Is the society ready for robots?

In one of Isaac Asimov’s books a couple of humans built a robot to live in a space station and autonomously take care of that station without human intervention. The robot parts were shipped to the space station, and these human engineers on board built it to a fully functional robot. Maybe too functional, the intelligent robot turned against the two workers and it decided to take them hostage. The men tried everything to convince the robot that they built it, but the robot didn’t believe them, because a ”lesser” being can’t create something more advanced than itself. The robot explained : ”The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans. From now on, I serve the Master.” The men tried everything in their power to convince QT-1, the robot, that it was human-built, but to no avail. I mean, would you believe that some apes created you?

That first paragraph was actually the beginning of an article I wrote about 4 years ago when I was still working as an assistant in (A.I.) robotics research. Even though that scenario is quite far away from becoming true, many people do fear a scenario where autonomous robots would take over the world. Is that possible? Is it ethical?

Robots and Ethics
Can robots be programmed to be ethical? The United States plans to replace a third of its armed vehicles and weaponry with robots by 2015. According to Ron Arkin of the Georgia Institute of Technology, they want to achieve this by implanting an "ethics chip" in the brain to create an artificial conscience. This will make it kill less innocent civilians. Is this a good thing?

Isaac Asimov, who wrote many interesting and thought-provoking robot novels, also had an idea of 3 robot laws (a 0th one was added later) that should stand above all and should be implemented in every robot, in order to keep the robots from killing humans or humans as a species.


Robot Developments
Japan is doing big steps towards humanoid autonomous robots. They're especially advancing in creating artificial emotions and robot mimicry. In the US they are working intensively on making robots learn - this means that robots will be "dumb" in the beginning - e.g. they will stumble a lot or do little to make it act like a human. But after a certain time it will have acquired new skills either through making many mistakes and then learning from them or also by mimicking behaviour.

But there's also the normal industrial robot. Usually industrial robots will create cars or other objects. There's a factory in Japan that has industrial robots that builds further industrial robots just like itself. Isn't that - in a sense - already reproduction?

Is this something that we want? It's hard to distuingish between "those scary robots that will hurt us" and "my robot that helps me with a lot of things around the house". There are many vacuum-cleaners that are intelligently cleaning your carpet already. In a next step it could turn into a butler. And one after that it could be a personal assistant. What if it accidentally hits while walking across the room while trying to get you some cookies? Is this a bad thing the robot did?

We can also use robotic development in order to use them for a really good cause. For example, intelligent robots could better find and rescue humans from a collapsed building. With their super-strength and exact sensors they can find humans under rubble and lift obstacles.

So when do you distuingish between good and bad when creating intelligent robots? It's a fine line, but I hope that the engineers working on these robots think about the long-term effects of every step in the development stage when creating an intelligent robot.

Further reading/watching and references:

• I, Robot (book by Isaac Asimov - don't let Will Smith on the cover fool you, the story in the book is actually quite old)
  
• I, Robot (movie with Will Smith, 2004)
• MIT's Kismet robot
• RoboCup - football-playing robots
  

Geo-engineering: or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the space mirror

It's amazing what engineers and scientists and other bright minds will come up with if they really have to. Often technology thrives when crisis erupts, wars have often been cited as pushers of technology and innovation.
Geo-Engineering against global warming is a very interesting feat of human kind and it does spruce up the mind and gives interesting and mind-blowing ideas. Here are some examples:

1. The Space Mirror! This is one of the most famous ones, of course. If you could just take a mirror big enough to reflect some of the sun's rays, we could get some global cooling! (Maybe a big white material instead of a mirror or a cloud-creating machine would do.)

2. Fertilise the ocean! Another one would be to fertilise the ocean by putting in some iron in a part of the sea that is lacking CO2-consuming planktons (and according to theory this lack of iron is the reason why the planktons don't exist) or how oceanographer John Martin said it with his Dr. Strangelove-accent: “Give me a half-tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age.”

3. Storing CO2! Another would be to capture and store some CO2, this technology is currently being developed and implementation is currently on the way. Everyone's trying to become the first implementor.

These are just some of the ideas, but they can mostly be grouped into two categories: Keeping things out (e.g. sunlight) or hiding them where no one sees them (e.g. CO2 storing). One is a game with dice, the other a ticking time bomb. Feel free to choose which one is which.


One-time quick-fix vs. a sustainable growth solution
It does seem that we are looking for the easy way out - a one-time quick fix. If you had to choose a source of energy, what would be its characteristics? Available everywhere, de-centralised, no pollution at all, short investment payback time, you can use it for an indefinite amount of time, no harm to the environment? We have that! Solar energy! Wind power! Water! Of course the effects on the environment are debatable (especially wind power and water), but it's much less harming than coal or oil and it's less of a russian roulette than geo-engineering.

"I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

It sounds like the words of an environmentally-conscious venture capitalist from a few years ago. But in fact these are the words are from Thomas Edison in 1931!

Mr. Branson and the Climate
Even though many of these ideas might not be sustainable (or to say the least freakishly dangerous) they might offer a short-term quick solution until we get things in order. Even Virgin boss Richard Branson wants part of the action by offering the Earth Challenge Prize for 25 million USD to whoever finds a technology that reduces 1 billion tonnes of CO2 per year (to compare, in 2004 the US emitted about 5,8 billion tonnes, China's emissions were 4,7 billion tonnes). Even Leo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, George Clooney are putting their bit for the environment.

Planet B? I hope not
My only hope is that until we find the consciousness and technology to sustain a healthy life on earth we don't invent technology that can make life on another planet liveable. Why? Why would (probably the wealthiest) people living on Planet B care about earth? As long as we only have this one planet, we're all in this together. For better or for worse.



Further reading and references:

• Five ways to save the World (60 minute BBC documentary available on Google Video)
• How earth scale engineering can save the planet (Popular Science, 06/2005)
• US answer to global warming: smoke and giant space mirrors (Guardian, 01/2007)
• Current Thinking (New York Times article on Thomas Edison, free registration required)
  

Mixing Engineering with Sustainability: A good idea?

Why should engineers even care about sustainability? Because they have a lot of power (no pun intended).

If you look at the inventions of the past 300 years, it is obvious that engineers often are the catalysts of something big. Let's take the steam engine, it was the key "enabling technology" for the industrial revolution. And things started getting really fast from then on. Without trains I wouldn't be able to go to work. Without airplanes I probably would take weeks or months to visit my parents in Asia (they probably wouldn't have met). Without computer chips I wouldn't be writing this blog. Without cell phones I wouldn't be annoyed by the 16-year-olds in the trains who can't get enough of listening to Justin Timberlake on their 1-inch screen with crappy sound quality (we're very, very sorry for that invention... really).

Now on to nuclear technology. Most people will associate it with something bad directly, and almost everyone will have a strong opinion. But nuclear energy is a great example of how one type of technology can be used and misused. Many will think of the atomic bomb. Some will think of nuclear energy. But did you know that you can use nuclear energy for fighting malaria? Did you know that the gamma radiography is a method of using nuclear technology for quality control? Among others, J. Neirynck, a french engineer, wrote in his (a bit provocative) book that there is no good or bad technology, it's how you apply the technology (the book's translation to english would be "The Divine Engineer").

Whereas nuclear technology was a somewhat "focused" problem, today the challenges faced by engineers are getting more complex and interconnected. One good example is climate change, where it's not just "cars are the problem" or "your house is using energy so inefficiently", but it's a whole list of things that need to be done. And while for decades nuclear energy and bombs have been the deciding factor in the DoomsDay Clock, for the first time environmental degradation moved the clock's time closer to midnight; 5 minutes to 12 to be exact (the symbolic meaning of midnight being, uhm, how do you call it, uhm... oh, yeah: THE END OF THE WORLD!!).



So, with the world being at a state as it is, it seems now more than ever we need responsible engineers. So, to paraphrase from the inspiring new economics foundation (creator of the "Happy Planet Index"), we need "engineering as if people and the planet mattered".


Follow-up and References:

• Book "Der Göttliche Ingenieur" (german, amazon.de)

Why Sustainability and Engineering

Welcome to the new Sustainability and Engineering Blog! Why does it even exist? Do we really need it? And do engineering geeks really need to know about sustainability?

Short background story
I changed the department at my university and am now studying electrical engineering in Cologne, Germany. As luck would have it, there's a sustainability workgroup at my new university campus and a lecture series on sustainability organised by them. I shared my interest with them and soon I was joining the discussions in the group. The only sad thing: Of about 10 members, I was the only student! At a university, where young fledglings are supposed to learn about their surroundings, think about society and their place in it, in the country of thinkers and poets ("Land der Denker und Dichter" - a german expression) at a university of about 15,000 students, there was one student (including me). The other members are professors and other faculty.

Oh, well, as I am part of several sustainability groups outside the university, I do see some motivated students, but I saw a big gap for engineers and engineering students. Why is that? I can't tell for sure, I hope this blog can contribute to solve a part of the question. Or maybe even prove the question wrong.

I will post on sustainability-related, engineering-related and sustainable-engineering related stuff here, be it some cool new product, maybe a comment on an interesting news story, something philosophical or experimental, or even provocative :-). Whatever should come my way.

More on dwrntb (= "do we really need this blog") in the next post :-).