Robot revolution will take the boss's job

Happy New Year! The blog is back from its holiday. We're opening with a thoughtful article from The Guardian involving technology and economics. Larry Elliot, the Guardian's economics editor, puts forward the argument that the new AI revolution will not threaten low skilled jobs (many of those have already been lost to manufacturing robots). Hecites As Dhaval Joshi, economist at BCA Research, "it is not going to be the low-paid jobs in the service sector such as cleaning, gardening, carers, bar staff or cooks, whose jobs are most at risk. That’s because machines find it hard to replicate the movements of humans in everyday tasks. The hard problems that are easy for AI are those that require the application of complex algorithms and pattern recognition to large quantities of data – such as beating a grandmaster at chess”, says Joshi. “Or a job such as calculating a credit score or insurance premium, translating a report from English to Mandarin Chinese, or managing a stock portfolio.” 

He continues to observe that "the looming threat is obvious. The first army of machines wiped out well-paid jobs in manufacturing; the second army is about to wipe out well-paid jobs in the service sector. In many cases, the people who will be surplus to requirements will have spent many years in school and university building up their skills." This will result in "exceptionally high rewards for those at the top, a hollowing out of the middle class, and the expansion of low-paid insecure jobs at the bottom."

Will a robot take your job?

With robotic technology advancing at a pace there is the obvious prospect that robots will start to perform a wider range of services and tasks and not be limited to factory manufacturing as they are at the moment. A recent article in Wired called "Robots Will Steal Our Jobs, But They Will Give Us New Ones" makes the argument that although many current jobs will be taken by robots new opportunities will arise - the most obvious of which is servicing and maintaining all the robots. Incidentally the photo here is of a robot that can cook a hamburger and the Japanese have robots that can prepare Ramen noodles.

Should "killer robots" be banned?

Lethal autonomous weapons systems, or "killer robots" as the public prefer to call them, are almost a reality. In fact in certain cases, such as Israel's Iron Dome rocket defence system, they already exist. Should the ability of a robot to identify a target and execute an attack without human intervention be outlawed? Many people believe it should, arguing that a robot can never act morally, whilst others argue that in certain circumstances robots may be less dangerous than frightened, stressed and fatigued soldiers. A week long meeting at the UN in Geneva is currently considering the issue. The UK government has already declared that it opposes an international ban on developing "killer robots" as described in this article in the Guardian. An international coalition of NGO's called the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is lobbying to have a ban established before the technology is upon us. What do you think?

Harvard Researchers Build $10 Robot

There's been a lot of attention in the last year about various initiatives to encourage children to learn how to code; with new programming languages and of course the inexpensive and increasingly popular Raspberry Pi computer. To this we can now add a robot developed by Harvard University researchers that will cost just $10. The "Affordable Education Robot is a low-cost robot designed to introduce students of all ages to the fundamentals of programming and control of robots, with the hope of inspiring them to further pursue studies in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)." Learn more about this robot here.

These robots cheer for absent fans at South Korean baseball games

File this one under "weird." The South Korean baseball team, The Eagles, haven't won the championship in 15 years; they're commonly know as The Chickens! But still their loyal fans come to watch and cheer their side on. So of course, being South Korea, it was natural for them to create robots who could cheer for absent fans. An unusual use of the concept of telepresence. Watch the video below to see how it's done. This story was brought to my attention by my colleague Mark.

Rock paper scissors robot wins every time!

Watch the video below of the Japanese Ishikawa Oku Laboratory's Janken robot winning at rock-paper-scissors 100% of the time. Technically it's cheating as it uses high-speed recognition and reaction to operate its hand-like machinery, which takes one millisecond to recognise what shape the human hand is making.

Video games made real

If you watched the Apple WWDC Keynote last week you'll have seen a live demo by robotics company Anki. Their "aim is to bring artificial intelligence (AI) into people’s everyday lives." Their demo, which didn't go entirely without a hitch (anyone who's ever given a live demo knows that feeling), was a new take on the classic game of slot cars. Only this wasn't a video game played on an iPhone or iPad, but a real racing game on a track on the floor with real little cars.
    The track was simply unrolled on the floor and the cars placed on it. They communicated by Bluetooth to an iPhone, however the cars are not driven by the iPhone but are rather given strategic commands. Watch the video below which explains it all - I can see Anki Drive being a popular Christmas gift. It also clearly demonstrates the great advances in recent years in sensor technology, algorithms and processing speeds.

Ian Watson

A Bionic hand that can feel

We've become almost accustomed now to the sight of an amputee controlling a robotic limb by thought alone. But a great impediment to creating truly life-like robotic limbs has been providing sensory feedback to the amputee - i.e., touch. Researchers from the Swiss-based Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne have recently announced that they are preparing to fit a bionic hand to a man in Rome. If successful this will be a real breakthrough since it should allow a person to control the limb much more accurately .

A movie about a healthcare robot

Yes really, a movie about a healthcare robot set in "the near future" called Robot & Frank. The movie is about the growing relationship between a curmudgeonly ex-cat-burglar, Frank, and a healthcare robot, just called Robot. The robot's prime directive is to improve Frank's health so it ends up encouraging him to plan a burglary, since the planning stimulates his mind. The robot acquiesces to taking part in the heist when Frank promises to commit to a low sodium diet. Any more would give too much of the story away. The movie is low key and will probably slip under your radar despite having a great cast. Some of the AI is quite accurate; I particularly enjoyed the use of "brute force search" to crack a 3 digit safe code.
   Don't think that healthcare robotics is just science fiction, many researchers, including colleagues in the University of Auckland, are actively working in this area and expect healthcare robots to be a reality in, as this movie says, "the near future."

The Cambridge Project for Existential Risk

There's been a spate of articles  (like this one) recently about the potential risks and ethics of lethal AIs - drones that can acquire targets autonomously and robots, like the Terminator, hunting down and killing people. Whilst I've blogged about this before I was surprised to suddenly see the web alive with speculation and comment. I think I've tracked down the source; a new Cambridge University research centre called "The Cambridge Project for Existential Risk." 
    The CSER is co-founded by Cambridge philosophy professor Huw Price, astrophysicist professor Martin Rees and Skype's co-founder Jaan Tallinn. Prof Price says, "It seems a reasonable prediction that some time in this or the next century intelligence will escape from the constraints of biology."  He adds that as robots and computers become smarter than humans, we could find ourselves at the mercy of "machines that are not malicious, but machines whose interests don't include us".

New Zealand Artist Inspired by Robotics

Sam Broad, working out of Lower Hutt in New Zealand, has produced a series of works inspired by robots but with a distinctive Kiwi flavor. You can see more examples of his prints at his website (http://www.sambroad.co.nz/) where he has on sale a range of prints, postcards and his unique tiki robots
[Recommended by Bob Doran]

A bird in the hand...

Here's some interesting footage of a flying robotic bird that can land and perch on someone's hand.
There are several video clips here plus other links to background information about the project from the Aerospace Robotics and Control Research Lab at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

What is a drone, anyway?

John Villasenor has written an useful article called, What is a Drone, Anyway, in the Scientific American blogs that guides the reader through the distinctions between: drones, planes on autopilot, unmanned aerial vehicles, remotely piloted aircraft and first-person view unmanned aircraft. We're becoming increasingly used to seeing drones in use in conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and their use is spreading to civilian law enforcement and  border patrol, so its a good idea if we understand the jargon.
   A drone is an autonomous arial vehicle that can fly without human intervention from point A to point B, or they can patrol a given area or perimeter. If the drone is armed, like the US Reaper drones, then traget acquisition and weapon firing is under human control. However, in a very worrying development South Korea has developed sentry robots to patrol the DMZ between it and North Korea that are capable of identifying targets and firing without human intervention. So the prospect of totally autonomous lethal drones is certainly here! Ron Arkin at Georgia Tech has recently written a book called Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots to explore the important issues these development may lead to.
    By the way, Scientific American has some very interesting blogs, I encourage you to check them out.

The uncanny valley

The term "uncanny valley" was coined by Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970.  Basically it describes our emotional reaction to robots; when they look different to us, think WALL•E, we react "cute," but when robots approach a humanoid form we can find them creepy and repulsive (i.e. uncanny). For us to warm to humanoid robots their design must cross the uncanny valley and become so similar to us that we are no longer grossed out, think the robot boy David in the movie A.I.
  However, crossing this valley is very hard since we're highly trained to notice almost imperceptible nuances in human behavior. This humanoid robot, called ECCE, I think we'd all agree is right in the uncanny valley - skin would help!

I'm getting a bionic hand

I've been keeping this a big secret because it's fairly awesome. I research in artificial intelligence and robotics and have had a research project in development for a while now. It involves replacing my right hand with a robotic bionic hand. Needless to say I've had quite a mission getting this past Auckland University's Human Participants Ethics Committee. They were totally against it for months, but eventually realized that the only way I could develop the capabilities of the robotic hand and its neuro-computing control link was by replacing my own hand, given that I couldn't find any other willing volunteer locally.
   The hand is quite advanced and initially will be controlled by an Emotiv Epoc headset. The plan is to replace the headset with smaller and more discrete sensors on my forearm and to test case-based reasoning software that will enable the hand to learn how to move more precisely. To the right is an X-ray of my right hand and wrist, which was taken today and which my surgeon will be using for the amputation tomorrow. This research will be the first of its kind in New Zealand and is being conducted in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Needless to say my wife is not very happy with my decision.
   More information about the project is available here.