as cheaply as possible.

I wouldn't be too surprised if Mars actually has robots/lots of automation, that we simply haven't seen yet because unlike the Belters/Earth they didn't have a massive population spike.
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