Tag: robot

Household Robot Servants Are A Lot Harder To Build Than Robotic Vacuums And Automated Warehouse Workers, Here’s Why
TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Household Robot Servants Are A Lot Harder To Build Than Robotic Vacuums And Automated Warehouse Workers, Here’s Why

With recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics technology, there is growing interest in developing and marketing household robots capable of handling a variety of domestic chores. Tesla is building a humanoid robot, which, according to CEO Elon Musk, could be used for cooking meals and helping elderly people. Amazon recently acquired iRobot, a prominent robotic vacuum manufacturer, and has been investing heavily in the technology through the Amazon Robotics program to expand robotics technology to the consumer market. In May 2022, Dyson, a company renowned for its power vacuum cleaners, announced that it plans to build the U.K.’s largest robotics center devoted to developing household robots that carry out daily domestic tasks in residential spaces. Despite the growing inte...
Is It Ok To Turn Off A Robot If It Has A Conscious? Building True AIs The Moral Implications
AI, TECHNOLOGY

Is It Ok To Turn Off A Robot If It Has A Conscious? Building True AIs The Moral Implications

In the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “The Measure of a Man,” Data, an android crew member of the Enterprise, is to be dismantled for research purposes unless Captain Picard can argue that Data deserves the same rights as a human being. Naturally the question arises: What is the basis upon which something has rights? What gives an entity moral standing? The philosopher Peter Singer argues that creatures that can feel pain or suffer have a claim to moral standing. He argues that nonhuman animals have moral standing, since they can feel pain and suffer. Limiting it to people would be a form of speciesism, something akin to racism and sexism. Without endorsing Singer’s line of reasoning, we might wonder if it can be extended further to an android robot like Data. It would require ...
Don’t fear a ‘robot apocalypse’ – tomorrow’s digital jobs will be more satisfying and higher-paid
TECHNOLOGY

Don’t fear a ‘robot apocalypse’ – tomorrow’s digital jobs will be more satisfying and higher-paid

If you’re concerned that automation and artificial intelligence are going to disrupt the economy over the next decade, join the club. But while policymakers and academics agree there’ll be significant disruption, they differ about its impact. On one hand, techno-pessimists like Martin Ford in “Rise of the Robots” argue that new forms of automation will displace most jobs without creating new ones. In other words, most of us will lose our jobs. On the flip side of the debate are techno-optimists such as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andy McAfee. In “The Second Machine Age,” they contend that continued investments in education and research and development will offset the job losses and generate many new human tasks that complement AI. While I can’t predict who will turn out to be right, I do ha...