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
  

Germans asked to reduce "Fahrvergnügen"

Due to global warming the United Nations has advised Germany to finally put speed limits on all its roads. Until now it was normal for a 210 km/h Porsche driver to overtake the 175 km/h BMW-driving businessman on the german "Autobahn". The debate has heated up in Germany and though the answers to this question are few (Yes/No/Maybe), the reasons for the different answers are plentiful.

Many Germans feel that having a speed limit is like taking away a human right (a german human right, in this case). But was it their right in the first place?


"Mis-allocation" of production capacity
On a german talk show an ex-environmental minister of Germany, Jürgen Trittin - he's the environmental minister who took over that job after the current chancellor Angela Merkel left that post, noted that the non-limit might not be the problem itself, but it's the cars that are engineered to take advantage of the streets that are not speed-constrained. In fact, only about 2% of german roads and less than 50% of highways have no limits, but the german auto industry is geared to build cars for these 2% - BMW, Daimler, Audi, Porsche are all working on "faster and bigger".

But his main concern with speed limits is not environmental sustainability or climate change but more for the safety on the roads. As you can see in the table, safety is an issue when considering speed limitations. Lowering your speed from 200 down to 125 can reduce the distance you need to get a full stop by over 55%! And the traffic would also flow better. This would reduce crashes, accidents, deaths. (Interesting fact: More than 4 out 5 people caught speeding in Germany are men.)

So introducing a speed limit might have only very small direct environmental impacts, but it can have so many useful positive indirect impacts. All the big car manufacturers would then start building less powerful cars and more research can go into efficiency, reducing pollution and safety.

(A notable fact: Looking for a news video clip on YouTube on speed limits, all I could find was guys showing off how they can drive as fast as they can on the german highway. Some up to 290 km/h!)


The CO2 constraint set by the EU
It would also go great with a new regulation set by the European Union. All EU car companies must now reduce their average emission of their car fleet down to 140 g/km by 2008 (2009 for Japanese/Korean producers). In a second step it wants to reduce the emissions down to 120 g/km until 2012 - this all sounds drastic, but the carmakers had a whole decade to sort this out themselves. Words were spoken, actions not taken. Voluntary agreements didn't work this time.

A typical Porsche spits out about 321 g of CO2 each km it drives and a BMW about 191 g/km which poses a big challenge for the luxury- and sports-type car makers. And unless the Hummer goes electric, it probably will never reach the EU market (470 g/km). But this shouldn't be a hindrance but a challenge for Germany's engineers. Other countries like France and Italy have less of a problem since their car fleet emits little CO2 already - Renault, Citroen, Fiat aren't famous for building big and fast cars.

Is Emissions trading the answer?
One idea put forward is to introduce an emissions trading plan, much like the carbon market set up by the EU recently. So a car company like Porsche has to buy certificates from a car manufacturer like Fiat in order to be able to produce cars with higher-than-allowed emissions. This would add extra costs to Porsche buyers (and would give Fiat a bigger price advantage) but on average an EU car would reach regulation standards. But this would dim any competitive thoughts: Porsche can just buy their guilt away.

And even an average emissions limit across the car fleet, in my opinion, also reduces innovation. Wouldn't it be possible for Porsche to buy a small car company which produces low emissions to get their emissions average lowered? (They probably wouldn't do this because of many other reasons - but with only 100,000 cars produced annually and such a big profit margin, it would be feasible for Porsche.) My thought is - in the long-term - to put a hard emissions limit on every car.


The road ahead
While in neigbouring countries speed limits are normal, the people there don't seem to be more stressed or having less fun driving their cars. On a trip to the Netherlands once I had to get used to that there is no road where I can drive over 120 (this is when I still had a car - a red Toyota Corolla). It took me about an hour to get used to this, but after that it was fine. I think people won't voluntarily drive with less speed, it would frustrate them to see other cars whizz by with 160 km / h. But with regulations in place, it might work ("I will if you will") and it would create a more enjoyable and safe driving experience.

Think UK - A public service ad from UK (on driving 30 mph - beware, a bit brutal)


Further reading and references:

• Talk of speed limits on autobahn revs up Germans (International Herald Tribune Europe)
  
• How clean is your brand? (pdf, European Federation for Transport and Environment)