Month: January 2021

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Alexa has Hunches

Amazon’s Alexa can perform actions on her own based on previous instructions from the user without asking beforehand. Until now, the voicebot always asked before it did anything. Now it has hunches, which is what Amazon calls the function. On its website, the company writes: “Managing your home’s energy usage is easier than ever, with the Alexa energy dashboard. It works with a variety of smart lights, plugs, switches, water heaters, thermostats, TVs and Echo devices. Once you connect your devices to Alexa, you can start tracking the energy they use, right in the Alexa app. Plus, try an exciting new Hunches feature that can help you save energy without even thinking about it. Now, if Alexa has a hunch that you forgot to turn off a light and no one is home or everyone went to bed, Alexa can automatically turn it off for you. It’s a smart and convenient way to help your home be kinder to the world around it. Every device, every home, and every day counts. Let’s make a difference, together. Amazon is committed to building a sustainable business for our customers and the planet.” (Website Amazon) It will be interesting to see how often Alexa is right with her hunches and how often she is wrong.

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Reclaim Your Face

The “Reclaim Your Face” alliance, which calls for a ban on biometric facial recognition in public space, has been registered as an official European Citizens’ Initiative. One of the goals is to establish transparency: “Facial recognition is being used across Europe in secretive and discriminatory ways. What tools are being used? Is there evidence that it’s really needed? What is it motivated by?” (Website RYF) Another one is to draw red lines: “Some uses of biometrics are just too harmful: unfair treatment based on how we look, no right to express ourselves freely, being treated as a potential criminal suspect.” (Website RYF) Finally, the initiative demands respect for human: “Biometric mass surveillance is designed to manipulate our behaviour and control what we do. The general public are being used as experimental test subjects. We demand respect for our free will and free choices.” (Website RYF) In recent years, the use of facial recognition techniques have been the subject of critical reflection, such as in the paper “The Uncanny Return of Physiognomy” presented at the 2018 AAAI Spring Symposia or in the chapter “Some Ethical and Legal Issues of FRT” published in the book “Face Recognition Technology” in 2020. More information at reclaimyourface.eu.

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A Fish-inspired Robotic Swarm

A team from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering has developed fish-inspired robots that can synchronize their movements like a real school of fish, without any external control. According to a SEAS press release, it is the first time scientists have demonstrated complex 3D collective behaviors with implicit coordination in underwater robots. “Robots are often deployed in areas that are inaccessible or dangerous to humans, areas where human intervention might not even be possible”, said Florian Berlinger, a PhD Candidate at SEAS and Wyss in an interview. “In these situations, it really benefits you to have a highly autonomous robot swarm that is self-sufficient.” (SEAS, 13 January 2021) The fish-inspired robotic swarm, dubbed Blueswarm, was created in the lab of Prof. Radhika Nagpal, an expert in self-organizing systems. There are several studies and prototypes in the field of robotic fishs, from CLEANINGFISH (School of Business FHNW) to an invention by Cornell University in New York.

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Artificial Intelligence and its Siblings

Artificial intelligence (AI) has gained enormous importance in research and practice in the 21st century after decades of ups and downs. Machine ethics and machine consciousness (artificial consciousness) were able to bring their terms and methods to the public at the same time, where they were more or less well understood. Since 2018, a graphic has attempted to clarify the terms and relationships of artificial intelligence, machine ethics and machine consciousness. It is constantly evolving, making it more precise, but also more complex. A new version has been available since the beginning of 2021. In it, it is made even clearer that the three disciplines not only map certain capabilities (mostly of humans), but can also expand them.

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A Mobile Charging Robot

Futurism.com reports that Volkswagen has unveiled a working prototype of a robot that can autonomously charge electric cars. “The Mobile Charging Robot is an adorable squat bot – which, when you get right down to it, is strikingly reminiscent of the R2-D2 droid from ‘Star Wars,’ bleeps and bloops included.” (Futurism.com, 28 December 2020) As a result, the service robot becomes a social robot. This may be a benefit for the video, but whether it is necessary in practice remains to be seen. The basic idea is that the robots move to cars that are parked in large residential complexes – and where there is not necessarily a human in the vicinity (and where therefore no social interaction is needed). But the concept is questionable in other respects as well. A mobile energy storage of this type seems to be inefficient: “basically, you’d have to charge the robot’s battery supply which it then uses to charge electric cars” (Futurism.com, 28 December 2020). Nevertheless, the idea should be pursued. Without a doubt, there are logistical advantages to having a robot drive to and charge cars – fewer charging stations are needed, and you can service two vehicles at once.

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The Morality Menu Project

From 18 to 21 August 2020, the Robophilosophy conference took place. Due to the pandemic, participants could not meet in Aarhus as originally planned, but only in virtual space. Nevertheless, the conference was a complete success. At the end of the year, the conference proceedings were published by IOS Press, including the paper “The Morality Menu Project” by Oliver Bendel. From the abstract: “The discipline of machine ethics examines, designs and produces moral machines. The artificial morality is usually pre-programmed by a manufacturer or developer. However, another approach is the more flexible morality menu (MOME). With this, owners or users replicate their own moral preferences onto a machine. A team at the FHNW implemented a MOME for MOBO (a chatbot) in 2019/2020. In this article, the author introduces the idea of the MOME, presents the MOBO-MOME project and discusses advantages and disadvantages of such an approach. It turns out that a morality menu could be a valuable extension for certain moral machines.” The book can be ordered on the publisher’s website. An author’s copy is available here.