Skip to main content

Home/ Digit_al Society/ Group items tagged people and machines robots technology

Rss Feed Group items tagged

dr tech

8 Skilled Jobs That May Soon Be Replaced by Robots - 0 views

  •  
    "Unskilled manual laborers have felt the pressure of automation for a long time - but, increasingly, they're not alone. The last few years have been a bonanza of advances in artificial intelligence. As our software gets smarter, it can tackle harder problems, which means white-collar and pink-collar workers are at risk as well. Here are eight jobs expected to be automated (partially or entirely) in the coming decades. Call Center Employees call-center Telemarketing used to happen in a crowded call center, with a group of representatives cold-calling hundreds of prospects every day. Of those, maybe a few dozen could be persuaded to buy the product in question. Today, the idea is largely the same, but the methods are far more efficient. Many of today's telemarketers are not human. In some cases, as you've probably experienced, there's nothing but a recording on the other end of the line. It may prompt you to "press '1' for more information," but nothing you say has any impact on the call - and, usually, that's clear to you. But in other cases, you may get a sales call and have no idea that you're actually speaking to a computer. Everything you say gets an appropriate response - the voice may even laugh. How is that possible? Well, in some cases, there is a human being on the other side, and they're just pressing buttons on a keyboard to walk you through a pre-recorded but highly interactive marketing pitch. It's a more practical version of those funny soundboards that used to be all the rage for prank calls. Using soundboard-assisted calling - regardless of what it says about the state of human interaction - has the potential to make individual call center employees far more productive: in some cases, a single worker will run two or even three calls at the same time. In the not too distant future, computers will be able to man the phones by themselves. At the intersection of big data, artificial intelligence, and advanced
dr tech

Don't Fear the Robot - Issue 84: Outbreak - Nautilus - 0 views

  •  
    "Robots have been slow to appear because each one requires a rare confluence of market, task, technology, and innovation. (And luck. I only described some of the things that nearly killed Roomba.) But as technology advances and costs decline, the toolbox for robot designers constantly expands. Thus, more types of robots will cross the threshold of economic viability. Still, we can expect one constant. Each new, successful robot will represent a minimum-the simplest, lowest-cost solution to a problem people want solved. The growing set of tools that let us attack ever more interesting problems make this an exciting time to practice robotics."
dr tech

Being human: how realistic do we want robots to be? | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

  •  
    "Anouk van Maris, a robot cognition specialist who is researching ethical human-robot interaction, has found that comfort levels with robots vary greatly depending on location and culture. "It depends on what you expect from it. Some people love it, others want to run away as soon as it starts moving," she says. "The advantage of a robot that looks human-like is that people feel more comfortable with it being close to them, and it is easier to communicate with it. The big disadvantage is that you expect it to be able to do human things and it often can't.""
dr tech

Robots may soon be able to reproduce - will this change how we think about evolution? |... - 0 views

  •  
    "But could robots ever reproduce? This, undoubtedly, forms a pillar of "life" as shared by all natural organisms. A team of researchers from the UK and the Netherlands have recently demonstrated a fully automated technology to allow physical robots to repeatedly breed, evolving their artificial genetic code over time to better adapt to their environment. Arguably, this amounts to artificial evolution. Child robots are created by mixing the digital "DNA" from two parent robots on a computer."
dr tech

Study explores inner life of AI with robot that 'thinks' out loud | Robots | The Guardian - 0 views

  •  
    "The researchers programmed a robot called Pepper, made by SoftBank Robotics, with the ability to vocalise its thought processes. This means the robot is no longer a "black box" and its underlying decision-making is more transparent to the user."
dr tech

Flat-pack heaven? Robots master task of assembling Ikea chair | Science | The Guardian - 0 views

  •  
    "In the meantime, Pham is keen to see if robots can learn to build the chair using only an image of the assembled product as a guide. Will the technology ever help humans who struggle with the task? "I don't think it is in Ikea's business model to have robots assemble their chairs," he said. "In the next 10 to 20 years, people will still be sweating over flat-pack furniture.""
dr tech

After staff, Google now lays off over 100 robots that cleaned cafeterias: Report - Tech... - 0 views

  •  
    "Google, which recently laid off thousands of employees globally, is now laying off the robots that cleaned cafeterias at its headquarters. A report by Wired recently said that Alphabet's "Everyday Robots" project - a unit under Google's experimental X laboratories - has been shut down by Google's chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai."
dr tech

Robots and AI to give doctors more time with patients, says report | Society ... - 0 views

  •  
    "Robots, artificial intelligence and smart speakers will ease the burden on doctors and give them more time with patients, according to an NHS report on the pending technological "revolution" in healthcare. Developments in the ability to sequence individuals' genomes - the entirety of their genetic data - will also spur on advances, according to the review published on Monday."
dr tech

Robot doctors, online lawyers and automated architects: the future of the professions? ... - 0 views

  •  
    "Advances in technology have long been recognised as a threat to manual labour. Now highly skilled, knowledge-based jobs that were once regarded as safe could be at risk. How will they adapt to the digital age?"
dr tech

Welcoming Our New Robot Overlords - The New Atlantis - 0 views

  •  
    "Today we fear a different technological threat, one that centers not on machines but other humans. We see ourselves as imperiled by the terrifying social influence unleashed by the Internet in general and social media in particular. We hear warnings that nothing less than our collective ability to perceive reality is at stake, and that if we do not take corrective action we will lose our freedoms and way of life."
dr tech

Microsoft's robot editor confuses mixed-race Little Mix singers | Technology | The Guar... - 0 views

  •  
    "Microsoft's decision to replace human journalists with robots has backfired, after the tech company's artificial intelligence software illustrated a news story about racism with a photo of the wrong mixed-race member of the band Little Mix."
dr tech

A Robot, A Recruiter & A REST API Walk Into A Bar… - Peterson Technology Part... - 0 views

  •  
    "One great way to tell the difference is to ask AI recruiting companies what they use artificial intelligence, machine learning and/or deep learning for. Hopefully the hiring firm can what it's using the new technology for and not just that it is. If not it's time to dig a bit deeper."
dr tech

I help create the automated jobs that are taking jobs. - 0 views

  •  
    "Those changes happened relatively slowly, but it seems to me that employment disruption is accelerating. A large reason for this is that what used to be a room-sized super computer now fits in my pocket. Over the last two decades, I have observed a fundamental change in how we can apply advanced algorithms to sensing and controlling systems-the kinds of technology that enable more sophisticated robotic manufacturing. I can remember discussing various algorithms and believing they were well beyond what we could ever implement. Now these same algorithms are considered elementary. They are just some of the changes that have fueled the revolution in manufacturing."
dr tech

Human-robot interactions take step forward with 'emotional' chatbot | Technology | The ... - 1 views

  •  
    "In the future, the team predict the software could also learn the appropriate emotion to express at a given time. "It could be mostly empathic," said Huang, adding that a challenge would be to avoid the chatbot reinforcing negative feelings such as rage."
dr tech

Some scientists fear superintelligent machines could pose a threat to humanity | The Wa... - 0 views

  •  
    "The world's spookiest philosopher is Nick Bostrom, a thin, soft-spoken Swede. Of all the people worried about runaway artificial intelligence, and Killer Robots, and the possibility of a technological doomsday, Bostrom conjures the most extreme scenarios. In his mind, human extinction could be just the beginning."
dr tech

Computers are taking over jobs but that doesn't have to be a bad thing - 0 views

  •  
    "A report from the Oxford Martin School's Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology said that 47 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are likely to be replaced by automated systems. Among the jobs soon to be replaced by machines are real estate brokers, animal breeders, tax advisers, data entry workers, receptionists and various personal assistants."
dr tech

Microsoft sacks journalists to replace them with robots | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

  •  
    "Around 27 individuals employed by PA Media - formerly the Press Association - were told on Thursday that they would lose their jobs in a month's time after Microsoft decided to stop employing humans to select, edit and curate news articles on its homepages."
dr tech

Could robots make us better humans? | Technology | The Guardian - 1 views

  •  
    ""My PhD students seem to have to spend three years just getting to the point where they understand what's being asked of them," he says. Once again, he looks pained. "We seem to be hitting problems that will require so many strands that one mind isn't going to be able to pull them together.""
dr tech

A beauty contest was judged by AI and the robots didn't like dark skin | Technology | T... - 0 views

  •  
    The ensuing controversy has sparked renewed debates about the ways in which algorithms can perpetuate biases, yielding unintended and often offensive results.
dr tech

After You Die, Microsoft Wants to Resurrect You as a Chatbot - 0 views

  •  
    "Last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted a patent to Microsoft that outlines a process to create a conversational chatbot of a specific person using their social data. In an eerie twist, the patent says the chatbot could potentially be inspired by friends or family members who are deceased, which is almost a direct plot of a popular episode of Netflix's Black Mirror."
1 - 20 of 20
Showing 20 items per page