OpenAI's AI-Powered Robot Learned How To Solve a Rubik's Cube One-Handed (zdnet.com) 21
Using ADR, the real world Dexterous Hand can adapt to changes such as when it drops the cube on the floor and the cube is placed back in the hand at a slightly different angle. The performance of the Dexterous Hand after being trained with ADR is vastly better than without it, when only a handful (sorry again again for the pun) of random variants are thrown at it using the prior approach of manually-crafted randomness, the authors report. What's happening, they opine, is the emergence of a kind of "meta-learning." The neural network that has been trained is still, in a sense "learning" at the time it is tested on the real-world Rubik's cube. What that means is that the neural network is updating its model of what kinds of transitions can happen between states of affairs as events happen in the real world. The authors assert that they know this is happening "inside" the trained network because they see that after a perturbation -- say, the Dexterous Hand is hit with some object that interrupts its effort -- the robot's activity suddenly plunges, but then steadily improves, as if the whole policy network is adjusting to the changed state of affairs.
India's Reliance Jio Unveils Video Call Assistant To Help Businesses Automate Customer Support (techcrunch.com) 4
'There's an Automation Crisis Underway Right Now, It's Just Mostly Invisible' (gizmodo.com) 159
merbs shared their report: Instead, automation increases the likelihood that workers will be driven away from their previous jobs at the companies -- whether they're fired, or moved to less rewarding tasks, or quit -- and causes a long-term loss of wages for the employee. The report finds that "firm-level automation increases the probability of workers separating from their employers and decreases days worked, leading to a 5-year cumulative wage income loss of 11 percent of one year's earnings." That's a pretty significant loss.
Worse still, the study found that even in the Netherlands, which has a comparatively generous social safety net to, say, the United States, workers were only able to offset a fraction of those losses with benefits provided by the state. Older workers, meanwhile, were more likely to retire early -- deprived of years of income they may have been counting on. Interestingly, the effects of automation were felt similarly through all manner of company -- small, large, industrial, services-oriented, and so on. The study covered all non-finance sector firms, and found that worker separation and income loss were "quite pervasive across worker types, firm sizes and sectors."
Automation, in other words, forces a more pervasive, slower-acting and much less visible phenomenon than the robots-are-eating-our-jobs talk is preparing us for. "People are focused on the damage of automation being mass unemployment," study author James Bessen, an economist at Boston University, tells me in an interview. "And that's probably wrong...." According to Bessen, compared to firms that have not automated, the rate of workers leaving their jobs is simply higher, though from the outside, it can resemble more straightforward turnover. "But it's more than attrition," he says. "A much greater percentage -- 8 percent more -- are leaving." And some never come back to work. "There's a certain percentage that drop out of the labor force. That five years later still haven't gotten a job."
The result, Bessen says, is an added strain on the social safety net that it is currently woefully unprepared to handle.
Worker Pay is Stagnant -- Economists Blame Robots (cbsnews.com) 182
"We should just give Americans a raise," he wrote. To be sure, automation is leading to massive changes in work that are hitting some industries and workers especially hard, such as lower and middle-skilled workers. For instance, the ranks of office assistants and clerical workers is expected to shrink by 5% through 2026 as offices shift tasks to artificial intelligence and other software, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This could result in a loss of 200,000 jobs.
Wells Fargo Prediction: American Banks Will Automate Away 200,000 Jobs By 2030 (gizmodo.com) 124
It is not rare that a report forecasts the imminent erosion of an industry's jobs picture, but it is a little rare that a prominent industry analyst for one of said industry's largest companies is so brazen -- even giddy -- about trumpeting the imminent loss of those jobs.... It is the confidence and enthusiasm for this schema that is key, as that is what will transform the report into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the banks buy what Mayo and Wells Fargo are selling, then the report will contribute to an automated arms race between companies to cut staff and purchase enterprise financial software products that is already underway. This is how a lot of corporate automation unfolds.
As a result, we can expect to interact with even more customer service chatbots and automated call menus (whether they work well or not), to see more financial decisions turned over to algorithms, and a continued flood of software products to enter the banking industry. And Wells Fargo certainly won't be the only bank automating here: As the FT notes, Citigroup is planning to eliminate tens of thousands of call center workers, and Deutsche Bank expects to slash half its ~100,000-strong workforce.
Gizmodo argues the report's analysis is "filled with buzzwords and promises of harnessing big data and predictive algorithms that may or may not pan out to be as effective as currently thought."
Nonetheless, they write that the report's author "has been making the cable TV rounds, touting this incoming golden age of high-tech ultra-streamlined, automated banking, an age in which fleshy humanoid obstructions are finally smoothed out of the picture, making way for a purer, faster flow of capital from customer to banking executive."
Seattle Startup 'Picnic' Unveils Pizza-Making Robot That Makes 300 Pies/Hour (geekwire.com) 70
There are also a few details that may save Picnic's pizzas from tasting as if a robot made them. For starters, the dough preparation, sauce making and baking -- the real art of pizza -- is left in the capable, five-fingered hands of people. The robot is also highly customizable, comprised of a series of modules that dole out whatever toppings you want in whichever order you choose. Once an order for a pizza has been made, it enters a digital queue in the platform, which starts making the pie as soon as the dough is put in place. The robot has a vision system that allows it to make adjustments if the pie is slightly off-center. It's also hooked up to the internet and sends data back to Picnic so the system can learn from mistakes. The report says their business model is essentially pizza-as-a-service. "Restaurant owners pay a regular fee in return for the system and ongoing maintenance as well as software and hardware updates," reports GeekWire. "The startup has launched at Centerplate, a caterer in the Seattle Mariners' T-Mobile Park baseball stadium, as well as Zaucer, a restaurant in Redmond, Wash."
'Almost No One Out There Thinks That Isaac Asimov's Three Laws Could Work For Truly Intelligent AI' (mindmatters.ai) 250
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov fans tell us that the laws were implicit in his earlier stories. A 0th law was added in Robots and Empire (1985): "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."
[...] Chris Stokes, a philosopher at Wuhan University in China, says, "Many computer engineers use the three laws as a tool for how they think about programming." But the trouble is, they don't work. He explains in an open-access paper (PDF):
The First Law fails because of ambiguity in language, and because of complicated ethical problems that are too complex to have a simple yes or no answer.
The Second Law fails because of the unethical nature of having a law that requires sentient beings to remain as slaves.
The Third Law fails because it results in a permanent social stratification, with the vast amount of potential exploitation built into this system of laws.
The 'Zeroth' Law, like the first, fails because of ambiguous ideology. All of the Laws also fail because of how easy it is to circumvent the spirit of the law but still remaining bound by the letter of the law.
Ex-Google Engineer Says That Robot Weapons May Cause Accidental Mass Killings (businessinsider.com) 107
Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger quotes their report: Laura Nolan had been working at Google four years when she was recruited to its collaboration with the US Department of Defense, known as Project Maven, in 2017, according to the Guardian. Project Maven was focused on using AI to enhance military drones, building AI systems which would be able to single out enemy targets and distinguish between people and objects. Google canned Project Maven after employee outrage, with thousands of employees signing a petition against the project and about a dozen quitting in protest. Google allowed the contract to lapse in March this year. Nolan herself resigned after she became "increasingly ethically concerned" about the project, she said...
Nolan fears that the next step beyond AI-enabled weapons like drones could be fully autonomous AI weapons. "What you are looking at are possible atrocities and unlawful killings even under laws of warfare, especially if hundreds or thousands of these machines are deployed," she said.... Although no country has yet come forward to say it's working on fully autonomous robot weapons, many are building more and more sophisticated AI to integrate into their militaries. The US navy has a self-piloting warship, capable of spending months at sea with no crew, and Israel boasts of having drones capable of identifying and attacking targets autonomously -- although at the moment they require a human middle-man to give the go-ahead.
Nolan is urging countries to declare an outright ban on autonomous killing robots, similar to conventions around the use of chemical weapons.
Mysterious Magnetic Pulses Discovered On Mars (nationalgeographic.com) 54
On Earth, groundwater is a hidden sea locked up in sand, soil, and rocks. If something similar is found on Mars, then "we shouldn't be surprised," says Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University who was not involved with the work. But if these results bear out, a liquid region at this scale on modern Mars has enormous implications for the potential for life, past or present. So far, none of these data have been through peer review, and details about the initial findings and interpretations will undoubtedly be tweaked over time. Still, the revelations provide a stunning showcase for InSight, a robot that has the potential to revolutionize our comprehension of Mars and other rocky worlds across the galaxy.
NBCUniversal's Streaming Service Is Called Peacock and It's Launching Next April (vulture.com) 69
The Next Energy-Efficient Architecture Revolution: A House Built By Robots (qz.com) 54
Over four years, 30 different industry partners joined a team of experts at ETH Zurich university for a cutting-edge "digital fabrication" project: building the DFAB House. Timber beams were assembled by robots on site, it used 60% less cement, and it features some amazing ceilings printed with a large-scale 3D sand printer. "This is a new way of seeing architecture," says Matthias Kohler, a member of DFAB's research team. The work of architects has long been presented in terms of designing inspiring building forms, while the technical specifics of construction has been relegated to the background. Kohler thinks this is quickly changing. "Suddenly how we use resources to build our habitats is at the center of architecture," he argues. "How you build matters."
DFAB isn't the first building project to use digital fabrication techniques. In 2014, Chinese company WinSun demonstrated the architectural potential of 3D printing by manufacturing 10 single-story houses in one day. A year later, the Shanghai-based company also printed an apartment building and a neoclassical mansion, but these projects remain in the development phase. Kohler explains that beating construction speed records wasn't necessarily their goal. "Of course we're interested in gaining breakthroughs in speed and economy, but we tried to hold to the idea of quality first," he says. "You can do things very, very fast but that doesn't mean that it's actually sustainable...."
Beyond the experimental structure in Switzerland, Kohler and Dillenburger explain that they're interested in fostering a dialogue with the global architecture and construction sectors. They've published their open-source data sets and have organized a traveling exhibition titled "How to Build a House: Architectural Research in the Digital Age," opening at the Cooper Union in New York this week.
McDonald's Is To Replace Human Workers With Voice-Based Tech In US Drive-Throughs (bbc.com) 345
Taylor Swift Reportedly Threatened To Sue Microsoft Over Racist Twitter Bot (digitaltrends.com) 84
When the bot was reprogrammed, Tay was relaunched as Zo. But in the book Tools and Weapons by Microsoft president Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne, Microsoft's communications director, the executives have finally revealed why -- another Tay, Taylor Swift. According to The Guardian, the singer's lawyer threatened legal action over the chatbot's name before the bot broke bad. The singer claimed the name violated both federal and state laws. Rather than get in a legal battle with the singer, Smith writes, the company instead started considering new names.
NYC Mayor and Presidential Hopeful Bill De Blasio Wants a Tax On Robots (cnet.com) 88
Tesla Battery Researcher Unveils New Cell That Could Last 1 Million Miles (electrek.co) 152
The new lithium-ion battery cell has a next-generation "single crystal" NMC cathode and a new advanced electrolyte, according to the site Electrotek. "We are talking about battery cells that last two to three times longer than Tesla's current battery cells."
First Long-Distance Heart Surgery Performed Via Robot 25
The Next Hot Job: Pretending To Be a Robot (wsj.com) 44
Companies working with remote-controlled robots know there are risks, and try to mitigate them in a few ways. Some choose only to operate slow-moving machines in simple environments -- as in Postmates's sidewalk delivery -- so that even the worst disaster isn't all that bad. More advanced systems require 'human supervisory control,' where the robot or vehicle's onboard AI does the basic piloting but the human gives the machine navigational instructions and other feedback. Prof. Cummings says this technique is safer than actual remote operation, since safety isn't dependent on a perfect wireless connection or a perfectly alert human operator. For every company currently working on self-driving cars, almost every state mandates they must either have a safety driver present in the vehicle or be able to control it from afar. Guidelines from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggest the same. Phantom Auto is betting the shift to remote operation might become an important means of employment for people who used to drive for a living. Other requirements for our remote-controlled future include "a tolerance for working for a lower wage, since remote operation could allow companies to outsource driving, construction and service jobs to call centers in cheaper labor markets," the report adds.
"Another might be a youth spent gaming. When Postmates managers interview potential delivery-robot pilots like Diana Villalobos, they ask whether or not they played videogames in their youth. 'When I was a kid, my parents always said, 'Stop playing videogames!' But it came in handy,' she says."
'The 2018 MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy' (ryanbigg.com) 302
duplicated "o's" that I've had to go back and fix, or missing ones -- guess how fun it is to write a book about a Toy Robot with this particular problem
double spaces -- or no spaces
a Command key that registers 9 out of every 10 times
words like "times" that inexplicably get spelled like "timies", or "about" that gets spelled like "abouot"
Apple is all about the thinness of their laptops. I do not particularly care about the thinness of this device. For the most part, it sits on one of two desks that I use or it sits on my lap on the train. Maybe I use it on the couch from time-to-time. I do not care about the thinness of this device while I am using it. I only care about it when I store it away, in my backpack. This keyboard has a key travel distance that, I am sure, is measured in microns or perhaps nanometers. It feels like I am typing on a concrete slab. Key presses inexplicably duplicate. Or don't register at all. All for thinness. This keyboard is a catastrophic engineering failure, designed by a company that should know better. A company with more money in the bank than several countries combined. This keyboard would be, by far, the part of the MacBook Pro that is used the most by everybody who owns one, and it is so poorly engineered for the pursuit of thinness. The author is a junior engineering program lead at Culture Amp, an analytics platform that specializes in staff surveying and analytics.
On the Far Side of the Moon, China's Rover Discovers a Strangely-Colored Gel-Like Substance (cnet.com) 67
Three days into day 8, a member of the Chang'e 4 team was reviewing images taken during by the rover and noticed a strangely colored material, distinct from the gray soil around it. So, the team instead turned its attention toward the substance and sent the rover towards the crater for a better look. The Yutu-2 "drive diary" says the team commanded the rover to point its spectrometer, a device which can evaluate the composition of materials, towards the unusual substance. The team didn't indicate what the substance might be and they haven't shared an image of the weird material. The team did, however, share an image of the rover heading for the crater to have a gander at what's inside.
I know you're thinking aliens but Andrew Jones, a journalist reporting on the Chinese space program, wrote that one possible explanation is that the gel-like substance is melted glass, created after a meteor strike.