Group items tagged

Robots are opening new channels of communication for students on the autism spectrum or those with other disabilities. Educators at New York City's special education District 75 say the NAO robot-a bright-eyed, two-foot-tall humanoid developed by Aldebaran Robotics-is now considered a virtual classmate by some students.

Rethink Robotics' new creation is easy to interact with, but the innovations behind the robot show just how hard it is to get along with people.

"If you want humans to fear and respect their robot overlords you have to start early. Elementary school children in Korea in the cities of Masan and Daegu are among the first to be exposed to robotic teachers. "

"Network World - A recent slideshow, "10 Careers Robots Are Taking From You", highlighted things that, it argued, robots can do as well as humans. But most just augment and improve part of what humans do, not the whole job."

"If you're an optimist, you're excited to use these advancements to complement your teaching style. On the other hand, you might be a little concerned that a robot will replace you in the next 3-10 years. In any case, the time to prepare for these changes is now. By practicing and sharpening our human strengths (in other words - robots' weaknesses), we can improve our chances of thriving in a world where AI is ubiquitous in every classroom, school and home. Here are 3 skills to start honing today that give educators an advantage over AI."

"If we can tap into the same network effects that drive the internet economy and bring it into the firm, we have the potential to build businesses that don't just benefit the bottom line but create a culture of participation and learning. And that's when we'll find that machines are far less adept at delivering the imagination, creativity, genuine insight, and emotional and moral intelligence that is uniquely human."

"As Victor begins to lose he gets sarcastic and angry but otherwise he just makes conversation - commenting on words he puts down and generally chattering away while you play. Like the fitness robot, Autom, the designers made Victor so that he would be easily to engage with. By simulating human interaction, you get a unique experience that can make people feel a little better. Plus it's a trash-talking Scrabble-bot. Are we living in the future or what?"

"Diamandis believes that solar energy will soon satisfy the demands of the entire planet and replace the market for fossil fuels. This will mean fewer wars and cleaner air. Systems for converting atmospheric humidity into clean drinking water will become cheap and ubiquitous. The industrial meat industry will also vanish, replaced by tastier and healthier laboratory-grown products with no environmental downsides. He also predicts that exponential increases in the power of AI would soon render teachers and universities superfluous. The best education in the world will become freely available to anyone."

Cosmic monstrosities... Disruption! End-Times! Robot-graders! MOOCpocalypse!

Given his calm and reasoned academic demeanor, it is easy to miss just how provocative Erik Brynjolfsson's contention really is. ­Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology-from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services-are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.

Documentation of Lab Golf, led by Ashley John Pigford. Video by Abir Zakzok, Hana Al Saadi, Maeda Al Haidar, as part of Lab Mike, led by Simone Muscolino, Jorell Legaspi and Jordan Gushwa.

"Smart machines are an emerging "super class" of technologies that perform a wide variety of work, both the physical and the intellectual kind, said Sondergaard. Machines, for instance, have been grading multiple choice for years, but now they are grading essays and unstructured text. This cognitive capability in software will extend to other areas, including financial analysis, medical diagnostics and data analytic jobs of all sorts, says Gartner."

"The challenge of presenting alternative "views" of symbolic and semantic content makes up the leading edge of accessibility research today and many problems have yet to be solved. This document presents an overview of approaches currently in development or in use in fields such as: Mathematics Sciences Simulations and immersion Robots and telepresence Charts, diagrams, and tables Geography and maps Music Languages"

"In the 1930s most of the nations in the capitalist world experienced widespread severe unemployment, and it appeared resistant to elimination by traditional policies. A new scourge emerged and proved victorious in several nations: fascism. This was the result of an unprecedented development: a mass movement against democracy."

" I'm sure many teachers would happily outsource homework grading and assessment to the droids. Blended learning will likely continue to make advances across classrooms as a substitution of teachers' time, though I see it unlikely to dominate instruction, particularly in elementary grades."

"The artist's latest innovation has the potential to extend his reach even further. It's a spray-paint-wielding drone."

"With deep learning, computer scientists build software models that simulate-to a certain extent-the learning model of the human brain. These models can then be trained on a mountain of new data, tweaked and eventually applied to brand new types of jobs. An image recognition model build for Google Image Search, for example, might also help out the Google Maps team. A text analysis model might help Google's search engine, but it might be useful for Google+ too."

"Like any good TA, Ms. Watson's involvement was low-key but helpful. "She was the person -well, the teaching assistant- who would remind us of due dates and post questions in the middle of the week to spark conversations," student Jennifer Gavin told the Journal. Some students envisioned their TA as a young PhD hopeful. Few, if any, realized Ms. Watson was actually a computer."