‘Sophia’ - the World’s First Robot to be Granted Citizenship Status

[StephenZA]

They'll definitely be doing something. Whether that something actually makes them enough money to maintain the standards of living they accept is a wildly different matter.

This culture war nonsense consuming global politics right now is a furphy compared to this.

100% ... its almost like the politicians are ignoring real issues to cater to the masses!

Even then, though. There's a pretty substantial portion of science work which could honestly just be done by a really, really good robot, in terms of routine work. One would hope that STEM people are bright and adaptive enough to use that to their advantage.

.... there goes my job...

 

[StephenZA]

. Whether that something actually makes them enough money to maintain the standards of living they accept is a wildly different matter.

The market has to have a 'minimum' wage because you cant sell service or goods that nobody can afford, so it becomes a little cyclic... it is hugely difficult to predict though and could bring a class war about.

 

[vcs]

Even then, though. There's a pretty substantial portion of science work which could honestly just be done by a really, really good robot, in terms of routine work. One would hope that STEM people are bright and adaptive enough to use that to their advantage.

100% ... its almost like the politicians are ignoring real issues to cater to the masses!

.... there goes my job...

LOL, reminds me of one of those "The BIg Bang Theory" episodes.

Raj - He watched me work for 10 minutes and starting designing a piece of software that could replace me
Leonard - Is that even possible?
Raj - As it turns out, yes..

 

[Spark]

The market has to have a 'minimum' wage because you cant sell service or goods that nobody can afford, so it becomes a little cyclic... it is hugely difficult to predict though and could bring a class war about.

Which would be a staggeringly awful thing, because one would assume that most of the weapons are automated too.

 

[StephenZA]

Which would be a staggeringly awful thing, because one would assume that most of the weapons are automated too.

Apparently not..!! Because it is unaffordable to replace. Report: U.S. Nuclear System Relies On Outdated Technology Such As Floppy Disks : The Two-Way : NPR (tongue in cheek).

 

[Spark]

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html?_r=0

This very long piece goes deep into the huge and more or less overnight advances that Google Translate has made as a result of machine learning.

What the cat paper demonstrated was that a neural network with more than a billion “synaptic” connections — a hundred times larger than any publicized neural network to that point, yet still many orders of magnitude smaller than our brains — could observe raw, unlabeled data and pick out for itself a high-order human concept. The Brain researchers had shown the network millions of still frames from YouTube videos, and out of the welter of the pure sensorium the network had isolated a stable pattern any toddler or chipmunk would recognize without a moment’s hesitation as the face of a cat. The machine had not been programmed with the foreknowledge of a cat; it reached directly into the world and seized the idea for itself. (The researchers discovered this with the neural-network equivalent of something like an M.R.I., which showed them that a ghostly cat face caused the artificial neurons to “vote” with the greatest collective enthusiasm.) Most machine learning to that point had been limited by the quantities of labeled data. The cat paper showed that machines could also deal with raw unlabeled data, perhaps even data of which humans had no established foreknowledge. This seemed like a major advance not only in cat-recognition studies but also in overall artificial intelligence.

 

[Magrat Garlick]

Machine learning still is susceptible to the really bizarre bugs isn't it? Like, the Jeopardy bot will occasionally come up with an answer which isn't even in the same universe as the question, even with the category known - it makes up for that by good tactics and by being 99 % right. Bit of a problem for automating monotonous tasks, as edge cases will have to be hand-checked...

 

[Spark]

Machine learning still is susceptible to the really bizarre bugs isn't it? Like, the Jeopardy bot will occasionally come up with an answer which isn't even in the same universe as the question, even with the category known - it makes up for that by good tactics and by being 99 % right. Bit of a problem for automating monotonous tasks, as edge cases will have to be hand-checked...

It doesn't have to be perfect, though. Just better than humans.

 

[Magrat Garlick]

also, if they modelled the looks on Aubrey Hepburn, they need better face recognition software

 

[Magrat Garlick]

It doesn't have to be perfect, though. Just better than humans.

Yeah but better depends on your optimization function. I reckon most machine learning peddlars are using a function which doesn't properly account for the downside risk of the really silly errors.

Mind, I was hoping to do data entry until the end of days, that ship has probably sailed.

 

[StephenZA]

I would love for automation to take over marking of practicals and tutorials.....

 

[watson]

They'll definitely be doing something. Whether that something actually makes them enough money to maintain the standards of living they accept is a wildly different matter.

This culture war nonsense consuming global politics right now is a furphy compared to this.

The Japanese are already providing the role model for incorporating robots into society and the economy.

Investors should wake up to Japan’s robotic future*

Unfavourable demographics are spurring innovation — and investment opportunities

https://www.ft.com/content/2cff1dba-9f87-11e7-8cd4-932067fbf946

It seems to be working because Japan has a birthrate that is going backwards. Consequently, it is easier to absorb robot workers into sectors like Aged Care that require lots of serving, fetching, carrying and heavy lifting.

So if you want your human society to thrive in the coming robotic era then first stabilise or decline your human population rather than increase it.

 

[watson]

Actually the future First World economy is not hard to work-out if you think about it.

Society will end-up having a lot more robots and androids than people in it. And those people that do exist will be employed almost exclusively in the field of robotics - R+D, marketing, distribution networks and maintenance.

Outside of the 40 hours per week performing these tasks things will be the same as they have always been - a mixture of family time, sports and the arts.

But again, all this pre-supposes that the human population is fairly stable and gently oscillates around the ideal mean.

 

[StephenZA]

One good/bad thing we can get rid of the pop stars!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...n-virtual-teen-singer-into-japanese-mega-star

 

[StephenZA]

 

[watson]

The dangers behind smiling citizen robot Sophia

News that Saudi Arabia has conferred citizenship on Sophia the female robot is shudders-up-the-spine territory for me. Why is artificial intelligence so spooky? It's not just the competition, the possibility that we'll manufacture creatures smarter, sexier, stronger than ourselves; creatures who will take our jobs and our lovers. Who may even out-human us. More chilling, and more likely, is the possibility behind Elon Musk's plea to ban "killer robots;" that in outsourcing our humanity we will dehumanise ourselves.

The dangers behind smiling citizen robot Sophia

Faced with the choice between living with a fat, abusive, man-hating human or a calm, intelligent and pleasant android who flies through the Turing Test, I’d probably take the android any day of the week.

In fact, 50 years from now I can hear couples say to eachother - “Now shape-up and be nice or I’ll go get myself the latest model android who can quote every edition of Wisden / Jane Austin, and has all the right attachments”.

So we may find that a bit of competition from robots actually improves human behaviour overall and therefore makes society better.

 

[sledger]

Yeah, humans having their normative behaviours essentially determined by robots is a great idea.

 

[Ausage]

https://vimeo.com/12915013

 

[watson]

These ‘pet dogs’ from Boston Dynamics are so cutting-edge that they’re a bit creepy....

 

[watson]

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