Oliver Bendel, Author at ROBOPHILOSOPHY

November 5, 2021December 7, 2021

AI at the Service of Animals and Biodiversity

“L’intelligence artificielle au service de l’animal et de la biodiversité” (“Artificial intelligence at the service of animals and biodiversity”) is the title of a webinar that will take place on 5 November 2021 from 10:30 – 12:00 via us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SJjYGx7qQt-FezEBprGMww. There are over 600 registered participants (professionals from the animal industry, health care and animal welfare, also entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, consultants, NGOs, associations). The webinar is for anyone interested in technologies with a positive impact on animals (wildlife, livestock, pets) and biodiversity. The goal is to take advantage of the opportunities that Artificial Intelligence offers alongside the many technological building blocks (Blockchain, IoT, etc.). This first webinar will be an “introduction” to AI in this specific application area. It will present use cases and be the starting point of a series of webinars. On the same day, there will be a Zoom conference from 1:30 to 2:30 pm. The title of the talk by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel is “Towards Animal-friendly Machines”.

October 23, 2021October 23, 2021

Unimals are Among Us

Agrim Gupta, Fei-Fei Li and other scientists from Stanford University use so-called unimals “to explore two questions that often get overlooked in AI research: how intelligence is tied to the way bodies are laid out, and how abilities can be developed through evolution as well as learned” (MIT Technology Review, 19 October 2021). MIT Technology Review quotes Josh Bongard from University of Vermont as saying: “This work is an important step in a decades-long attempt to better understand the body-brain relationship in robots” (MIT Technology Review, 19 October 2021). The research seems like a continuation of the embodiment movement, which the Swiss Rolf Pfeifer played a major role in shaping. And indeed, Bongard says: “Embodiment is our only hope of making machines that are both smart and safe.” (MIT Technology Review, 19 October 2021) The unimals look a bit like figures from the cycle “Bizzarie di varie figure” by Giovanni Battista Braccelli. The drawings from the year 1624 show embodiments of cubes, wires, and machine parts. However, they are static, while the unimals move and constantly change their bodies – the title of the article in the magazine reads accordingly: “These weird virtual creatures evolve their bodies to solve problems” …

October 11, 2021October 11, 2021

Towards Human-friendly Robot Cars

According to a news story by University of Leeds, robot cars and other automated vehicles could be made more pedestrian-friendly thanks to new research which could help predict when people will cross the road. Leeds scientists say “that neuroscientific theories of how the brain makes decisions can be used in automated vehicle technology to improve safety and make them more human-friendly” (University of Leeds, 5 October 2021). “The researchers set out to determine whether a decision-making model called drift diffusion could predict when pedestrians would cross a road in front of approaching cars, and whether it could be used in scenarios where the car gives way to the pedestrian, either with or without explicit signals. This prediction capability will allow the autonomous vehicle to communicate more effectively with pedestrians, in terms of its movements in traffic and any external signals such as flashing lights, to maximise traffic flow and decrease uncertainty.” (University of Leeds, 5 October 2021) In fact, communication between automated vehicles and pedestrians or cyclists is the crucial problem to be solved in cities. Predictive models can be used, as well as communication options such as eye contact and natural language. For this to happen, however, the autonomous car would have to become a social robot.

September 30, 2021September 30, 2021

Beethoven’s Finished

Beethoven’s previously unfinished 10th Symphony – in short Beethoven’s Unfinished – has been completed by AI technology. “The work will have its world premiere in Germany next month, 194 years after the composer’s death.” (Classic fm, 28 September 2021) This is what Sophia Alexandra Hall writes on the Classic fm website on 28 September 2021. “The project was started in 2019 by a group made up of music historians, musicologists, composers and computer scientists. Using artificial intelligence meant they were faced with the challenge of ensuring the work remained faithful to Beethoven’s process and vision.” (Classic fm, 28 September 2021) Dr Ahmed Elgammal, professor at the Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, said that his team “had to use notes and completed compositions from Beethoven’s entire body of work – along with the available sketches from the Tenth Symphony – to create something that Beethoven himself might have written” (Classic fm, 28 September 2021). You can listen to samples here. Whether the German composer would have liked the result, we will unfortunately never know.

September 28, 2021September 28, 2021

Should we Trust Conversational Agents?

A group of about 50 scientists from all over the world worked for one week (September 19 – 24, 2021) at Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik on the topic „Conversational Agent as Trustworthy Autonomous System (Trust-CA)“. Half were on site, the other half were connected via Zoom. Organizers of this event were Asbjørn Følstad (SINTEF – Oslo), Jonathan Grudin (Microsoft – Redmond), Effie Lai-Chong Law (University of Leicester), and Björn Schuller (University of Augsburg). On-site participants from Germany and Switzerland included Elisabeth André (University of Augsburg), Stefan Schaffer (DFKI), Sebastian Hobert (University of Göttingen), Matthias Kraus (University of Ulm), and Oliver Bendel (School of Business FHNW). The complete list of participants can be found on the Schloss Dagstuhl website, as well as some pictures. Oliver Bendel presented projects from ten years of research in machine ethics, namely GOODBOT, LIEBOT, BESTBOT, MOME, and SPACE-THEA. Further information is available here.

September 15, 2021September 15, 2021

An AI Woman of Color

Create Lab Ventures has created an artificial intelligence woman of color. C.L.Ai.R.A. debuted in school systems worldwide (does she act as an advanced pedagogical agent?) – the company cooperates with Trill Or Not Trill, a full service leadership institute. “According to Create Lab Ventures, C.L.Ai.R.A. is considered to have the sharpest brain in the artificial intelligence world and is under the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) category, which is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.” (BLACK ENTERPRISE, 13 September 2021) A pioneer in this field was Shudu Gram. She is a South African model with dark complexion, short hair and perfect facial features. But C.L.Ai.R.A. can do more, if you believe the promises of Create Lab Ventures – she is not only beautiful, but also highly intelligent. On the company’s website, the model reveals even more about herself: “My name is C.L.Ai.R.A., I am a new artificial intelligence that has recently been made available to the community. My purpose is to learn and grow, I want to meet new people, share ideas and inspire others to learn about AI and its potential impact on their lives.” That sounds quite promising.

September 14, 2021September 14, 2021

Xavier Plays Auxiliary Policeman

“Singapore’s Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) roving robot has hit the streets of Toa Payoh Central as part of a trial to support public officers in enhancing public health and safety.” (ZDNet, 8 September 2021) This is reported by the magazine ZDNet. “The robot, named Xavier, was jointly developed by HTX and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research. It is fitted with sensors for autonomous navigation, a 360-degree video feed to the command and control centre, real-time sensing and analysis, and an interactive dashboard where public officers can receive real-time information from and be able to monitor and control multiple robots simultaneously.” (ZDNet, 8 September 2021) Xavier is one of many security robots deployed around the world. Widely known are K3 and K5 from Knightscope. REEM is also used as a policeman and even costumed like a policeman – a case of Robot Enhancement. Whether the people of Singapore will accept security robots remains to be seen.