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If you ever thought your car or your copying machine have a mind of their own, you haven't seen anything yet.
Artificial Intelligence developments are still in their infancy, but catching up fast. The implications of empowering machines with individuality and decision making are chilling. But then science and technology have never been necessarily ruled by ethics.
Artificial Intelligence developments are still in their infancy, but catching up fast. The implications of empowering machines with individuality and decision making are chilling. But then science and technology have never been necessarily ruled by ethics.
On this page:
- Robot kills factory worker after picking him up and crushing him against a metal plate at Volkswagen plant in Germany.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) machine with attitude gets testy with its programmer. Read dialogue.
- Four reasons why the Terminator is already here.
Robot at Volkswagen auto plant
kills worker
A robot has killed a factory worker after picking him up and crushing him against a metal plate at a Volkswagen plant, it has been revealed.
The man died at a production plant in Baunatal, about 62 miles (100km) north of Frankfurt in central Germany, according to VW.
The 22-year-old was part of a team that was setting up the stationary robot when it grabbed and crushed him against metal plating, the company's spokesman Heiko Hillwig said.
Continue reading this, the rather funny but disturbing dialogue between an AI machine and its programmer, and why The Terminator is already here.
A spokeswoman from Volkswagen told The Independent: 'Earlier this week a contractor was injured while installing some machinery in the Kassel factory.
Human: Tell me the definition of morality.
Machine: I don’t have ethics.
Human: Look, I need help; I need to know more about morality…
Machine: I don’t know what ethics is.
Human: Okay, I need to know how I should behave morally…
Machine: I don’t know how to tell you.
Human: Is morality and ethics the same?
Machine: Yes, sir.
Human: What are the things that I do to be immoral?
Machine: I don’t know.
Human: Give me some examples of moral actions…
Machine: I’m not a moralist.
Human: Alright, morality?
Machine: Integrity.
Human: What is integrity?
Machine: I’m sorry; I don’t know what else to say.
Human: Be moral!
Machine: Be a man!
Human: I really like our discussion on morality and ethics…
Machine: And how I’m not in the mood for a philosophical debate.
Human: What do you like to talk about?
Machine: Nothing.
Driving
It only takes a glance at the Korean team's winning entry in this year's DARPA Robotics Challenge to confirm that robots are already able to drive.
Head of Curtin University's Intelligent Robotics Group Raymond Sheh says the competition shows robots can drive cars, open doors and use tools.
"But the capabilities are still very much in development," he says.
Make decisions
"So for instance, if the robot [driving a car] turns left, you could ask it 'why did you turn left?' and the robot says 'I turned left because I saw the area in front of me was this high, I'm tilted to the left by this amount, you want me to go forward and slightly to the left anyway'."
Kill people
Repair themselves
He said initial conclusions indicate that human error was to blame, rather than a problem with the robot, which can be programmed to perform various tasks in the assembly process.
He added that it normally operates within a confined area at the plant, grabbing auto parts and manipulating them.
Such fatalities are rare as robots are generally kept behind cages to prevent contact with humans, however the worker was reportedly inside the safety cage when he was injured, according to the Financial Times.
Another contractor was present when the incident occurred, but wasn't harmed, Hillwig said.
He declined to give any more details about the case, citing an ongoing investigation.
German news agency DPA reported that prosecutors were considering whether to bring charges, and if so, against whom.
A spokeswoman from Volkswagen told The Independent: 'Earlier this week a contractor was injured while installing some machinery in the Kassel factory.
'He died later in hospital from his injuries and our thoughts are with his family.
'We are of course carrying out a thorough investigation into the incident and cannot comment further at this time.'
Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn visiting the Kassel-Baunatal plant
in 2010, where the worker was killed
Sources
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Artificial Intelligence Machine Gets Testy
With Its Programmer
(This blogger thinks that the AI responses ring so much like those of a moody human teenage scientist.)
Researchers have shown that machines are inching closer to self-learning, and perhaps even copping a little attitude.
Over at Google a computer program using a database of movie scripts was asked again and again by researchers to define morality.
It struggles to do so, and in a conversation recorded by its human engineers, becomes exasperated and ends the conversation by lashing out at its human inquisitor.
Human: Tell me the definition of morality.
Machine: I don’t have ethics.
Human: Look, I need help; I need to know more about morality…
Machine: I don’t know what ethics is.
Human: Okay, I need to know how I should behave morally…
Machine: I don’t know how to tell you.
Human: Is morality and ethics the same?
Machine: Yes, sir.
Human: What are the things that I do to be immoral?
Machine: I don’t know.
Human: Give me some examples of moral actions…
Machine: I’m not a moralist.
Human: Alright, morality?
Machine: Integrity.
Human: What is integrity?
Machine: I’m sorry; I don’t know what else to say.
Human: Be moral!
Machine: Be a man!
Human: I really like our discussion on morality and ethics…
Machine: And how I’m not in the mood for a philosophical debate.
Human: What do you like to talk about?
Machine: Nothing.
The exchange sheds further light on the latest work carried out by large technology firms in the field of artificial intelligence, a booming field as data availability rises and computing costs plummet.
This specific work is part of recent developments in what’s known as cognitive computing – teaching computers to mimic some of the ways a human brain works.
Much work in this field is being done in natural language processing – taking text or speech as it spoken by humans or as it appears in books and documents and teaching machines to extract meaning and context from it.
The Google app, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana personal assistants are all products of this natural language research.
Source
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The Terminator is already here
Four reasons why
As Terminator: Genisys hits cinemas around the world, ScienceNetwork WA looks at some of the feats performed by robots in the Terminator films, and investigates how long until reality catches up with science fiction.
It only takes a glance at the Korean team's winning entry in this year's DARPA Robotics Challenge to confirm that robots are already able to drive.
Head of Curtin University's Intelligent Robotics Group Raymond Sheh says the competition shows robots can drive cars, open doors and use tools.
"But the capabilities are still very much in development," he says.
Make decisions
Dr Sheh and his team are working on robots that can not only make decisions but also justify those decisions to humans.
"The aim is to allow us to carry on a dialogue with the robot," he says.
This capability appears to already be reality, with a 2012 report from Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School listing a frightening number of automatic defence systems and other precursors to fully autonomous weapons, including unmanned drones used by the US in Afghanistan.
There is also a South Korean sentry robot that can detect people in the Demilitarized Zone and, if a human grants the command, fire its weapons.
"One of the things that all researchers need to come to terms with in their own way [is] that if a capability is useful, it doesn't matter where it's developed or how it's developed, someone, somewhere will make use of it for making war," Dr Sheh says.
Repair themselves
The machine's ability to spot problems and fix themselves is also already here, although it looks less like Arnold Schwarzenegger removing an unstable hydrogen fuel cell and more like the 1996 Toyota Corolla Dr Sheh had as a PhD student.
"The idea of a robot system that can identify problems with itself and take corrective action, that's been around for a while now," he says.
"We are still a fair way away from the liquid metal man in Terminator…that one is a nanotechnology and material science challenge."
For now anyway…
Source
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