Everyone has become accustom to machines and robots doing our manual labor for us, like a tractor’s strength surpassing a hundred workers, or a row of self-checkouts replacing twenty cashiers. These unskilled jobs aren’t any worry to most people and they prefer the machine to the man, but most don’t know that the machine can do more than just the unskilled jobs.

A new computer program named “Cepheus” has been created to play poker. That may not seem like a big deal but the fact that this program can beat human opponents in Texas hold ‘em poker means that this program can operate on its own with human like intelligence. The researchers at the University of Alberta are the ones who created this program and say that Cepheus has “solved the game of poker”.

But of course, ever since the invention of Deep Blue, an impossible to beat chess machine, computers have shown amazing ability in surpassing their creators. So what does this tell us of things to come? One might see this machine and think: nothing. So a computer can beat a human at card games, does that really make the next step the enslavement of humanity? Perhaps nothing so extreme, but that doesn’t mean change isn’t coming.

The robot revolution is like something humanity has never experienced before, and it isn’t just happening, it’s here. Currently on the road are fully automated cars, or cars that drive all by themselves, but to call them cars really isn’t fair. They didn’t call the first cars mechanical horses, because they were so much more than that. They are a new innovation that will slowly but surely, replace all human drivers as long as they produce less error which isn’t hard because the automated car doesn’t text, talk, or drink while driving.

There are also more and more intelligent robots being produced, to the point that some of our most skilled workers could be deemed unnecessary and even replaced. Medical robots, lawyer robots and even creative robots are within technological grasp, this is a dangerous thought that seems illogical, that a machine just can’t do what a human does but the sad fact is that they can.

The next common argument is that the Robot Revolution is far on the horizon as they are far from perfect, but we have to remember that neither are humans. The machines don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be better than humans. And they are.

With no sleep, no food, and no capacity for mistake, a machine can out preform a human and now in almost all areas. If the human race isn’t keeping a careful eye we may become, well, useless.