Tag Archives: robotics

Jobless future

If you’re worried about your kids and the fact that More than half of students chasing dying careers you are probably right.  If you think that electing a career that is not dying will help them you are probably wrong.  Of course this and other Odradeks will outlive parents, but the dismissal is not a kafkan one.  Problem is it is likely the case that the problem is not which careers, but more likely ‘careers’ itself is becoming an obsolete term.

Colleagues seem to be there for a while, though we might have to be Ready for a Robot Colleague.

In a broader view on workmate, A.I. may give us a ride in preparation for a new time occupation future.  Perhaps it’s better for us to Don’t Worry, Smart Machines Will Take Us With Them.  remember those kids chasing dying careers?  That’s only part time – the rest of it they are drooling obsessively at smart phones as much as we let them.  It may well be that the case that this is their robot education in the making.

“Learning to Speak Robot: The Mainstreaming of Robotics” by STEVEN KOTLER

“Five years ago, industrial robotics was an elitist field. (…) —cost, danger and expertise—kept the field about as far away from the mainstream as technology can get.

 (…) Specifically designed to solve all three of the field’s largest barriers, Baxter was the moment that robotics went mainstream: a  (…) cheap (…)  user-safe robot with a user-friendly interface. It means he can work side-by-side with humans and opens up a whole new frontier of cooperative and collaborative possibilities.”

read full article Posted on Singularity Hub:

Plenty of robots

It appears we can’t keep their pace.  In a recent batch of news a friend found robots painting Van Gogh style, robots beating us on rock-paper-scissors (below, and btw that’s cheating on my playground), writing adventures and so on.

On the more troubling strain we try to make sure we control military robots, and wonder how great an idea is it to build system that deceive us, or how good an AI boss can be.

And while we can’t make ethical robots, and they are not yet out there firing (at) us, humans may enjoy treating robots like Yo-Yo Ma’s cello — as an instrument for human intelligence.

Bias dynamics in A.I.

The more algos we live by, the more “Computer Scientists Find Bias in Algorithms” as the story by Lauren J. Young tells us.

We may, of course, think that bias is unavoidable, so the best we can do is be aware and go on.  How much aware may find some psychological or commercial barriers, as in Jerry Kaplan’s “Would You Buy a Car That’s Programmed to Kill You? You Just Might.”

Maybe we can only hope that something good may come from algos interacting and trying to learn what are their new preferred actions (from their adjusted biases) as Daniel Hennes and Michael Kaisers paper on “Evolutionary Dynamics of Multi-Agent Learning” indicates its possible.

 

Robots being bullied

This video show kids being bullies in a mall – victim this time was a robot.

 

It may relate to another recent case of a robot being vandalized in his hitchthiking trip.

For the time being such experiments are very useful to bring light to human behavior.  Let’s say someone argues that as many other human behaviour this might be one society opts to discourage.  And as in many other cases, way to set limits is to grant victims rights not be be molested.

As we are likely to see such events recurring more often, robot rights defendants may have a growing number of examples on their side.

“Forces of nature: Biomimicry in robotics” by Stuart Nathan

featured at theengineer.co.uk

“(…) robotics, possibly the most important field where engineers try to copy the abilities of living beings, is providing fruitful ground for bioinspired technologies. Investigating nature’s solutions is the preserve of biologists, but their insights into the often surprising and even seemingly perverse ways that organisms achieve what might seem impossible — such as climbing a sheer, smooth surface — can often  give engineers ideas for how to solve completely different problems. (…) .

(…)

Systems based on nature are attractive to engineers for several reasons, Whitesides said. “They tend to work well with humans because their functional parts are frequently soft, so they aren’t as hazardous as heavy industrial machinery with fast-moving metal components. Also, they tend to be simpler, because a lot of the time we replace complex electronic or mechanical control systems by simply making use of the properties of the materials of construction and how we actuate them. That often means they’re relatively cheap, so they can be built for a single use. …” read full article

Autonomous Weapons Open Letter from the Future of Life institute

Future of Life Institute published this “Autonomous Weapons: an Open Letter from AI & Robotics Researchers”:

“Autonomous Weapons: an Open Letter from AI & Robotics Researchers
Autonomous weapons select and engage targets without human intervention. They might include, for example, armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is — practically if not legally — feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.

Many arguments have been made for and against autonomous weapons, for example that replacing human soldiers by machines is good by reducing casualties for the owner but bad by thereby lowering the threshold for going to battle. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity. There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people.

Just as most chemists and biologists have no interest in building chemical or biological weapons, most AI researchers have no interest in building AI weapons — and do not want others to tarnish their field by doing so, potentially creating a major public backlash against AI that curtails its future societal benefits. Indeed, chemists and biologists have broadly supported international agreements that have successfully prohibited chemical and biological weapons, just as most physicists supported the treaties banning space-based nuclear weapons and blinding laser weapons.

In summary, we believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so. Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.”