a blog by Ian Kennedy
Are you the turtle or the hare?
Flossie Dickey turned 110 and sounds exhausted, almost falling asleep on the set and would like nothing better than to be left alone.
Virginia McLaurin is 106. Her joy at meeting the Obamas at the White House is infectious.
Following up on yesterday’s post about teaching artificial intelligence manners and ethics, this morning I listened to the latest episode of The Truth which features a dramatization of a blind man using a new kind of AI that helps him “see” – I won’t spoil the twist for you but it’s well worth the 10-minute listen.
In response to fears that robots will take over and exterminate the human race, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are studying ways to teach robots human ethical values.
In the absence of an aligned reward signal, a reinforcement learning agent can perform actions that appear psychotic. For example, consider a robot that is instructed to fill a prescription for a human who is ill and cannot leave his or her home. If a large reward is earned for acquiring the prescription but a small amount of reward is lost for each action performed, then the robot may discover that the optimal sequence of actions is to rob the pharmacy because it is more expedient than waiting for the prescription to be filled normally.
This is why it’s important to teach intelligent agents not only the basic skills but also the tacit, unwritten rules of our society. There is no manual for good behavior and “raising a robot” from childhood is an unrealistic investment of time. The best way to pass on cultural values is through stories.
Stories encode many forms of tacit knowledge. Fables and allegorical tales passed down from generation to generation often explicitly encode values and examples of good behavior.
But there are problems with throwing a bunch of stories at artificial intelligence and expecting it to learn good behavior.
Stories are written by humans for humans and thus make use of commonly shared knowledge, leaving many things unstated. Stories frequently skip over events that do not directly impact the telling of the story, and sometimes also employ flashbacks, flashforwards, and achrony which may confuse an artificial learner.
To resolve this, the researchers used something they call the Scheherazade System (named after the storyteller from One Thousand and One Nights) to build up a collection of experiences to put stories into context. The system uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to create simple, easy-to-parse scripts of common occurrences that we all take for granted as common knowledge. For example, drinks are usually ordered before a meal at a restaurant, popcorn purchased before you go to your seat at the cinema, explains one paper.
Fascinating stuff. I hope they make progress for Elon Musk’s sake.
Quotes are from a research paper from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Using Stories to Teach Human Values to Artificial Agents
“A group of drones could operate in a fully autonomous mode – establishing a position and keeping to a designated route, and also interacting with other robotic complexes.” – RT News
You read that right. Fully Autonomous.
We all remember Apple Computer’s 1984 commercial. It represented Apple’s coming out as a viable alternative to the dull, beige box computer that was foisted on us.
I proffer to you Tesla’s version of that commercial. Filmed by the Freise Brothers, it features a voice from the past describing a future that has arrived.
This is how they celebrated the Chinese New Year in Guangzhou. 540 robots dancing in unison with a squadron of drones hovering overhead in formation.
The circus has left town but that’s not to say the city didn’t get the chance to poke a little fun at the NFL’s self-importance.
I believe the English phrase is, taking the piss.
Taking advantage of all the reports of poor air quality in China, British entrepreneur Leo De Watts is making “thousands of dollars” selling bottles of “naturally occuring, lovingly bottled” air to the Chinese.
Echoing the “bespoke” values of the old country, Aethaer uses traditional materials and packages their product in glass mason jars. This is opposed to their modern, upstart Canadian competition, Vitality Air, who are selling compressed oxygen in aluminum cans.
Be sure to take advantage of Aethaer’s Chinese New Year’s Special.
And this from Canada, Smoke & Flame, North America’s only premium, handcrafted, firewood manufacturer.