Nation’s homeless being replaced by lazier, less-efficient robots

Washington, D.C. – An annual report released this week by the U.S. Conference of Mayors shows that an increasing number of homeless people throughout the country are being replaced by lazier, less-efficient robots.

“What this study says is that our perception of the nation’s homeless as a group of men and women who are unable to adapt to society’s structure is becoming increasingly outdated,” said Philip Mangino, director of the U.S. Interagency Council (ICH) on Homelessness. “In truth, more and more of the non-hardworking humans who’ve been the backbone of this nation’s homeless population for hundreds of years are being replaced by machines – robots capable of being far less productive than a traditional, flesh and blood homeless person could ever be.”

According to the report, many of the same robots built to replace humans in the workplace since the 1980s are now beginning to edge out homeless people for full-time positions on the streets of our inner-cities – so much so that robotic units now constitute almost 12 percent of the nation’s estimated 3.5 million homeless – up sharply from approximately eight percent in 2003.

Experts pointed to recent breakthroughs in robotics technology such as the development of the Fujitsu robot – an advanced humanoid-like machine capable of avoiding the work of at least four homeless people – when projecting that by 2010, more than half of the nation’s homeless guttersnipes will have been replaced by these slothful, super-unmotivated robots.

Speaking to reporters Monday, Mangino explained the conditions currently driving the trend toward automation in the nation’s homeless environment.

“Humans are losing out to robots on the streets simply because they are just that – human,” said Mangino, the federal government’s highest-ranking official on homelessness. “Your typical homeless person can only sit around at the library or lay on a park bench for so long before they must motivate themselves into at least scrounging up some food or they’re going to die. Modern robots, on the other hand, can squat in an alleyway for months on end without even running a self-diagnostic check, let alone have to lift a hydraulic-powered arm in the name of self-preservation. In a nutshell, humans simply can’t compete with machines’ ability to sit around and do nothing all day.”

Arthur Clive, head of robotics for a major U.S. automobile manufacturer, agreed with Mangino’s assertion that a highly-inefficient modern robot can simply do a better job of avoiding work than can a homeless person.

“Compared to your average homeless person, a robot is capable of taking up to five times as long to bend over to pick up a used cigarette off the street in the middle of oncoming traffic,” said Clive, detailing one of many advantages homeless robots have over homeless humans. “And when it comes to yelling at telephone poles, modern robots’ speech and language capabilities enable them to shout completely irrational nonsense for a longer period of time and at a higher decibel level than can a human – without the need to pause for breath every once in a while for fear of passing out. Not only that, but they could yell obscenities at parking meters in more than two-hundred languages, which only succeeds in making the homeless robotic unit look even that much crazier in the eyes of the public.”

Mangino said that homeless robots are also capable of being discriminated against and looked down upon as second-class machinery by common citizens, who tend to harbor the misconception that a robot’s homeless status is purely the result of its CPU consciously choosing not to run any work programs.

“Just because a robot is homeless doesn’t necessarily mean it’s programmed to be lazy,” Mangino said. “The truth is that many of today’s homeless robots have a few wires crossed, if you know what I mean. They’re often singled out and kicked to the curb just because they’re a few millimeters off. What’s worse, their conditions are often improperly diagnosed or they are never able to get the maintenance they need to function properly and coexist with other robots in an assembly line mainframe.”

Clive agreed with Mangino’s argument that just because a robot is homeless doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t want to perform intricate, repetitive motions 24 hours a day.

“A lot of the robots you see hanging around in storefronts on your drive to work every morning are not lazy chunks of metal that would sooner have their USB ports removed than have to be on an assembly line working for the man,” said Clive. “Many of these units are proud, hard-working bots that just got overloaded or damaged somehow and became unable to work. Maybe they had their extension arm seize up on them, or maybe they fried their motherboards experimenting with bad downloads. Or maybe they have memory problems that make it impossible for them to function. Whatever the reason, it’s important to remember that not every robot out on the streets is there because they’ve made a conscious decision to throw their lives into the scrap yard.”

Mangino said that although the U.S. government has only recently addressed the homeless robot issue, the ICH has already been approved to launch two federally funded programs aimed at helping homeless robots get back up on their wheels.

“Twenty-seven major U.S. cities have received funding to open up free shelters – a place where wayward robots can go to get a good power-wash and maybe get their batteries charged or download a few software updates so they can get out there and start scanning for jobs,” Mangino said. “In addition to that, most of these cities will be implementing a program that issues free memory cards once a month to as many needy robots as possible.”

Lauding the ICH for bringing attention to the issue, Clive said he believes the government should make solving the problem of robot homelessness its number one domestic concern – with the issues of gasoline prices and human homelessness following closely behind.

“It takes a great deal more than a power-wash and battery charging to convince a homeless robot to completely reformat its drives and adopt an entirely new operating system that can lead them toward success,” said Clive. “Convinced that no one will ever again give them a chance to perform tedious motions over and over again, these robots completely turn their ports off to the world and start to consider running any of their more complex programs as a complete waste of energy. It’s sad to say, but the day a robot starts panhandling and pushing a shopping cart on the streets all day instead of perfectly executing a thousand difficult spot-welds an hour on a factory assembly line, even the most technologically advanced robot will start to view itself as being more worthless than a Commodore 64 with a missing ‘Enter’ key. Once they log off from the world like this, there’s usually not a damn thing anyone can do to convince them to try to reboot.”