Posts tagged robot

Apparent uselessness

robot, epistemology, learning, exploration, dominant, progressivist, narratives, undreamed-of-utilit

Sometime last year I picked up on Kenneth Stanley’s and Joel Lehmann’s 2015 book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned - The Myth of the Objective. In the book they develop an argument for an advanced teleology based on experiments with synthetic processes of knowledge acquisition in the context of AI, ALife, and Learning. The argument roughly says, that if you want to reach a goal, that is ambitious in the sense that the exact sequence of steps (the route) which will get you there, is not known, then accumulating possible steps is a better strategy than heading directly into the direction of the goal. That’s because chances are, that some of these steps will turn out, but unforseeably so, to be precisely what is needed to make the next move when negotiating the route. So far so good

via http://x75.github.io/2016/10/06/apparent-uselessness/

Robots, lasers, poison: the high-tech bid to cull wild cats

ecology, robotics, robot, cats, feral-cats, Australia, grooming, traps

Robotic killers that detect feral cats, spray their fur with poison and rely on them to essentially lick themselves to death have been deployed in the Australian desert for the first time. Feral cats are one of the biggest threats to many of Australia’s endangered species, killing millions of animals every day throughout the country – and controlling them has proved difficult.

via http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/17/robots-lasers-poison-the-high-tech-bid-to-cull-wild-cats-in-the-outback

You Call This Thai Food? The Robotic Taster Will Be the Judge

thailand, food, robot, taste, automation, algoritmics, deliciousness, gastronomy, thai food

The government-financed Thai Delicious Committee, which oversaw the development of the machine, describes it as “an intelligent robot that measures smell and taste in food ingredients through sensor technology in order to measure taste like a food critic.” In a country of 67 million people, there are somewhere near the same number of strongly held opinions about Thai cooking. A heated debate here on the merits of a particular nam prik kapi, a spicy chili dip of fermented shrimp paste, lime juice and palm sugar, could easily go on for an hour without coming close to resolution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/world/asia/bad-thai-food-enter-a-robot-taster.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2

Samantha West The Telemarketer Robot Who Swears She’s Not a Robot

turing test, telemarketing, robocalls, robot, recording, alice, eliza

When Scherer asked point blank if she was a real person, or a computer-operated robot voice, she replied enthusiastically that she was real, with a charming laugh. But then she failed several other tests. When asked “What vegetable is found in tomato soup?” she said she did not understand the question. When asked multiple times what day of the week it was yesterday, she complained repeatedly of a bad connection.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/10/meet-the-robot-telemarketer-who-denies-shes-a-robot/