In a final scene of Ex Machina, in which an eccentric company founder has a programmer from his company perform the ultimate Turing test on Ava, his human-like artificial intelligence, the escaped Ava is seen walking one last time through … Continue reading Transrobotism – Transhumanism’s Twin
First it was an oil pipeline, then a large meat producer that was paralyzed by cyberattacks. Not a week goes by without a hospital here, a shipping company there or, most recently, Colonial Pipeline, through whose oil pipelines 45 percent … Continue reading The Coming of an AI Pearl Harbor is Inevitable
How do you prepare a sandwich spread with peanut butter and strawberry jam? Quite simply, you take two slices of bread, smear peanut butter and jam on it and you’re done? Not quite, if you follow these instructions exactly. That’s … Continue reading The peanut butter jelly sandwich instructions for an AI
When Mary Shelley wrote her novel ‘Frankenstein’ at the age of 20, she struck a chord with the times. The phenomenon of electricity, which caused dead frogs’ legs to twitch wildly, had stirred people’s imaginations. In retrospect, it seems little … Continue reading Machine Learning and Democracy
The United States has had an interesting approach to new technology and challenges since its founding: whenever they reach a certain critical mass, Americans create an agency or authority to deal with them exclusively, both in terms of regulation, impact … Continue reading The new U.S. AI Initiative compared to the European Digital Strategy.
An unassuming Twitter account featuring a pretty young lady who appeared to be a motorcycle enthusiast garnered a number of fans in Japan. She was repeatedly seen posing in front of the bike, standing in front of the sea with her motorcycle or tinkering with it in her workshop.
Until someone discovered some inconsistencies. For example, one picture showed an arm with a little too much hair, and in a mirror visible in a photo, another curious detail. The mirror image looked quite different from the young lady. Not only was the person a lot older, but also a man.
Continue reading “FaceApp and the cute motorbike girl”
In a TED Talk, robot ethicist Kate Darling of MIT describes how she demonstrated a small dinosaur robot to a friend. This little robot named Pleo had some sensors and motors built in, it could walk around and move its head, but it could also tell if it was standing upright or lying down. If he was lying down or hanging down, he would start crying. Darling’s friend examined the robot while holding it upside down, which caused the robot to cry. Darling felt so uncomfortable doing this that she took the robot back from her friend.
Her reaction to this, this pity for the dinosaur robot, which was ultimately nothing more than a toy, astonished her herself, and she asked herself why we form emotional connections with machines.
Darling’s reaction was not unusual; it happens to others. In P. W. Singer’s book ‘Wired for War‘, American soldiers speak of the ‘robo hospital’ rather than the ‘Joint Robotics Repair Facility’ where they send their drones and demining robots for repair. These same soldiers give their robots ‘funerals with full military honors.’ And last but not least, we already learned about the overturned Kiwibots that are immediately put back up by passers-by because they looked so ‘sad’. All this shows us that we humans are very quick to make such emotional connections. Everything that moves and looks like life can awaken our compassion.
Continue reading “How Do You Design A Lovable Robot?”
If one has difficulty defining a term or a situation, then considering and defining the opposite can be helpful. In workshops with companies thinking about how to prepare for the future, the following questions provide a lot of new thinking … Continue reading Natural Stupidity