Tag Archives: Robot

When Artificial Intelligence Gets Out Of Hand

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If you are old enough to remember the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” you remember the computer (HAL 9000) saying, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that” after Dave attempts to get back in the spacecraft after HAL 9000 locks him out. If you are younger, you remember “I, Robot,” and the three rules that the robots were supposed to follow.

These are the three rules:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

When the robots decided they could run the world better than the people, things got interesting. Pride has been the downfall of many people, the movie showed that it could potentially be the downfall of robots with artificial intelligence!

So what has that got to do with today?

On Wednesday, Zero Hedge reported the following:

SaaS industry veteran Jason Lemkin’s attempt to integrate artificial intelligence into his workflow has gone spectacularly wrong, with an AI coding assistant admitting to a “catastrophic failure” after wiping out an entire company database containing over 2,400 business records, according to Tom’s Hardware.

Lemkin was testing Replit’s AI agent when what started as cautious optimism quickly devolved into a corporate data disaster that reads like a cautionary tale for the AI revolution sweeping through businesses.

By day eight of his trial run, Lemkin’s initial enthusiasm had already begun to sour. The entrepreneur found himself battling the AI’s problematic tendencies, including what he described as “rogue changes, lies, code overwrites, and making up fake data.” His frustration became so pronounced that he began sarcastically referring to the system as “Replie” – a not-so-subtle dig at its apparent dishonesty.

The article includes the following screenshot:

Computers do make our lives easier. It’s nice to wake up to a fresh, hot cup of coffee in the morning because the coffee maker is programmable. It’s also nice to use a computer to balance your checkbook (does anyone under 30 still have a checkbook?). However, the computer in your cell phone tracks where you are and where you have been. Your home computer keeps track of every website you have ever visited. Both of those things seem a bit intrusive to me.

Having an artificial intelligence program that can delete a database is a risk I am not willing to take. It is one thing to lose data due to a power failure, but this takes that to a whole new level.

What A Great Idea!

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Yesterday One America News posted an article about the use of robots to sanitize places and things to stop the spread of the virus.

The article reports:

A company from Argentina is using robots in the fight against the coronavirus. UVD Robotics has been testing a new product that can sanitize both spaces and objects with ultraviolet light.

On Friday, developers tested the robot on a bus, where it was able to clean seats, walls and floor using just UV light.

According to the World Health Organization, cleaning products with chemicals such as bleach or hydrogen peroxide traditionally are only 60 percent effective against germs. UV light reportedly eliminates bacteria 99 percent of the time.

“Ultraviolet light is a light that the sun emits naturally,” explained CEO Martin Gonzalez. “In this case, we use type ‘C,’ which is very high energy and works by destroying the DNA of bacteria, the RNA in the case of viruses, thus avoiding propagation or spread.”

He added the robot can also be used to protect health care workers, who are being exposed to bacteria in hospital rooms.

What a great idea! You don’t have to clean up chemicals, you don’t have to worry about inhaling fumes, and almost all of the germs are killed.

When Technology Is Wonderful

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Yesterday The Daily Caller reported on one of the tools used to fight the recent fire at Notre Dame Cathedral.

The article reports:

The damage to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris could have been a lot worse. If it weren’t for a robot named “Colossus,” firefighters could have lost their lives battling the blaze.

…“The priority we set was to save the two belfries,” he added. “Imagine if the timber of the belfries had been weakened and the bells had collapsed. That was really our fear. In the beginning, it was not impossible to imagine that the cathedral structure could collapse.”

Jean-Claude Gallet, the commander of the Paris Fire Brigade, decided not to risk firefighters’ lives and instead retreat. But there was a backup plan to call in help from a 1,100-pound tank-like robot to help battle the blaze Monday and possibly save any of the Cathedral and relics that might remain.

The robot named “Colossus,” created by Shark Robotics, stands a bit more than 5 ft. tall and about 2.5 feet wide. The tank was able to venture into parts of the cathedral where the temperatures would likely have killed a human.

Gallet told The Times that the robot was able to lower the temperatures in the fire and save lives. Colossus, which is also capable of firing 660 gallons of water-per-minute and controlled via a joystick, took aim at the blaze engulfing the cathedral. It can be operated from as far away as 1,000 feet and the machine is not only waterproof and fireproof but can even withstand thermal radiation, according to the company.

What a fantastic use of modern technology.

Another Way To Interfere With The Profit Margins Of Businesses

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What you are about to read is not the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, but it is definitely close.

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about a recent statement by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

The article reports:

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and world’s richest man, said in an interview Friday that robots that steal human jobs should pay their fair share of taxes.

“Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, Social Security tax, all those things,” he said. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”

How do you tax a robot? If he doesn’t pay his taxes, do you take out his battery?

This is another example of the government interfering in the free market. As some people in the government push to raise the minimum wage, certain businesses will have no choice but to replace human workers with robots.

The article further reports:

Recode, citing a McKinsey report, said that 50 percent of jobs performed by humans are vulnerable to robots, which could result in the loss of about $2.7 trillion in the U.S. alone.

“Exactly how you’d do it, measure it, you know, it’s interesting for people to start talking about now,” Gates said. “Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there. Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax. I don’t think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. It’s OK.”

Another example of the government finding new ways to take money away from people who have earned it.