Robot Convinces Website: "I am not a robot"​

Robots/AI can do a lot of things these days. Aside from Chess, they've recently mastered Go, and now Poker. Just in case you think it's all fun and games, they're also starting to build iPhones and cars too. While you can argue whether or not the Turing Test has fallen, they can defeat capcha tools too.
I haven't seen AI attempt to run a business yet, but machines do look poised in the next 20 years to take over most jobs that are repeatable and/or done at scale.
Now might be a good time for humans to start looking for skills that aren't repeatable and/or done at scale.

Do Self-Driving Cars Threaten 4.1M Jobs?

Some have postulated that Self-Driving Cars Threaten 4.1M jobs. The argument is that 4.1M bus drivers, taxi drivers, truck drivers, and people in the transportation business will lose their jobs and presumably not be able to find another line of work.
Personally, I tend to be somewhat skeptical of this type of headline. I do believe that the future the market will demand a more technically literate workforce - even in the C-suite. However, I do tend to agree that The Jobless Future Is A Myth.
4.1M driving jobs may disappear, but when the price of delivering items drops dramatically, how many more specialized opportunities will there be to deliver food and other niche items will come in to replace the jobs lost. I think of it like Walmart allegedly killing "mom-and-pop" stores but then helping clear the way for Etsy before starting to feel the pressure from Amazon. I would argue that the work the mom-and-pop stores did is still happening, just in different places. It seems to me more like the market getting more efficient over time rather than impending doom on the horizon.
Machines can do a lot of things, but I'm not convinced that permanently putting people out of work is one of them.

Uber vs. Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's an old saying "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." Whether it's a direct quote or a paraphrase of Ralph Waldo Emerson is immaterial - I'm convinced that the quote is pure B.S.

Exibit A: Uber is starting to use self-driving cars. 

Exibit B: People are very skeptical of self-driving cars. 

For the sake of completeness, I'll say that there probably isn't enough data yet to definitively answer whether self-driving cars are safer than their human-driven cars. Still, I personally feel like one could make a strong anecdotal case that there is a lower rate of fatalities among self-driven cars.

I personally think Uber's approach to the problem is brilliant. Instead of spending buckets of cash on advertising and putting the statistics out there, they're spending it to give free rides using the technology. Uber customers get to opt-in to the service, the rides are free, and they come with a driver who is only there to override the car in the event of an emergency. 

This has several key benefits:

1. It helps Uber to improve their autonomous driving technology by testing it and gathering more training data. This is something that all players in this space will need a lot of, and Uber stands to gain a huge lead over their competition. 
2. It replaces fear of the technology with concrete experience - probably among tech savvy early adopters who are the most likely to talk to their friends about it. 
3. It validates the market in a way that nobody has accomplished yet. 

I applaud Uber for their initiative. Whether the technology is safer or not, if they waited for people to beat a path to their door, they'd likely be waiting for a while.

The "Unmanned" Navy Submarine Program

The United States Navy has an unmanned submarine nearing deployment. This is a great example of how AI can augment but not completely replace a human workforce.

These submarines are designed to be low-cost surveillance/anti-sub systems. They can travel thousands of miles and stay at sea for months. Unlike their human-operated counterparts, they don't have to come back for food every few months. Theoretically, if enough of them were deployed and they didn't need to move around much, one of these subs could stay out at sea for years without refueling.

Then there's the cost factor. The goal is to produce the new subs for $20M each. That's a good amount of money, but it's roughly 1% of the $1.7B each that the Navy agreed to pay for their next 10 Manned Nuclear Submarines. 

For the cost of a single Virginia class submarine, the Navy could operate an entire fleet of approximately 100 unmanned subs controlling activity across an entire ocean theater.

On the other hand, while mostly autonomous, the fleet still needs human operators to make deployment decisions and process the intelligence provided. That need isn't likely to change. Note that the new subs also are not part of the nuclear deterrent. 

While the U.S. Navy is leveraging automation in a big way, they're still going to need human staff. However, the Navy of the future may include fewer sailors and more intelligence analysts. 

Robots Can... Sing And Dance?

Surely, the arts are safe and will never be automated. A machine could never possibly have a soul or feelings and could never possibly relate to art the way that a human can. Therefore, it must obviously follow that a machine could never create art the way that humans can.

Well... That may be premature. In China, a team of 1000+ synchronized dancing robots just broke the world record. This is not the first attempt at robotic dancing. 

Similarly, AI algorithms are becoming increasingly adept at composing music. 

Masters at human dancing/music usually spend a lifetime studying, perfecting, improvising, and re-combining a relatively small number of basic movements in new and creative ways. On the other hand, AI can (with enough $$, development expertise, and computing power) in mere moments observe the last 30 years of music/dance, figure out which songs/dances were the most effective/successful/lucrative for a given purpose (usually topping the charts/selling tickets), and combine the different movements into a unique number/composition.

This is not to say that machines will completely replace human musicians/dancers. A century after the invention of the automobile there are still horses selling for millions of dollars. On the other hand, in modern society motor vehicle theft anecdotally seems to be more common than horse theft.

Robot Ends Terrorist Threat With A Bomb

President Obama has officially made history for the number of days an American President has ordered flags to be flown at half staff. Sadly, as of late it seems that many human beings have given in to utter cowardice as they chose to visit hate, murder, and evil on society at large, and my sincere condolences go out to those affected by these incidents. 

Terrorism isn’t new, but the way that police responded to the latest threat may be. This time, while the terrorist was busy being a terrorist, the Dallas Chief of Police David Brown decided to use a robot to avoid risking further loss of life. The Dallas Police strapped a pound of C4 to a robot, guided the robot toward the terrorist, and detonated the bomb to end the threat.

The implications here are far reaching. In addition to bombs, similar drones are capable of carrying tasers, water cannons, and possibly guns. What’s more, Even the most limited-government-minded of federal politicians have discussed using drones to drop bombs domestically to accomplish similar things. 

While I offer no opinion on the use of such a robot in this case, I will say that if I were given the task of stopping the shooter myself, I could see how the idea of sending a robot instead would seem very appealing. I will also say that now seems like a great time to have a civil debate on the limits of when robots should be used in such situations.

The robots in this case were human controlled every step of the way, and that brings with it a certain level of ethical debate. If AI/The Singularity/Skynet is even possible, I still hold that it's not imminent. A more likely scenario for the next 5-10 years seems to be one where the robots of tomorrow could be a blend of AI and human control.

In other words, what if a robot were sent into a room with multiple terrorists holding hostages, and police were tempted to hand off part of the targeting process to the machine? That scenario may not be as far-fetched as it sounds, and it would bring with it an entirely different level of ethical debate.

AI finally catches up to… cows?

Have you heard the news? Super-intelligent machines are plotting to take all of our jobs during breakfast before deciding over their lunchtime soup and salad whether or not they want to kill us all!

What’s that you say? You want proof - or at least a tiny shred of evidence? Well look no further than this: A "learning robot” managed to escape from it’s fenced-in training area. Surely, this is nothing less than Skynet in the making!
Well. Maybe not quite… You see, the engineer kinda forgot to close (much less lock) the gate. The robot, like any decent overgrown Roomba vacuum cleaner, eventually found it’s way out of its pen and went cavorting around the town... until its battery died while it was in the middle of a nearby street. And then to prove that it wasn’t a fluke, the robot escaped... AGAIN!  (No word on whether or not the gate was closed the second time.)

I confess that I’m being a bit facetious here. I will say that I do believe that technology/AI/automation is reaching a level of sophistication that will eliminate a lot of jobs. I could even see a very real potential for not-quite-smart-enough AI in charge of cars or anti-aircraft lasers causing a real and very serious danger to people. Even more so, it appears that AI may take over defending our skies in the not-too-distant future. 

On the other hand, before I’ll believe that Skynet is coming for me, I’d like to see evidence that robots are doing more than escaping from their pens similar to how cows, sheep, and dogs have been giving their owners the slip and even stopping traffic for millennia. There’s at least one 2,000 year old parable in The Bible of sheep performing similar feats, and I imagine there’s other similar stories in ancient literature/historical accounts. 

I’m ready to say that there’s plenty of prior art to go around on this one.