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Anna Dubinina

Relationships with Robots: Good or Bad for Humans? - 0 views

  • making robots look like humans or cute animals, we may develop emotional affinity toward the machines
  • . This could help promote trust with users—but perhaps also overtrust?
  • Robots are tools, but they are tools that sometimes hold meaning for people that interact with them, or through them, as when robots are teleoperated at a distance
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  • In addition, sometimes robot operators insert a very clear extension of themselves into the robot, much like we see people invest in game avatars
  • I’d also categorize extending a sense of oneself into a robot as a form of attachment.
  • In ten or twenty years, when humanlike and animal-like robots are employed in a more drone-like way from a greater distance, will a similar user self-extension or new human-robot social phenomenon cause any hesitation during human-directed tasks and effect mission outcomes?
  • As AI and robots become more involved in our models of everyday life, I believe there will be a spectrum of emotional responses toward robots depending on their roles (for instance, caregiver, educator, industrial, companion, etc.) and individual user tendencies.
  • A consequence of purposeful design for attachment is that objects of attachment trigger the owner’s emotions in situations like decision making, and so can be agents of persuasion or otherwise effect someone’s actions
  • The bottom line is that these human-AI/robot interactions are transactions and not reciprocal, and therefore probably not healthy for most people to rely on as a long-term means for substituting organic two-way affectionate bonds, or as a surrogate for a human-human shared relationship
  • Is attachment to a robot problematic ethically?
Maria Gurova

Academic conference on 'Love and Sex with Robots' abruptly cancelled after being declar... - 0 views

  • Humanoid robots are now being introduced into nursing homes, and as therapists, for example. The new Hello Barbie toy will be a "friend" to children, holding conversations with young boys and girls. Robots are even getting married in Japan.
  • A perfect example of the backlash against human-like machines happened last Friday, when Adrian David Cheok and David Levy were forced to cancel their second annual Congress on Love and Sex with Robots, set to be held in Malaysia next month.
  • The case of the cancelled conference is just the beginning of the kind of obstacles intellectuals and researchers may encounter in the pursuit of academic study of humanoid robotics—an increasingly controversial field as the line between fantasy and reality gets blurred
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    Two academics decided to hold a conference for a controversial matter of human robot interactions, the conference with a provocative name and a highly scientific content was banned in a very conservative and religious country of Malaysia 
Maria Gurova

The Four Things People Can Still Do Better Than Computers | Fast Company | Business + I... - 1 views

  • computers' strengths lie in speed and accuracy, while humans' strengths are all about flexibility
  • There are three types of work that humans do really well but computers cannot (yet):
  • 1) Unstructured problem-solving
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  • 2) Acquiring and processing new information, deciding what is relevant in a flood of undefined phenomena
  • reinvent our education system to prepare children for an "increased emphasis on conceptual understanding and problem-solving"--and to better collaborate with, take care of, and program the computers that are going to continue to be our sidekicks
  • 4) Being human
Maria Gurova

Brown University creates first wireless, implanted brain-computer interface | ExtremeTech - 0 views

  • Researchers at Brown University have succeeded in creating the first wireless, implantable, rechargeable, long-term brain-computer interface. The wireless BCIs have been implanted in pigs and monkeys for over 13 months without issue, and human subjects are next.
  • Brown’s wireless BCI allows the subject to move freely, dramatically increasing the quantity and quality of data that can be gathered — instead of watching what happens when a monkey moves its arm, scientists can now analyze its brain activity during complex activity, such as foraging or social interaction
  • the device’s power consumption, which is just 100 milliwatts. For a device that might eventually find its way into humans, frugal power consumption is a key factor that will enable all-day, highly mobile usage
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  • Amusingly, though, the research paper notes that the wireless charging does cause significant warming of the device
  • While the wireless BCI isn’t approve for human use (and there’s no indication that they’re seeking approval yet), it was designed specifically so that it should be safe for human use.
evgeny lavrov

Inside L'Oreal's Plan to 3-D Print Human Skin | WIRED - 0 views

  • L’Oreal makes cosmetics and hair color. It also makes skin
  • Now it’s talking about
  • printing
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  • The idea is to produce skin more quickly and easily using what is essentially an assembly line developed with Organovo, a San Diego bioprinting company.
  • L’Oreal already
  • produce its patented skin, called Episkin
  • Organovo pioneered the process of bioprinting human tissues, most notably creating a 3-D-printed liver system
  • In concept, it’s the same idea of programming the 3-D printer to print architecture on an X-Y-Z axis
Vladimir Antonov

The Latest Generation Atlas Humanoid Robot Is Absolutely Incredible | TechCrunch - 0 views

  • That robot you see being pushed around is the latest generation of Atlas, the insanely advanced humanoid robot as built by the Google-owned Boston Dynamics.
  • they’re hitting stuff out of Atlas’ hands and pushing him around to test its compensation systems. All that pushing and shoving only makes him stronger.
  • An average human made of metal instead of meat
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  • it’s a bit closer to the weight of the average human
  • He’s a few inches shorter at 5’9″ vs 6′, but crams a bevy of sensors (LIDAR, Stereo cameras, and more) into a body that no longer needs tethers for support or power
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    Humanoid robots are getting smarter, stronger and lighter, with more human-like dynamic compensation systems.
anna_nelidova

Head tracker knows what you're doing and helps you multitask | New Scientist - 1 views

  • wearable system that tracks human movements to understand what task you’re doing, how difficult it is, and when you switch to something else. His goal is to help us control our multitasking lives
  • Gathering patterns of data that describe humans doing different tasks has more potential than just helping us work more efficiently.
  • the device could turn your phone to silent or deliver only emergency notifications. It could also tell you when you need to take a break
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  • Epps’s team has made a device which straps to a baseball cap that can work out the intensity of a task and when a person switches to another task – just from their head movements.
  • o use the data from wearables to train artificial intelligences.
  • Epps’s team is building a new prototype made from cheap components that can be worn on glasses, which tracks eye movement and speech as well as head motion.
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    A wearable system that tracks head movements could help people to multitask and handle distractions. The data generated by wearables on millions of humans can be useful for learning purposes of robots and AI. 
nrybakov

AI can write surprisingly scary and creative horror stories - 0 views

  • The team used 140,000 horror stories from the subreddit r/nosleep to teach the AI how to tell a horror story that a human would find intelligible, compelling and scary. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Shelley, though, is her reliance on human interaction to facilitate her storytelling.
  • AI can write surprisingly scary and creative horror stories
  •  
    AI Shelley writes scary stories together with human users
isoldatenkova

Human Contact Is Now a Luxury Good - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The rich have grown afraid of screens. They want their children to play with blocks, and tech-free private schools are booming. Humans are more expensive, and rich people are willing and able to pay for them.
  • classes have been replaced by software, much of the academic day now spent in silence on a laptop. In Utah, thousands of children do a brief, state-provided preschool program at home via laptop.
  • And children who spent more than two hours a day looking at a screen got lower scores on thinking and language tests,
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  • Human contact is becoming a luxury good.
  • Tech companies worked hard to get public schools to buy into programs that required schools to have one laptop per student, arguing that it would better prepare children for their screen-based future.
  • In Silicon Valley, time on screens is increasingly seen as unhealthy. Here, the popular elementary school is the local Waldorf School, which promises a back-to-nature, nearly screen-free education
Maria Gurova

Driverless cars, pilotless planes … will there be jobs left for a human being... - 3 views

  • From staff-free ticket offices to students who can learn online, it seems there is no corner of economic life in which people are not being replaced by machines.
  • One of the reasons Google is investing so much is that whoever owns the communications system for driverless cars will own the 21st century's equivalent of the telephone network or money clearing system: this will be a licence to print money.
  • The only new jobs will be in the design and marketing of the cars, and in writing the computer software that will allow them to navigate their journeys, along with the apps for our mobile phones that will help us to use them better
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  • The invention of 3D printing, in which every home or office will be equipped with an in-house printer that can spew out the goods we want – from shoes to pills – anticipates a world of what Summers calls automated "doers". They will do everything for us, eliminating the need for much work.
  • we have come to the end of the great "general purpose technologies" (technologies that transform an entire economy, such as the steam engine, electricity, the car and so on) that changed the world. There are no new transformative technologies to carry us forward, while the old activities are being robotised and automated.
  • Notwithstanding robotisation and automation, I identify four broad areas in which there will be vast job opportunities.The first is in micro-production
  • The second is in human wellbeing. There will be vast growth in advising, coaching, caring, mentoring, doctoring, nursing, teaching and generally enhancing capabilities.
  • The third is in addressing the globe's "wicked issues" . There will be new forms of nutrition and carbon-efficient energy, along with economising with water, to meet the demands of a world population of 9 billion in 2050.
  • And fourthly, digital and big data management will foster whole new industries
  • the truth is, nobody knows. What we do know is that two-thirds of what we consume today was not invented 25 years ago. It will be the same again in a generation's time
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    demand for the new expertise may impact not only the school and academic education, but earlier development stages
Oleg Batluk

Facebook Says Its Artificial Intelligence Will Be Like A Car For Your Mind | Popular Sc... - 0 views

  • Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR), the division within the company dedicated to AI
  • some are new, like a working unsupervised learning model
  • The company has made substantial investment in artificial intelligence in the last few years
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  • Most recently Facebook has shown off a new addition for blind users
  • where we are right now in AI development. We're in the literal infancy
  • Facebook reports that it the neural net can now judge with up to 90 percent accuracy if the blocks will fall, and they claim that's better than most humans.
  •  
    Facebook made experiments showing AI smarter than humans and presented social solutions for blind people
Vladimir Antonov

Scientists create a prototype for the human skin|Interesting E... - 0 views

  • What makes this device very interesting is that it is extremely cheap to make. Replicating the human skin involves creating a device that can detect pressure, touch, proximity, temperature, humidity, flow, and pH levels all at the same time. In order to achieve this, one would expect that highly sophisticated sensors and circuits will be used. That does not happen to be the case. This team used common household items such as sticky notes, napkins, aluminum foils and sponges to create the paper skin. The whole device cost only $1,67 to make.
  • “My vision is to make electronics simple to understand and easy to assemble so that ordinary people can participate in innovation.”
  • Compared to various pricey sensors out there, the paper skin looks to be a good alternative with many potential applications. According to test results, it has already been seen that the paper skin performs on the same level as the more expensive sensors currently available.
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  • “Compared with the sophisticated and complex artificial skin platforms found in the literature, Paper Skin not only provides the most functionalities on one platform, including 13-cm range proximity sensing, but also displays improved sensing performances over the highly expensive counterpart materials,” said Joanna Nassar, an electrical engineer at KAUST and the lead author in the research work.
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    science's getting cheaper
Anna Dubinina

How robots will reshape the economy (based on U.S. example) - 0 views

  • Few doubt that our future — both immediate and long term — will be heavily impacted by robots
  • A pair of Oxford researchers recently estimated that 47 percent of the total U.S. employment is at risk of being eliminated.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, Mercedes announced it is trading out some of its production robots for human labor — the machines could not keep up with the increasing options for customization
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  • robots in the workplace will likely help reverse this trend.
  • The vast majority of automation technology will not outright replace humans; instead, it will simply make their work more efficient.
  • As the global supply chain matured, market pressures drove American companies to offshore their work to other countries that offered inexpensive labor
  • This is not to say that all white-collar workers should enroll in engineering night classes, but knowing how technology works at a base level will make you better at your job 
  • Employers need to actively promote training programs that empower employees to work more effectively with new tech.
Maria Gurova

Study: Lego faces have been getting 'angrier' over last 20 years (Wired UK) - 1 views

  • The University of Canterbury team, led by Christoph Bartneck of the university's Human Interface Technology Lab, wanted to explore one way Lego might be influencing children through play. Toys, and play time, are considered vital to the development of emotional understanding in children, and with an average of 75 Lego blocks per human on Earth it makes sense to see what kinds of emotions Lego is presenting to children
  • On average, heads displayed 3.9 different emotions, which means that for a lot of the faces their emotional state is reasonably complex and ambiguous.
  • We cannot help but wonder how the move from only positive faces to an increasing number of negative faces impacts how children play
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  • Lego is moving towards a more conflict based play themes
  • the children that grow up with Lego today will remember not only smileys, but also anger and fear in the Minifigures' faces
evgeny lavrov

2050 Demographics Projections | Prediction | Future | Technology | Timeline | Trend | 2... - 0 views

  • the average desktop computer now has the raw processing power equivalent to all of the human brains on Earth combined
  • There is no longer a clear distinction between human and machine intelligence
  • Full immersion VR is now a mainstream phenomenon
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  • Entire new societies have formed in cyberspace
  • By the mid-2050s, traditional Western news corporations no longer exist
  • News gathering, analysis and distribution has fragmented - shifting to millions of creative individuals, bloggers, citizen journalists and small-scale enterprises.
  • Traditional Western TV channels have largely disappeared
  • replaced by unique "personalised" web channels, covering practically any subject or combination of subjects imaginable
  • Debates are now occurring over "synthetic people" entering the population.
Maria Gurova

In The Future, The Whole World Will Be A Classroom | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and... - 1 views

  •  
    please watch the video conversation, but here are my brief takeaways: - There is a shift form institutional structures (corporations, centralized governments, educational establishments) to social structuring - Social Structuring - creating value by aggregating micro contributors by large networks using social tools and technology Key patterns in future of learning are 1. Content comments 2. New Foundations 3. Global Learning arbitrage 4. Embedded and embodied learning 5. Human-software symbiosis 6. Socialstructured work Major shifts in learning: - from episodic to continuous learning - from content conveyors to content curators - from working at one scale to working at up&down the scale - from degrees to reputation metrics - from grades to continuous feedback
Ekaterina Yanovskaya

Driving in the Networked Age | Reid Hoffman | LinkedIn - 0 views

  • how soon will it be illegal to operate human-driven cars on public streets?
  • autonomous vehicles will also be able to share information with each other better than human drivers can, in both real-time situations and over time. Every car on the road will benefit from what every other car has learned. Driving will be a networked activity, with tighter feedback loops and a much greater ability to aggregate, analyze, and redistribute knowledge.
  • when thousands and then even millions of cars are connected in this way, new capabilities are going to emerge.
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  • But the benefits of self-driving cars are so significant that in time the public will demand prohibitions against old-fashioned legacy driving in most public spaces
  • there are more than 2 billion legacy cars on the road, globally. Currently, the car industry can only produce around 100 million new vehicles a year. Just from a manufacturing perspective, it could take 20 years to build a new fleet that approximates the one we have now.
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    driverless cars that will function with a "zero
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