Oliver Bendel, Author at ROBOPHILOSOPHY

September 14, 2023September 14, 2023

Autonomous Trains in Switzerland

According to various Swiss media, such as the Tages-Anzeiger and Watson, the Regionalverkehr Bern-Solothurn (RBS) will start test runs with an automated or autonomous train in October 2023. This will be “only on routes where there are empty runs” (Watson, September 13, 2023, own translation). According to the media, this would meet the required level of safety. “The test runs were preceded by extensive clarifications and studies – among other things, to clarify this question. At present, it is also being examined whether spatial monitoring of the level crossing is necessary, which is located on the route between Bätterkinden station and the turning track.” (Watson, September 13, 2023, own translation) Worldwide, many subways operate driverless and largely accident-free. Shuttles that travel at low speeds on virtual rails have also been used successfully for years – in Switzerland, the SmartShuttle was a pioneering project. It makes sense to automate rail traffic in this country. There is no doubt that in a few years, passenger transportation will also take this form.

September 3, 2023September 3, 2023

Artificial Intelligence & Animals

The online event “Artificial Intelligence & Animals” will take place on 16 September 2023. “AI experts and attorneys will discuss the intersection of AI and animals in this UIA Animal Law Commission and GW Animal Law webinar” (Website Eventbrite) Speakers are Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel (FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland), Yip Fai Tse (University Center for Human Values, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University), and Sam Tucker (CEO VegCatalyst, AI-Powered Marketing, Melbourne). Panelists are Ian McDougall (Executive Vice President and General Counsel, LexisNexis London), Jamie McLaughlin (Animal Law Commission Vice President, UIA), and Joan Schaffner (Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University). Oliver Bendel “has been thinking on animal ethics since the 1980s and on information and machine ethics since the 1990s”. “Since 2012, he has been systematically researching machine ethics, combining it with animal ethics and animal welfare. With his changing teams, he develops animal-friendly robots and AI systems.” (Website Eventbrite)

August 31, 2023August 31, 2023

AAAI Spring Symposia Return to Stanford

In late August 2023, AAAI announced the continuation of the AAAI Spring Symposium Series, to be held at Stanford University from 25-27 March 2024. Due to staff shortages, the prestigious conference had to be held at the Hyatt Regency SFO Airport in San Francisco in 2023 – and will now return to its traditional venue. The call for proposals is available on the AAAI Spring Symposium Series page. Proposals are due by 6 October 2023. They should be submitted to the symposium co-chairs, Christopher Geib (SIFT, USA) and Ron Petrick (Heriot-Watt University, UK), via the online submission page. Over the past ten years, the AAAI Spring Symposia have been relevant not only to classical AI, but also to roboethics and machine ethics. Groundbreaking symposia were, for example, “Ethical and Moral Considerations in Non-Human Agents” in 2016, “AI for Social Good” in 2017, or “AI and Society: Ethics, Safety and Trustworthiness in Intelligent Agents” in 2018. More information is available at aaai.org/conference/spring-symposia/sss24/.

August 22, 2023August 22, 2023

A Universal Translator Comes

The idea of a Babel Fish comes from the legendary novel or series of novels “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Douglas Adams alluded to the Tower of Babel. In 1997, Yahoo launched a web service for the automatic translation of texts under this name. Various attempts to implement the Babel Fish in hardware and software followed. Meta’s SeamlessM4T software can handle almost a hundred languages. In a blog post, the American company refers to the work of Douglas Adams. “M4T” stands for “Massively Multilingual and Multimodal Machine Translation”. Again, it is a language model that makes spectacular things possible. It has been trained on four million hours of raw audio. A demo is available at seamless.metademolab.com/demo. The first step is to record a sentence. The sentence is displayed as text. Then select the language you want to translate into, for example Japanese. The sentence is displayed again in text form and, if desired, in spoken language. A synthetic voice is used. You can also use your own voice, but this is not yet integrated into the application. A paper by Meta AI and UC Berkeley can be downloaded here.

August 11, 2023August 11, 2023

Expansion of Robocar Operations in Frisco

Robot cabs have been seen in San Francisco for years, first by Uber, then by Cruise and Waymo. But there have been various restrictions on their operation in the past. NBC BAY AREA reported on August 10, 2023: “California regulators on Thursday approved an expansion that will allow two rival robotaxi services to operate throughout San Francisco at all hours, despite safety worries spurred by recurring problems with unexpected stops and other erratic behavior that resulted in unmanned vehicles blocking traffic, including emergency vehicles.” (NBC BAY AREA, 10 August 2023) It goes on to say: “The California Public Utilities Commission voted to approve rival services from Cruise and Waymo to operate around-the-clock service. It will make San Francisco first major U.S. city with two fleets of driverless vehicles competing for passengers against ride-hailing and taxi services dependent on humans to operate the cars.” (NBC BAY AREA, 10 August 2023) It is highly likely that accidents will occur, including personal injury. A city is a highly complex environment, and the technology for autonomous driving is far from mature. In addition, the population and tourists are not sufficiently prepared for this form of traffic.

July 30, 2023July 30, 2023

The Robot-elevator Project

An elevator is still a bit of a problem for a service robot. A first approach is to use social features such as facial expressions and sounds. The user trusts the machine or feels sorry for it and helps it into the lift. A second option is for the robot to press the right buttons with its gripper. However, this can be very difficult and can also cause problems, for example when people are present. A third option is for the robot and the elevator to communicate via appropriate interfaces. This is certainly the most elegant solution, but it requires some technical standardisation and upgrading. As reported by the Korea Economic Daily, KT, LG Elec, and Hyundai Elevator have joined forces in the “robot-elevator project”. The vision is described in the teaser as follows: “A robot freely gets on and off an elevator and moves around a building, doing everything from coffee to parcel delivery and route guidance.” (KED, 28 July 2023) About the plans of the three companies, the magazine says: “The three will jointly plan and search for elevator-robot linkage services, con-duct cooperation to secure competitiveness in robotics services and look for new business lines. KT and LG Electronics said a far more competitive system of robotics services is possible by linking an elevator to a robot since robots must freely move between floors to increase their utility.” (KED, 28 July 2023) More information is available at www.kedglobal.com/robotics/newsView/ked202307280005.

July 15, 2023July 15, 2023

Disabling Autonomous Vehicles

“Anti-car activists have come up with a novel and effective way of disabling driverless vehicles owned by Waymo and Cruise in San Francisco: placing traffic cones on their hoods. It’s the work of a group called Safe Streets Rebel, which has launched a protest dubbed ‘Week of Cone’.” (Techspot, 11 July 2023) This was reported by Techspot on 11 July 2023. Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel has been pointing out for several years that automated and autonomous cars can be crippled in a simple way. On 6 March 2018, in an article in a Swiss IT journal, he asked, “Does autonomous driving fail because of manipulated sensors?” … A thesis by his student M. Hashem Birahjakli then systematically compiled and examined methods and means. A blog post about it states: “The results of the work suggest that every 14-year-old girl or boy could disable a self-driving car. So far, hacking has been seen as the greatest threat to autonomous driving. But while not everyone can hack, almost everyone carries chewing gum or lipstick. The automotive industry should consider this threat seriously.” The operator Waymo reacts helplessly to the actions. According to the German magazine Golem, a press spokesman emphasized that the traffic cone action shows a lack of understanding of how autonomous vehicles work and is vandalism. In fact, the activists know very well how autonomous vehicles work. And that is precisely the problem.