Research Blog #8

A robot that eats pollution

Summary: This talk was on Mar 2016 in ted talk by Jonathan Rossiter. He is an engineer, and he is making robots. In this talk, Jonathan tried to explain his idea which talks about how we can use robots to reduce pollutions. He illustrated some problems such as oil and algae inside the sea and how we can designed robots for this environment in small details. In fact, the talker designed robots by taking the characteristics of organisms. For example, he used the characteristics of basking shark to swim in the sea and eat the pollution as the real fish or shark. These robots can be controlled by people by seeing the amount of pollution the robot was reduced. This some idea of the robots future!

• All this talk was really interesting, but the most interesting part is how the robots will have the energy and what if they stop working? Jonathan explain these details by saying that “It’s got a brain, it’s got a body and it’s got a stomach. It needs the stomach to create the energy.”, and “The second component might be the stomach. We need to get the energy into the robot and we need to treat the pollution, so the pollution goes in, and it will do something. It’s got a cell in the middle here called a microbial fuel cell. I’ll put this down, and I’ll lift up the fuel cell.”. In addition, when the robot die it will be nothing as the talker said in this quit, “Just spread them around. You know that at the end of their lives, they’re going to degrade to nothing.” Finally, I chose these quotes as interesting quotes because while I am listening to him I asked these questions to myself before I know the answers.

Robots won’t kill the workforce. They’ll save the global economy.

Summary: This article was written on December 2, 2016, by Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, is the author of “The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the The Post-Crisis World”. It talks about what will happen in the world on 2050, which the population will rise from 7.3 billion to nearly 10 billion. As a result, the robots is the one thing that can protect the global economy from the dangers that lie ahead. For example, In the Group of Seven, the world’s top industrial countries, unemployment has fallen faster than expected in the face of weak economic growth, and faster than in any comparable period since at least the 1970s. The Japanese economy is growing at 0.8 percent, yet it is at full employment. According to my research, the job picture has been particularly strong in Germany, Japan, and South Korea — the industrial countries that employ the most robots. Finally, for much of the world, robots will stand alongside immigrants, women and the elderly as a fourth pool of labor.

• The surprising thing in this article is the relationship between population and robots dealing with the economy As the author said at the beginning of the article “we’re more likely to treasure robots than to revile them. They may be the one thing that can protect the global economy from the dangers that lie ahead.”. I chose this quotes because I thought the relationship it will be opposite like if the population increase we need more jobs for them, but I was wrong because if population increase we will need to increase the outcome of food, material, and clothes.. etc

Research Blog #7

Source#1: The Future of the Army: Fewer Soldiers, More Robots, More ‘Lethality’

Summary: This article was written by Alexis C. Madrigal is a contributing editor for The Atlantic. He’s the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology. This article briefly talks about advantages of using robots in the war which will lead to having less number of human in the war with more power. For example, Robots could reduce the force protection burden, giving the Army more killing power per brigade. In addition, robots can perform some of the tasks in terms of maneuverability, in terms of the future of the force. 

Notes: This source is different from my previous sources because it is talk about the different job of robotic and different aspects. The most interesting thing in this source is that we can protect a lot of people who are dying in the war. Also, I noticed that this source refers to other sources such as  Defense News reported he said in a speech at the Army Aviation Symposium. He mentions this source to support his topic. Finally, this source raises for me the thinking of how robotics are important for a certain job such as an Army.

Source#2: Why Humans Don’t Trust Robots, AI

Summary: This article was written by David Wagner on 6/22/2015. David has been writing on business and technology for over 10 years and was most recently Managing Editor at Enterpriseefficiency.com. Before that, he was an Assistant Editor at MIT Sloan Management Review, where he covered a wide range of business topics including IT, leadership, and innovation. In this article, the author raises an important question which is “Robots are entering the workplace, but humans don’t trust them. Why, and what we can do to make them more trustworthy”, so in this article he discussed the reasons and what is the solution for making people trust robots. For example, as the article mention, little bits of humanity, especially friendliness and self-doubt, create more trust in people.

Notes: The most surprising thing to me is this sentence “Strangely enough, the answer may be to make robots look less confident. Robots that hesitate or look confused gain trust from people, rather than lose it”. I feel I do not agree with them!. This source may be is different because it shows the response to my question of why people do not trust robotics. This source refers to other sources by hyperlink it. It talks about the experiments for how people will trust robots. He use this source to make a reader can see the details for the experiments. For the next search, I want to know more about how the scientist can make people trust robots more.

 

 

 

Research Blog #6

Source #1: Can we control it? Autonomous robots threaten human identity, uniqueness, safety, and resources (from the library)

Summary: This article was written by Jakub Złotowski Affiliation: HIT Lab NZ, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand; Kumar Yogeeswaran Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand; and Christoph Bartneck Affiliation: HIT Lab NZ, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand on 10 December 2015, which publication by International Journal of Human – Computer Studies. This article discussed how robotics’ issues are important which make the scientists make empirical research to understand the effect of robotic in our life. The research included these aspects social power, realistic and identity threats, mediating role of threat on prejudice and discrimination and hypotheses. The results showed that people have ongoing fears of autonomous robots. However, this experiment it is depends on in which culture it used. For example, they said that “In East Asia, robots are presented as helping humans to defeat common enemies and they can co-exist peacefully. Therefore, it is possible that the perception of autonomous robots in these cultures may be much more positive than in our study”. Finally, findings have practical implications for research on AI and open new questions on the relationship between robot autonomy and their social impact.

Source #2: Robots at Work and Play

Summary: This article was written by Alan Taylor is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees the Photo section. He wrote this article on NOV 19, 2014. It discussed how is robotics are important to our life by taking place in the fields of space exploration, health care, public safety, entertainment, defense, and more. For example, these machines — some fully autonomous, some requiring human input — extend our grasp, enhance our capabilities, and travel as our surrogates to places too dangerous or difficult for us to go. In addition, it shows how it takes place in playing as the authors illustrated that as an example by showing the picture “A robot of a German team, left, plays the ball besides a British team robot in the Kids League at the RoboCup German Open 2014 in Magdeburg, Germany, on April 3, 2014. 44 international RoboCup Major League teams from 12 countries demonstrate the state-of-the-art competitions in soccer, rescue and service robots”.

Source #3: Why Computers Aren’t Going to Steal Everyone’s Jobs – The Atlantic 

Summary: This article was written on JAN 19, 2016 by James Bessen. He is an economist and a lecturer at the Boston University School of Law and he is the author of the book Learning by Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth. The author argued in this article why people afraid from robotics while we are using computers in our job. He discussed his idea by saying that” Take the legal industry as an example. Computers are taking over some of the work of lawyers and paralegals, and they’re doing a better job of it. For over a decade, computers have been used to sort through corporate documents to find those that are relevant to lawsuits. This process—called “discovery” in the profession—can run up millions of dollars in legal bills, but electronic methods can erase the vast majority of those costs. Moreover, the computers are often more accurate than humans: In one study, software correctly found 95 percent of the relevant documents, while humans identified only 51 percent”. In fact, robots need more positive attention than any panic from people.

Notes: The connections I noted between these sources are showing how people are afraid of robotic because they think the robotic will take their jobs. In fact, the last sources let me want to know about different ideas that argue the idea of robotic will take our jobs in the future. My topic is changing as I learn more about it by adding different aspect such as how we can control robots in the future. These assignments let me understand the research process because the lead me to build a good picture to my project by adjusting my guiding question as I search more.

Research Blog #5

“The Robots Are Coming, but Are They Really Taking Our Jobs?”

Summary:

This source was written on Aug 6, 2014, by Adrienne Lafrance. She is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers technology. She discussed how robots will enter our life in the future such as they are coming to house, to your doctor’s office, to your car, and to your favorite coffee shop. She also discussed the misunderstanding of this idea “Robots is replacing our jobs in the future”. While many existing jobs will be turned over to the machines, this cohort says, “human ingenuity will create new jobs, industries, and ways to make a living, just as it has been doing since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.” and that is a positive outcome for the economy.

• The most interesting things for me in this source is the wrong idea of robots replacing the job in percent of  52 by saying that ” But 52 percent of those surveyed predict that robots won’t displace more jobs than they create by 2025″ and how that will affect the economy by increasing the outcome.
•  This source refers to other sources such as “AI, Robotics, and the future of the jobs”. She mentioned this source to show the survey about this topic and support her idea about the reality of robots replacing the jobs.
• I want to know next how this idea is wrong and what some other thought about it?

Research Blog 4

“Lifting the Burden of Women’s Care Work: Should Robots Replace the “Human Touch”?

Notes:

• Key claims: The entire structure of community care, therefore, relies on a historical model of women as homemakers and caretakers in the private sphere of the home. Replacing the Women’s care work with Robots to solve the lack care and the opinion of the elder people.
• Examples to illustrate: Janet Finch, like many other feminist critics of care practices, focuses on the way in which expansion of “community care services” results in a regression of women’s rights and interests.

Japan has responded to this problem by developing technologies to assist with some of the care demands.

•  Gist: Women as primary caretakers in situations of long-term care
• Contextualize: JENNIFER A. PARKS, is also the author of Bioethics in a Changing World

Summary: 

This article “Lifting the Burden of Women’s Care Work: Should Robots Replace the “Human Touch”? is written by Jennifer A. Parks, who also wrote The Bioethics in a Changing World. She argues in this article how a woman is a primary caretaker in a society and how this job is difficult to her by illustrating the example of Janet Finch. She is like many other feminist critics of care practices, focuses on the way in which expansion of “community care services” results in a regression of women’s rights and interests”.In fact, the entire structure of community care, therefore, relies on a historical model of women as homemakers and caretakers in the private sphere of the home. As a result, some countries replace the women’s care work with Robots to solve the lack care like for example what happen in Japan. Japan has responded to this problem by developing technologies to assist with some of the care demands. However, when the idea is presented to the elderly residents of the home, many are horrified and reject it outright. The idea of allowing a machine to do such personal care strikes many residents as being too detached and impersonal. How are we to negotiate this impasse?

Research Blog 3

First Source:

“Role of expressive behaviour for robots that learn from people.”

This source was written by C Breazeal Affiliation: (The MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. cynthiab@media.mit.edu) on 2009 Dec 12. The source is publication by Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences as an article.

The most interesting thing before I read the resource, and that let me chose it, is the title, which made me think why we use robots that learn from people and we do not want people to do our job? Also, the other interesting thing is this fact, robots are taking behaviors of expertise who develop these robots as the author said, “Today, it is common practice for robots to be taught and evaluated by the same researchers who developed it”.

This source refers to other sources by hyperlink other sources that are related to the same topic somewhere such as this source “Computation of emotions in man and machines“. The new perspective I found for my topic is that people and robots can be together in this world because we cannot separate people from robots, actually, expertise has created the robots, but there are some roles the article discussed them.

Some words and ideas the author uses that might be good search terms are teaching robots, behavior for robots and visual attention between the human teacher and the robot learner.

Second source:

“THE TECHNOLOGY – “SAFE” & COOPERATIVE ROBOTS – One robot supplier believes that by engaging people with robots and robots with other robots, operations can be performed more effectively and efficiently”

The second source for this blog is written by Vasilash, Gary S. who is the founding editor of Automotive Design & Production (AD&P) magazine, a publication established in 1997 by Gardner Publications with the cooperation of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). He is responsible for the editorial management and direction of the monthly magazine. Vasilash continues to write a monthly column for AD&P and contributes several stories to each issue. He wrote this source on 2001 as an article. It is publication by Automotive design & production. 118, no. 6, (2006): 54

The interesting part from this source when the author said that “Another is assembly operations, where, for example, the strength of the robot, combined with the sight of a person (which takes less time to train than, say, a machine vision system) could allow the robotic performance of tasks that have been heretofore been considered to be too complex for automation”, which is kind of answering my question about people Vrs robots in the job issue.

This source refers to other sources by inserting the online link to explain her thought more to the reader. This sours is also given me a new idea abut the safety from a risk that maybe will happen at work which raised this question why people and robots are not working together?

the key that author used that might be good terms for search are safety, working together, control the robot and robots is the lead and the others follow.

Finally, by reading a lot of sources I learn more about my topic. It gave me new sides that I need to look for them, for example, the second source adds the safety side which I did not think about it before. In fact, this process help me to build a good fundation for my resarch, So I feel I do not change my guiding question because it leads me to discover new things about it.

 

 

Argument as Conversation

In the past, I made a lot of researchers, which gave me an experience of doing it. As a result, when I read this article “Argument as Conversation” I recognize some aspects, which I was using it before when I made researchers process such as framing the problem, reading to find more information, ask questions, and discussed some thought about the topic with the classmate or with the teacher.

Greene distinguishes between reading as inquiry and reading as a search for information by using an example. Distinguish between them are difficult because they have small differences. As he said, “whatever you decide, you may begin to reflect upon your experience in new ways in developing and argument about what the purpose of education experiences might be”. If you read for inquiry you will develop your thought by raising a lot of questions and while you keep researching questions will increase until you find the good answers. In another hand, if you read as a search you will find the information that will answer your questions and you will finish.

Greene defined framing as that, “Framing is a metaphor for describing the lens, or perspective, from which writers present their arguments”. I agree with this definition because framing is a limited picture of something just like a lens to see the topic in one way. I notice a lot of writers using a frame to let the reader focus on one side by discussed the information the writer want it. For example, the book that we read divided to many chapters which make the reader focuses while he or she read in one aspect like education, solitude, and family. Also, framing is happening everywhere not only with the writer but also at work between employees and so on.

Finally, this article changed my thinking about how I read and write for the research because I learned the differences between reading for research and reading for inquiry which that will reflect my writing for this project.

 

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Research Blog 2

“Siri, You’re Messing Up a Generation of Children”

Notes:

“The wonderment is that Siri has any emotional pull at all, given her many limitations. Some of her appeals can be chalked up to novelty. But she has another, more fundamental attraction: her voice. Voice is a more visceral medium than text.”

“The current generation of iPhones allows you to set Siri to male as well as female, but the point is that voices communicate gender, age, authority or the lack thereof—primal social cues that we can’t help but the process as markers of a real personality.”

” But as parents understand all too well, the key to getting a child to accept authority is knowing when to say no and when to say yes, and you wonder how a robot can be taught to know the difference.”

Summary: 

This article starts by showing what children ask Siri in the beginning of using it, and how it effects to the children by making an experiment.

“Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — and Must — Take Our Jobs”

Notes:

“Yes, dear reader, even you will have your job taken away by machines.”

“We have preconceptions about how an intelligent robot should look and act, and these can blind us to what is already happening around us.”

“That may be true of making stuff, but a lot of jobs left in the world for humans are service jobs”

Summary:

The topic of this article is the summary of what the article discussed about robots and how robots are affected in our job.

Library Activity

The library is the place for all students to study and to do their researches. Atkins library has tutorials available on the Library’s Website as videos that allow students to know the system of the library. I watched these videos, and I find the way of finding books or articles, which is using keywords. This way is helpful to look for other books that have related topics. Also, the sort of research is helpful to find what you want easily and quickly. When I used the library’s website, I used the advice of searching by sort. I chose to search by sort of date because I want to see the new articles to my project.

This is not the first time I visit Atkins library, but I remembered my first impression when I saw Atkins library. I was surprised because it is really big, and it has different places such as a quite zone and reading zone with different styles. For example, the ground floor has a long sofa, a small sofa, and chairs with a small table near the coffee shop. However, the first floor has desks with computers and has big tables with TV. The most things I liked there are rooms which you can reserve it anytime you want by using the library website. I noticed that students were using the library in a different way such as studying, sleeping, meeting friends and using computers. Also, I noticed some of students study with the group and some of them study alone.

My favorite place in the library is on the first floor near to the windows as the picture below shows. I chose this place because of the sun rays can go inside which let you feel you are free. And it is also a quiet place and it has a good location because the coffee shop will be down on the ground floor and the gate is near to me. While I am in the library waiting for my next class I usually study and do my homework. I will keep using the library as a place to study in the future because I always complete a lot of things while I am there.

 

Research Log 1

The source I feel provides interesting information about my idea for the Extended Inquiry Project is Machines versus people from this website: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/upfront-blog/2013/0206/Machines-versus-people. This topic was written on February 6, 2013, by John Yemma, Columnist, and The Christian Science Monitor. He is having served as the Monitor’s editor from 2008 to 2014. The Monitor publishes international news and analysis at CSMonitor.com, in the Monitor Weekly newsmagazine, and in an email-delivered Daily News Briefing. John can be reached at yemma@csmonitor.com.

This source lets me have thought about what humans have better than machines when I read this part “Machines are good and are getting better, but humans excel at overview and improvisation. Low-skill jobs such as home health-care aides and high-skill jobs such as biomedical engineers are improved by information and tools. And human judgment improves tools and information. As Professors Brynjolfsson and McAfee write, “the key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines.” In addition, I found this sentence is interesting to think about it which is said: “If there’s a future for machines and people, it’s working together.”

This source referred to other sources by putting the links such as 10 Surprises about Tomorrow’s Job Market written by Laurent Belsie, and Race Against the Machine which was written by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The author used these resources to support his ideas. The interesting links I want to follow is the first link “10 Surprises about Tomorrow’s” because it is discussed how the job will be in the future and this touch my idea for the inquiry project. This source makes me want to know for example how we can have an invisible support staff in jobs, allowing people to work smarter in a knowledge economy.

The best helpful search terms I have gotten from this source are: job security, human-machine partnerships and compete with machines. Finally, I will keep going behind this topic to complete my research.

 

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