Do we want to talk about autonomous robots?

[Terabith]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/11/10/darpa-robot-competition/?no_nav=true&fbclid=IwAR2H61AubFlDznnirSTQBsQqMrKCr4L8Z3pD6l_0fzlKtwoszVY8zy4aCmg

[MercyA]

Ah, it's behind a paywall.

I certainly would be happy for a Rosie from the Jetsons type robot. 🙂

[Melissa Louise]

Both fascinating and terrifying. Idk. I seem to remember reading Asimov in third grade and ever since then, part of me is like 'why are the humans so keen on robots WHO MAY RISE UP AND KILL US'. 

But yeah. Cool.

 

[Corraleno]

Really fascinating story, thanks for posting that Terabith!

@MercyA it's about a 3 yr competition sponsored by the Pentagon to design a coordinated system of nearly-autonomous robots that could carry out search and rescue operations under really difficult conditions. The article describes the final event in the competition, where research teams had one hour to send their robots into a complicated underground course full of booby traps to find, and transit the locations of, 40 specific artifacts like cell phones, backpacks, and mannequins equipped with heat and sound. Things went wrong — drones crashed, robots fell into holes, teams had to figure out what was wrong and send other robots to retrieve data from the ones that could not "return to base," etc. The research teams involved collaborations among people from many different institutions, and in some cases from several different countries, and the article suggests that the contest (which included DARPA investing millions of dollars in the most promising teams, and awarding prizes to the top 3 teams that totaled 3.5 million) led to significant advances in Ai technology.

 

 

 

[Ceilingfan]

No

[Eos]

We can talk about them all we want but we have no control over whether they are the future for us.  Why oh why do humans, and I mostly mean men, think that spending money and mental resources on these things is more important than funding and mental resources against hunger and climate change?  Some one will surely jump in here to say but hey, robots will one day find and do the solutions to these problems...no. They won't.  They will be developed and deployed primarily to harm and to enrich their developers. Any positive crumbs like cool vacuum technology or search-and-rescue operations will be gobbled up by the rest of us, the same way DARPA funded the creation of the internet primarily for military expansion and the rest of us get email.  It makes no sense.  Robots can do it all, except care.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Eos

[Katy]

I am so cynical about this. Machines can learn, but they can’t be creative or understand emotions, so they will never replace humans. We’ll farm out the jobs no one wants to them, like rescuing people in adverse conditions, but they’re not ever going to substitute for people in the same way a toy cannot substitute for a dog.

[Terabith]

7 hours ago, Eos said:

We can talk about them all we want but we have no control over whether they are the future for us.  Why oh why do humans, and I mostly mean men, think that spending money and mental resources on these things is more important than funding and mental resources against hunger and climate change?  Some one will surely jump in here to say but hey, robots will one day find and do the solutions to these problems...no. They won't.  They will be developed and deployed primarily to harm and to enrich their developers. Any positive crumbs like cool vacuum technology or search-and-rescue operations will be gobbled up by the rest of us, the same way DARPA funded the creation of the internet primarily for military expansion and the rest of us get email.  It makes no sense.  Robots can do it all, except care.

So, one of the things I liked about the article is that it talks about what things robots can do, and what roles are best for people to play.  The DARPA competition was specifically for robots to do things like explore disaster areas that are unsafe for people.  It honestly seemed like reasonable usage of money and research to me.  

[Corraleno]

7 hours ago, Katy said:

I am so cynical about this. Machines can learn, but they can’t be creative or understand emotions, so they will never replace humans. We’ll farm out the jobs no one wants to them, like rescuing people in adverse conditions, but they’re not ever going to substitute for people in the same way a toy cannot substitute for a dog.

That was actually the key point of the linked article, and the main lesson that came from the contest:

"The top three teams were the ones that had found ways to capitalize on cooperation between the intuitive genius of people and the relentless drive of robots. Teams that invested too much authority in the robots, or too little, came up short.

Chung, the game master, had foreseen this epiphany. By forcing the teams to surpass the known limits of robot autonomy over the past three years, he had led them back to an appreciation of the human role. “When you can get a handful of robots to do really meaningful, impactful things, and you can leave the human supervisor to go and do other meaningful, impactful things … That’s going to be the linchpin that offers up great new capabilities going forward.”

[HS Mom in NC]

We have a lawnbot we named Chauncey Gardener. We've had it for a few years.  Here's a commercial for the model we have: 

It frees us up to work on our ornamental woodland garden and permaculture food forest. When I don't have a kid at home anymore I'm getting an upstairs rumba and a downstairs rumba so I can garden full time.