15/07/2017 Click - Short Edition

This is Adam Jensen, star of the video game

Set in 2027, the poor chap has to undergo extensive

cybernetic modifications after being severely injured.

Well, just ten years before those events might occur,

that plot line doesn't seem that far off.

For years now people have been body hacking,

giving themselves extra abilities and, as our understanding

of robotics has advanced, so has our creativity.

Like the cyborg in the video game, he too has a bionic eye.

It doesn't have Terminator vision like this, yet,

Inside a prosthetic eye, which is an odd shape,

they're not a sphere, a prosthetic eye, they're actually

Inside that is a battery, a video camera and a video

transmitter all attached to a circuit board so they can

The camera is turned on and off with a magnet.

It doesn't look at all comfortable, is it in anyway comfortable?

The first configuration that looks the most uncomfortable,

it looks like a '90s iMac, you can see all the goods inside.

Like the battery and the wires, but that's covered by smooth

I don't have open wires and batteries, you know.

That kind of made my stomach drop a little bit when I saw that.

Rob damaged his eye when he was nine and in 2009 began exploring

As a film-maker himself, he was fascinated with the idea

It's like an absurd toy for a one-eyed film-maker.

I used to watch the Bionic Man when I was a kid, the $6 Million

I had the action figure, you looked through the back of his head,

I was looking at my Nokia flip phone at the time I was like -

That's in fact who I called, I called Nokia.

They said - well, we'll call the camera module people in China.

It's very small, it's very challenging.

It does visual dropouts, which is the visual language

of all video from the future, including Princess Leia

Since the initial prototype, Rob and his engineers have gone

He now has one eye that glows red when it films and another camera eye

I get calls from and emails from moms whose kid has just lost

an eye, because it's some sort of fun thing to show a kid this

maniac running around on videos and glowing

red eye cameras and stuff. It's fun for them to look at that.

They're now looking working on ways to transfer the technology to other

We're doing 3D scans of those now and then that creates a space that

you can take into software to map on the technology that we're

Some people golf, I like to make fake eye cameras and, you know,

UAE, that will go down well with users. Step aside, here is with

Khalifa, taking the coveted crown of most watched YouTube clip it has

been viewed a staggering... 2.9 billion times. Elon musk launched

the new all electric Tesla model three. A pricetag of $35,000 it is

supposed to be more affordable than their previous effort which cost 200

grand. Rival automobile company has scrapped its plans to build a

billion-dollar factory in the US state of Nevada. This leaves a big

question mark over than launch next year of the new model. No, this is

not a digital version of the Ministry of silly walks but this is

Google 's deep mined attempting to learn how to walk. The research has

been conducted in virtual environments that one day it should

help robots learn how to navigate complex spaces. And, finally, a

former NASA scientist to build a super soaker, giant sized. It is so

big you will at least see him coming.

Almost everyone in the world who works pays tax on the money

they earn, but at this restaurant in San Francisco there

are no waiting staff and robots plate the food.

That work is currently not taxable and politician Jane Kim is now

looking into how this is changing the city's economy.

So what we're seeing is after automation that you can

hire less people in order to deliver products maybe quicker

But it's one of the questions that we have, it's true this

is really convenient, but at what cost?

It's not just restaurants, this picture is now seen across the city,

from hotels and hospitals to the latest addition

to the autonomous family, self-driving cars.

Policy makers have noticed, every time a robot takes human job,

The research is showing us that jobs are going to get lost over the next

ten years and if before the Great Depression

we could have predicted what would come afterwards,

if government could have prepared for the job loss that occurred,

That is the level at which we are looking at potentially

over the next ten years, in terms of job loss

Estimations of how many jobs will be wiped out vary widely

from study to study, but a recent report especially has

It's estimated that robots will replace 37% of jobs

in the United States by the early 2030s.

So the biggest concern is mass job displacement,

lack of true, meaningful, high wage work.

We are already seeing a decrease of that in San Francisco

where we have the fastest growing income gap in the country

and a wealth gap that is akin to the country of Rwanda,

accord to our own human services agency data

and so we have a shrinking middle-class and we have this

growing imminent threat that many of our meaningful,

working-class and even middle-class jobs may go away

At Cafe X, again a human worker has been replaced by a robot.

An Americano with milk, served by a robot.

Now, the human has a different role, advising on coffee beans and showing

customers how to use the tablet to operate the robot.

The owner is not sure about the idea of a tax on the replacement.

I guess I find it a little odd because what robots are supposed

That means it allows a shift in labour from doing highly

repetitive, low productivity tasks to more useful things.

So in order to have this machine operate, there has to be a lot

of engineers on software, hardware and manufacturing to build

Jobs like this require training and that's what Supervisor Kim wants

If you're a childcare worker or you're an in home

support services worker, working with a senior

or individual with disability, you often work three or four hours

So one of the ideas was, why not tax robots and invest

in these poverty jobs and make them truly living wage

This would mean a robot tax potentially subsidising low paying,

but essential jobs, so that the human employees

Currently, many people are working but not earning enough to live,

leading several politicians around the world to float the idea

This would be expensive for governments and Supervisor Kim

is suggesting an automation tax could be a solution.

If there's one thing that San Francisco is known for,

it's leading the conversation on technology and innovation,

but as harder and harder questions are asked about automation

and what this really means for people's jobs it seems

appropriate that this city, which has added so much

to the problem, is also grappling with what could be the solution.

But the rise of robotic workers is playing out on a global scale

and San Francisco is not the only place trying to lead

In the EU, a proposal to tax robots was voted down earlier in the year

and one of the Commissioners who did so says robots will create more

They are worried because they say robots they will take their jobs,

Progress always created more jobs than progress used to destroy.

The train is moving and speed is high and now it's up to us to be

on that train or to stay and to wave to the leaving train.

Concerns about automation replacing human jobs has been felt sense

the Industrial Revolution and more recently workers in

the manufacturing industry have seen jobs disappear

As the issue of a robot tax begins to spread further,

a fundamental question still needs to be answered -

In the context of robots of course automation is much broader

They gave this definition more than 100 years ago.

Politicians can no longer ignore the robots creeping

into the workplace and while many of the big questions

are still being thrashed out, it's clear that the issue of robot

workers is becoming more and more of a political one.

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Thanks for watching and we will see you soon.