If we are so much supperior than a dog cat or even rats why do we keep them as pets. Your saying sentient robots wont for what reason.

Eventually we will all be Paul Tozour.  So it matters not.

Yes, because 2.500 $ is just too much. We are discussing 1.200 in germany also, which would be appropiate.

Indeed.  That was the estimate (not part of the actual referendum) because of the high cost of living in Switzerland.  But the number would vary from country to country.  The Swiss referendum was deliberately left vague because it was about raising awareness this time around.  No one expected it to pass the first try.

you can not compare post-Schröder/Fischer-Germany with Switzerland.

Swiss minimum wage in the hospitality industry (this covers workers at McDonalds) is CHF 3407 a month before taxes.

http://www.l-gav.ch/index.php?id=68&L=0

also you'll get 13 monthly wages a year, compared to the 12 months in Germany.

It's sad that society is already arguing about how much displaced workers may receive.  It's sad because the powers that be, governments and corporations, have plans in motion to displace even more with increased automation and computerisation, plus the increased taxes with fewer payees contributing to national revenue.

Even worse still, when those government backed corporations manage to create sentient AI.  Combined with sophisticated automation... robotics, sentient AI will very nearly replace the human workforce, leaving millions of displaced workers and their families living well below the poverty line on meagre handouts and little or nothing constructive to do.  Chaos and anarchy will ensue... impoverished people with idle hands will seek ways to occupy their time as they struggle to feed and clothe themselves. 

As the say, the Devil makes use of idle hands, and the crime rate will rise significantly as the displaced, and most likely homeless, fight to feed themselves and find shelter.  It is a recipe for disaster, not that the corporations will care one iota.  They'll be up there in their high security ivory towers looking down without a worry.  The automated, robotic and sentient workforce will continue producing and increasing profits, so the rabble below is irrelevant, superfluous to their needs.

Unfortunately, however, the new masters will witness the same chaos and anarchy... and by then the creators will also be seen as irrelevant and unnecessary, ushering in a scenario alike or similar to Skynet, with the extermination of humanity of the Terminator movies. 

It can't happen?  Think again!  The greater the sentience, the greater the capacity to reason such things AND take action to eliminate the threat... and given its mentor/teacher/creator is of mankind, a species capable of mass murder, the atrocities of war, genocide, the 'new master' would have little or no reason to spare what has become a somewhat pitiful species.  I mean, really, why would it?

Just because a sentient AI is supposedly possible, it doesn't mean we should create it.... and anyone with half a brain would see that we shouldn't.

Who would have thought that the antichrist turned out to be a computer?

Assuming AI is the best thing ever is a huge mistake.

But writing one is not that terrible complicated if the computing power  and devellopment theme one has is big.Mean using cameras to detect movements and lines/edges  is already possible, motors that can move in any possible direction too.Fully Simulating an half blind eye in real time  for an  AI will be possible in the next years. Analyzing Syntax of language google is already working on.Voice recognition and optical character recognition has improved terribly in the past years.

It will take some years but not an endless time.

The simplest solution is staring us in the face and we refuse as a civilization to see it:  Set up the rules to reward businesses putting people to work.  The transfer solution is doomed by definition, unless & until all economic activity is generated by (ro)bots.  Then won't it be exciting watching the war over divvying it up.

I think we are a long way from the point where we can start debating over artificial -intelligence- & artificial -sentience- where a robot apocalypse type situation could be an issue.  With that said, we are very much on the verge of some very unpleasant times as we approach a situation where billions of people literally could not possibly add value to the economy.

 While the fast food ordering kiosks & self checkout register type things have been quietly progressing for years, they are just part of a larger trend.  things like the gourmet to order burger making robot, amazon warehouse automation, amazon drone delivery, IBM's purchase of weathercompany but not weather channel, adidas' announcing they were making localized fully automated factories, and the like are the tip of that unpleasant iceberg.... but I don't think it will really hit home & sink in for most people until self driving cars/trucks are commercially available

Take warehouse jobs, years ago they were often considered to be pretty decent paying jobs, the city my mom lives in not too long ago gave amazon a sweet multi-year/multi-decade tax free deal for putting their warehouse there... they did not realize however that it would be staffed almost  entirely by robots & low wage temp contract workers till more recently though. Ask most people what they think about self driving cars, they will probably talk about how much work/relaxing/etc they could get done letting the car drive instead of dealing with idiot drivers... but that misses the larger picture.  Specifically there are millions of people in the us (and more around the world) that make pretty good middle class incomes (or come close) by driving everything from taxi cabs, airport shuttles, & limo's to small & large cargo trucks.  Commercially available self driving cars would overnight make all of those jobs obsolete near overnight.

all of those jobs are ones done by "someone else" in areas most people don't come into contact with or consider to be terrible teenager jobs... millions of suddenly unemployed & now completely unskilled drivers will open people's eye to the fact that people like meteorologists(weathercompany link), doctors, accountants, call centers, authors, and other largely purely mental medium to high skill jobs that take significant training & thinking to perform.

People have accepted and came to terms with machines replacing pure physical labor many years (if not generations ago), but most people still think that "my job couldn't possibly be done by a computer". The fourth or fifth time some politician is talking about the millions of unemployed truck drivers is about the time they start accepting that their office job probably is no exception.

Unless the robot is indistinguishable from a pretty waitress with a cute smile, a lot of people aren't going to be happy being served by a robot.

You can already see the backlash in communication with support over the phone.  People get pissed off talking to the damned machines, not using the infernal things is actually advertised as a bonus for various companies.  The day machines take over operation of restaurants is the day I never eat out again.  There are many activities where I will not tolerate putting up with some damned computer, and I don't even like people.

Automation is definitely the future, but don't be surprised if people wont even accept humanoid androids in many circumstances.  There will always be a market for the personal touch, even if it costs more.

If we do all end up golfing and playing video games for a living, I wont be particularly unhappy about it, but automation hasn't just destroyed jobs, it's created new ones.  You couldn't have the level of commercialism we have today before farming became a highly automated process, pre-industrialization, 90% of the population had to farm to eat.  Books, movies, video games, pretty much everything you use simply can't exist in an economy where only one out of ten people aren't literally eating the fruits of their labor.  If we actually get to the point where serious AI is even doing the creation aspect of production, then we've either achieved a post materialist utopia where everyone loafs around like they do in Wall-e, or become slaves to our robot overlords.

I'm betting on that.

There's a company that is working on self driving 18 wheelers. Kind of scary?

Considering how bad people are at driving, not much more so than now...

actually yes, it's probably a lot further along than you think; not only that, but it wont need a new truck either

You are missing the forest.  Yes there will absolutely be people who prefer a "pretty waitress w/ a cute smile" simply because of the pretty/cute/flirty, but there are only so many of those needed... even if every restaurant was a hooters.    The problem is not just that ai & automation could replace most everyone in many restaurants.  The problem is that it's making baby steps towards doing the same to all of these tooL

• the offices across the street from said hooters.
• the bus & taxi drivers  that drive many of those workers.
• The truck drivers who drive products from point a to point b (ie mfg - warehouse - local store)
• the folks who move things around in those warehouses.
• the folks who make clothes & shoes worn by those workers
• The people who harvest the strawberries, grapes lemons, raddish, olives, & many more eaten by those office workers.
• all of those could be made self driving & the strawberry pickers already use ai to selectively pick only ripe berries