Google AI and engineering teams have announced Google Duplex, a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out “real world” tasks over the phone. Google says:
The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments. For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural as possible, allowing people to speak normally, like they would to another person, without having to adapt to a machine.
Fully Autonomous
The engineers say that the Google Duplex system is capable of carrying out sophisticated conversations and it completes the majority of its tasks fully autonomously, without human involvement. The system has a self-monitoring capability, which allows it to recognize the tasks it cannot complete autonomously (e.g., scheduling an unusually complex appointment). In these cases, it signals to a human operator, who can complete the task.
Leanna Garfield writing in BI this week outlines how the the New Zealand-based robotics company, Scott Technology Limited is developing fully-automated meat processing bots, which can extract different cuts from lamb, pig, and beef carcasses. Many meatpacking companies believe using this type of technology (rather than human workers) will make processing more efficient. Garfield points out:
The world’s largest meat production company, JBS, is already investing in it. As NPR reported, the Brazil-based corporation bought a controlling share of Scott Technology late last year, in a deal valued at $41 million.
On July 27, 2016, Michigan-based Vayu, Inc., in collaboration with the Stony Brook University Global Health Institute completed the first ever series of long-range, fully autonomous drone delivery flights with blood and stool samples, setting records in the process. The samples were flown from villages in rural Madagascar to Stony Brook University’s Centre ValBio, a central testing facility located adjacent to Ranamafana National Park, over hilly terrain without any road infrastructure. The unique ability of Vayu’s delivery drone to take off and land anywhere solves that problem and helps vulnerable rural communities to get the medical care they deserve.
Certainly a growing and contentious policy debate on the role and purpose of autonomous robots in the “workplace”.
The potential of existential challenges to what we understand the “middle-class” to be [ in the context of a 20th Century definition of a “labour-force], coupled with genuine and profound advances in autonomous and now artificial intelligence, gives one a moment [at least] of pause. Certainly minds [ such as Musk, Hawking, Gates and Omohundro ] that closely consider these technologies and their implications would also agree. The existential challenges may extend far beyond the limited boundaries of what we call the “middle-class”.
As Prof. Stephen Hawking noted:
The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence… a super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble.
Consider the musings of Elon Musk and remember this phrase. Recursive self-improvement…:
Reforms and dislocations being witnessed in “modern” labour markets are perhaps the first symptoms of genuinely profound changes to what we understand work to be in the second half of this century. The implications of automation, “job-less growth” and widening skills and income inequality suggest profound changes in policy responses will be needed. Examples such as the development of “universal” or “basic income” schemes coupled with labour market and education reforms will no doubt begin to get more attention in the coming decade.
By 2018, around 1.3 million industrial robots will be entering service in factories around the world. In the high-revenue automotive sector, global investments in industrial robots increased by a record-breaking 43 percent (2013-2014) within one year.
Global Robotic Density = 66
[Source: IFR – Global Robotic Density]Contentious? Certainly. A recent study by the VDMA Robotics and Automation Association shows that previous waves of automation have not made labor obsolete in the German context. A case to “let it ride..”
[Source: Bloomberg]MIT Economist David Autor has some interesting things to say about similar changes. Simply put, Autor’s work suggest a bumpy ride, and the challenge is that:
human capital investment must be at the heart of any long-term strategy for producing skills that are complemented rather than substituted by technology……Significantly, mastery of “middle skill” mathematics, life sciences, and analytical reasoning is indispensable for success in this training.
Certainly the changes in economic and social policy are “well behind the curve” currently. I see little indication that this trend will improve. Given the latest work from the World Economic Forum’s research on The Future of Jobs where they state:
Today, we are on the cusp of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and biotechnology, to
name just a few, are all building on and amplifying one another. This will lay the foundation for a revolution more comprehensive and all-encompassing than anything we have ever seen. Smart systems—homes, factories, farms, grids or cities—will help tackle problems ranging from supply chain management to climate change. The rise of the sharing economy will allow people to monetize everything from their empty house to their car.
Perhaps most saliently, they note:
While the impending change holds great promise, the patterns of consumption, production and employment created by it also pose major challenges requiring proactive adaptation by corporations, governments and individuals. Concurrent to the technological revolution are a set of broader socio-economic, geopolitical and demographic drivers of change, each interacting in multiple directions and intensifying one another. As entire industries adjust, most occupations are undergoing a fundamental transformation.
Proactive adaptation by corporations, governments and individuals. Historically, a challenge at the best of times. Anticipating and proactively adapting to what the WEF considers the fourth industrial revolution?
Good luck with that…
When considering the global policy responses to Climate Change, a phenomenon that we have decades of evidence-based, scientifically verified research to support our understanding of both the near and long-term implications for humanity [with unprecedented consensus ] and yet adaptation, let alone proactive adaptation seems non-existent in the policy sphere, beyond the well-intentioned.
WEF founder Klaus Schwab and board member Richard Samans opined that:
To prevent a worst-case scenario — technological change accompanied by talent shortages, mass unemployment and growing inequality — re-skilling and up-skilling of today’s workers will be critical…
The nature of true innovation is such that any unique activity is at once, both ignored as irrelevant and recognised [by some] as the future…
The difficult part is knowing which one…
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
William Shakespeare
Given current policy debates regarding “industries of the future” and the need to be “agile” and “innovative”, it is instructive to consider our own cognitive biases when it comes to change, reform and innovation. Consider public policy debates of energy futures and global warming.
Thanks to The Atlantic for highlighting the work of the tech website BGR when they uneartheda comment thread from 2007 that originally appeared on the website Engadget, and was preserved by the Internet Archive.
The conversation is focused on the brand new iPhone, which had just been unveiled.
For those of you that can remember rotary dial phones, communication prior to the internet and those that euphemistically consider themselves well-read [at least when there were identifiable canons that one could digest in a life-time ] the prospect of the technological and behavioural change that occurred on the release of the “iPhone” is nothing short of profound.
[Rotary Dial Phone]Just eight years ago. The concept of “generational change” has perhaps been compressed to “decadal” or something even more finely temporal.
How we react to change, how we identify the new through the frameworks of the past are increasingly challenges of modern, highly technical societies.
Consider these humorous, prophetic and simply wrong reviews of the newly unveiled iPhone and consider our current notions of “innovation”.
“Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a touch-screen is on a phone. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here. I’ll be keeping my Samsung A707, thanks… Color me massively disappointed.”
“Touch screen buttons? BAD idea. This thing will never work.”
“I say get on the train, or get run over by it.”
“No freaking way, Apple! It’s over!”
“Well, it beats the hell outta my Nokia 6030”
“Steve…where is my FM radio?”
“OMG, its the Newton reborn!”
“no qwerty keyboard? ojhsdodsagfadhjldgs!!”
“This looks like a disgusting bastard child of iPod/Cellphone/PDA. Yes it’s shiny, but I’m sure it won’t be so shiny once you touch it.”
“5 hour battery life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME THIS IS A JOKE ITS A PHONE NOT A LAPTOP”
“DAMN! If you think it’s big, look at the picture with Steve holding it close up, its like a Razr! Wifi! Everything, good BYE every phone company in the world.”
“Im not impressed with the iPhone. As a PDA user and a Windows Mobile user, this thing has nothing on my phone… No thanks Apple. Make a real PDA please.”
“I mean it looks pretty but its not something i foresee being the next ipod for the phone industry…It took apple how long to develop this ONE PHONE, samsung and motorola release new phones every few months lol, and constantly innovates and gets better, im sorry but if im sending text messages i’d rather have my thumb keyboard than some weird finger tapping on a screen crap.”
“These comments remind me of the folks who thought the original iPod didn’t stand a chance.”
“Blackberry is DEAD. And so is every other poorly designed idiot phone and plastic PDA. Thank God. R.I.P. Blackberry. R.I.P. Palm. R.I.P. Treo.”
“That sound I just heard was everybody’s head exploding.”
