Tag: Bot or Not

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White House launches American AI Initiative

AI illustration / N. Hanacek / NIST
Artificial intelligence could open the door to a variety of applications. (NIST Illustration / N. Hanacek)

The White House is moving forward with the American AI Initiative, a set of policies aimed at focusing the full resources of the federal government on the frontiers of artificial intelligence.

President Donald Trump is due to sign an executive order launching the initiative on Feb. 11. Among its provisions is a call for federal agencies to prioritize AI in their research and development missions, and to prioritize fellowship and training programs to help American workers gain AI-relevant skills.

The initiative also directs agencies to make federal data, models and computing resources more available to academic and industry researchers, “while maintaining the security and confidentiality protections we all expect.”

“This action will drive our top-notch AI research toward new technological breakthroughs and promote scientific discovery, economic competitiveness and national security,” the White House said in a statement.

As a trust-building measure, federal agencies are being asked to establish regulatory guidelines for AI development and use across different types of technology and industrial sectors. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is being given the lead role in the development of technical standards for reliable, trustworthy, secure and interoperable AI systems.

The White House says an action plan will be developed “to preserve America’s advantage in collaboration with our international partners and allies.”

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Boeing and its workers tussle over automation

Boeing worker and robot
A worker keeps watch on a riveting robot inside the mid-body fuselage of a 777 jet. (Boeing Photo)

Boeing’s moves to automate its manufacturing processes and streamline the quality assurance process for its airplanes has sparked discussions with union officials over the effect on jobs.

The controversy came to light in the current issue of Aero Mechanic — the newspaper published by the International Association of Machinists’ District 751, which represents Boeing assembly workers — and in The Seattle Times.

Union leaders are concerned about a Boeing campaign known as “Quality Transformation,” which relies on automated processes such as robotic riveting and precision machining to cut down on manufacturing defects. Boeing says such processes make airplane assembly more “mistake-proof.”

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What’s cooking inside Nvidia’s robotics research lab

Nvidia robot open house
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Susan Gaither tickle a robotic hand at Nvidia’s robotics research lab in Seattle. (Nvidia Photo)

When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang interacted with a sensitive robotic hand at today’s open house for his company’s robotics research lab in Seattle, it was love at first touch.

“It almost feels like a pet!” Huang said as he tickled the hand’s fingers, causing them to retreat gently.

“It’s surprisingly therapeutic,” he told the crowd around him. “Can I have one?”

The robotic hand, which is programmed to avoid poking humans when they come too close, was just one of the machines on display at the 13,000-square-foot lab in Seattle’s University District.

Nvidia is based in California’s Silicon Valley and has nearly 200 employees working at an engineering center in Redmond, Wash.

But when the chipmaker laid plans to open a lab focusing on research in robotics and artificial intelligence, it set up shop in the same building that houses the University of Washington’s CoMotion Lab. It also put Dieter Fox, a longtime computer science professor at UW, in charge of the operation as senior director of robotics research.

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Amazon patent for a safety cage stirs up a buzz

Human transport device
Diagrams show the design of a proposed human transport device, as seen from the side at left and from the top at right. The patented concept was never turned into an actual device. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO).

Warehouse workers confined in cages? That’s the dark vision evoked by an essay delving into the worries that come along with the development of artificial-intelligence devices such as the Amazon Echo speaker.

“Anatomy of an AI System” was published on Friday by the AI Now Institute and Share Lab — and it’s already gotten a rise from the executive in charge of Amazon’s distribution system, who says the cage concept never ended up being used.

The 7,300-word essay was written by Kate Crawford, who is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research as well as co-founder and co-director of New York University’s AI Now Institute; and Vladan Joler, director of the Share Foundation and a professor at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia.

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ANA partners with space agency on telepresence

Avatar X roadmap
The Avatar X initiative would begin on Earth and move out to the International Space Station, other outposts, the moon and Mars. (ANA Holdings Graphic)

Telepresence robots on the moon and Mars? That’s the vision laid out for the partnership between ANA Holdings, the parent company of Japan’s All Nippon Airways, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

The ANA-JAXA program, known as Avatar X, aims to establish a public-private consortium to develop new types of human-controlled robots that can collect data and perform tasks in remote locations. The concept is in line with the ANA Avatar Vision that was unveiled in March, as well as with JAXA’s new J-SPARC research and development program.

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Wash. Gov. Inslee voices concern over automation

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says the coming age of wider automation and smarter artificial intelligence will require upgrades in educational and training systems — as well as improvements in the social safety net for those who would otherwise be left behind.

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Amazon patents robot that tosses warehouse items

Robotic tossing machine
A diagram from Amazon’s patent application shows robotic arms coordinating their movements to toss a dwarf figurine, a mug and a rubber ducky into designated warehouse bins. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO)

Robots are nothing new for Amazon’s fulfillment centers, but a newly issued Amazon patent envisions robots that could toss items around those centers.

The 27-page patent, published July 17, describes robotic arms or manipulators that can use sensors to identify objects, figure out how best to grab onto them, calculate the required trajectories and fling the objects into chutes or bins.

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Vision-free robot feels its way through the dark

Cheetah 3 robot
The vision-free version of MIT’s Cheetah 3 robot can jump onto a 30-inch-high tabletop. (MIT via YouTube)

Boston Dynamics’ scary-smart robots make use of sophisticated computer vision, but MIT is following a different strategy with its Cheetah 3 robot.

The vision-free version of MIT’s 80-pound, Labrador-sized Cheetah 3 can find its way across a pitch-black room and up an obstacle-littered stairway without the use of cameras or environmental sensors. Instead, it relies on what engineers call “blind locomotion” — that is, the feedback from its robotic legs and its algorithm-based sense of balance as it scrambles through the dark.

“There are many unexpected behaviors the robot should be able to handle without relying too much on vision,” designer Sangbae Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, said today in a news release.

“Vision can be noisy, slightly inaccurate, and sometimes not available, and if you rely too much on vision, your robot has to be very accurate in position and eventually will be slow,” Kim said. “So we want the robot to rely more on tactile information. That way, it can handle unexpected obstacles while moving fast.”

The strategy is well-suited for getting around disaster zones or other risky environments.

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Vivid Robotics wins $4.9M boost for food tech

Garett Ochs
Garett Ochs is co-founder and CEO of Vivid Robotics. (Garett Ochs via Kickstarter)

The stealthy Seattle-based food automation venture formerly known as Otto Robotics has a new name: Vivid Robotics.

It also has a fresh infusion of $4.9 million in funding, thanks to an investment round reported today in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And it has a fresh vision that could well extend beyond robotic food preparation, according to co-founder and CEO Garett Ochs. That’s one of the big reasons for the name change.

“We’re going to be creating products for food, and we’re also going to be creating other things,” Ochs told GeekWire. “We wanted to do rebranding so we are set up for a more streamlined approach to a divergent future.”

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Worried about fake news? Get set for fake humans

Chatbot discussion
Speakers at a Seattle University event organized by the MIT Enterprise Forum Northwest discuss human-machine interaction with a word cloud displayed on the screen behind them. The words were provided by the audience to answer a question: “What scares you the most about technology?” (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

We have heard the voice of our future AI overlord — and it’s making hair appointments for us.

Last week, Google wowed the world by demonstrating a voice assistant called Duplex that sounds eerily human on the telephone, right down the um’s and mm-hmm’s that it uses during its chat with a scheduler at a hair salon.

Some are now questioning how true-to-life the demo actually was. But even if some liberties were taken, Google Duplex was an eye-opener for experts who gathered at Seattle University on Wednesday night for an AI-centric event presented by MIT Enterprise Forum Northwest.

“Seeing that happen so quickly, I think, was a real shock for some people,” said Kat Holmes, a Microsoft veteran who’s the founder of the design company Kata and the author of “Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design.”

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