“The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.” — Stephen Hawking.
Automation is inevitable. But we still have time to take action and help displaced workers.
Automation is accelerating. The software powering these robots becomes more powerful every day. We can’t stop it. But we can adapt to it.
It wasn’t that long ago that building and training neural networks was strictly for seasoned computer scientists and grad students. That began to change with the release of a number of open-source machine learning frameworks like Theano, Spark ML, Microsoft’s CNTK, and Google’s TensorFlow. Among them, TensorFlow stands out for its powerful, yet accessible, functionality, coupled with the stunning growth of its user base. With this week’s release of TensorFlow 1.0, Google has pushed the frontiers of machine learning further in a number of directions.
TensorFlow isn’t just for neural networks anymore
In an effort to make TensorFlow a more-general machine learning framework, Google has added both built-in Estimator functionality, and support for a number of more traditional machine learning algorithms including K-means, SVM (Support Vector Machines), and Random Forest. While there are certainly other frameworks like SparkML that support those tools, having a solution that can combine them with neural networks makes TensorFlow a great option for hybrid problems.
It’s all fun and games, until Jose Canseco becomes the leader of the anti robot/AI resistance.
Jose Canseco is all juiced up about robots and their existential threat to humanity.
The steroid-tainted former slugger took a few Twitter swings at the human race’s blatant disregard of the current droid danger that is bringing the world toward an economic catastrophe.
“The robot threat is being taken to (sic) lightly,” Canseco began on Monday.
The wave of automation that swept away tens of thousands of American manufacturing and office jobs during the past two decades is now washing over the armed forces, putting both rear-echelon and front-line positions in jeopardy.
“Just as in the civilian economy, automation will likely have a big impact on military organizations in logistics and manufacturing,” said Michael Horowitz, a University of Pennsylvania professor and one of the globe’s foremost experts on weaponized robots.
According to Ford, however, the implementation of automation technology is inevitable because it has obvious advantages for both consumers and retailers. “I don’t think we can stop it,” he says. “It’s a part of capitalism, that there’s going to be this continuous drive for more efficiency.”
While many have been focusing on manufacturingand transportation as the industries that will be hardest hit by automation, Amazon Go is an example of how tech that exists right now could replace retail salespersons and cashiers, jobs that had the highest employment numbers in the U.S. in May 2015 according to the Bureau of Labor statistics.
In many ways, the human eye is nothing like a digital camera. Our eyes don’t have a fixed frame rate or resolution; there’s no consistent color reproduction, and we have literal, sizableblind spots. But, these optic inconsistencies — found in every biological eye — are the product of natural selection, and offer a number of benefits which scientists working in digital vision can take advantage of.
Case in point is a new type of 3D-printed lens created by researchers from the University of Stuttgart in Germany. Each lens is made from plastic and is no bigger than a grain of salt. But, their size is only one aspect of their cleverness. The real innovation here is that the lenses mimic the action of the “fovea,” a key physiological feature of the eyes of humans and eagles, that allows for for speedier image processing.
Team OB just won the Robotics for Good Award in Dubai. Over 1,600 technologies for good applied and after competing against the top 10 best assistive technologies the judges chose our bionic hands! Now we have the funding to push our hands through the final stages of medical testing and finally get them to everyone who needs one.
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and world’s richest man, said in an interview Friday that robots that steal human jobs should pay their fair share of taxes.
“Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, Social Security tax, all those things,” he said. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”
Gates made the remark during an interview with Quartz. He said robot taxes could help fund projects like caring for the elderly or working with children in school. Quartz reported that European Union lawmakers considered a proposal to tax robots in the past. The law was rejected.
For those interested in life extension and bionic / cyborg type enhancements, this CMU Robotics Institute Seminar gives an overview of the background and current developments in artificial vision. José Alain Sahel MD is a world leading ophthalmologist with a lengthy bio and numerous honors and appointments.
In the future, if you’re going blind, these sight restoration technologies may be used to remediate your vision loss.
Three major ideas are covered. 1) Implanting arrays of tiny 3-color LEDs under a failed retina to stimulate still-okay cells, and 2) using gene therapy to express a novel photoreceptor, borrowed from algae, to restore a form of sight to failed cells. These can be done together. Lots of studies in mice, primates, and humans. Some coverage is also given to 3) directly implanting electronics in the brain to send complete images to vision centers, but this is still at an early stage.
None of this is anywhere near total restoration. The patients can make out a few words for the first time. And unlike normal vision, the range of light intensity levels remains very narrow. But obviously it’s much better than nothing and will get better over time.
As a point of humor, he tells the story of one of his blind patients who totally redesigned one of his experiments for him.
