UsagiTsukino wrote:What will happen than? I mean if robots take the jobs more people will need to go on welfare and the government will blame it on the people or will people find new skills?
If robots take over for various jobs, however, there will be greater need for the following careers: Programming, Engineering, IT (Information Technology), and Maintenance. So, there would still be jobs that require humans.
Also, such robots may not necessarily be humanoid in design. If a robot is only going to be performing a few simple tasks, then there's no need to have all the extra parts.
As for why people have been attempting to make human-like robots: Curiosity and aesthetics. People are curious about whether or not they can create things in a fashion after their own image. The thing is, though, this would be extremely difficult due to both challenges in engineering and programming. (Plus, it'd be very expensive.) I find it unlikely that humans will be replaced by machines any more than they already have, any time soon. There are, however, some practical applications to this sort of research. Namely, advances in robotic limbs would be much more practical/useful for prosthesis than for trying to completely replace people with robots. (There's still some technical challenges here, but there are already methods of partially restoring function through prosthetic limbs.)
Computers are good at dealing with numbers, and that is why people often use them for doing the math when it comes to managing finances, and why people use them to keep track of their schedules. Computers can even make it faster and easier to deal with paperwork. (There are, however, limitations and problems to this approach, namely the need to regularly back up information and to keep the information secure.)
Computers aren't very good at object recognition in terms of images, however. (Google Images isn't very reliable for trying to find similar images once you go into the wider array of results, for instance.)
I hope this helps a little.
