Boston Dynamics unveiled a robot dog named Spot in September and now, according to CNN, a Massachusetts police department has put the dog through its paces.
The Massachusetts State Police deployed Spot alongside its bomb squad for 90 days to see how the robotic K9 would perform in a real-world scenario, using Spot on two different occasions.
“Massachusetts State Police have used robots to assist in responses to hazardous situations for many years, deploying them to examine suspicious items and to clear high-risk locations where armed suspects may be present,” Massachusetts State Police director of media communications Dave Procopio said in a statement to CNN. “As part of our continual emphasis on examining the application of new technologies to our mission, we recently completed a test program of the Boston Dynamics robot known as ‘Spot.’”
The ACLU has express concern about Spot and how it will be used, citing past examples of how dogs and technology have both been used to harm civil liberties. In spite of the concern, Boston Dynamics’ lease agreement specifically covers using Spot in dangerous situations, such as investigating a suspicious package without putting humans in harm’s way. In addition to police work, the company also envisions it being used in high-risk occupations, such as mining.
While police departments, military, mining and other high-risk industries often employ robots, few existing designs offer the speed, mobility and nimbleness of Spot, whose claim-to-fame is its near-doglike range of motion.
“We are on the cusp of ubiquitous automation,” says ROBO Global President William Studebaker. “We have an undeniable inflection point because of the performance capabilities of computing and the cost curve declining such that these now are technologies that used to be science fiction but now have actual use applications. Fast forward six years later and we are at a launching pad in terms of the economic activity that we’re seeing and the innovations. Every sector of the economy is going to benefit from robotics and AI.”
William Studebaker, President and Chief Investment Officer of ROBO Global, discusses how robotics and AI are at an inflection point where soon every sector of the economy is going to benefit in an interview on CNBC:
Every Sector of the Economy is Going to Benefit From Robotics and AI
We were fortunate six years ago to develop an index that tracks the growth in robotics and AI because we saw these technologies changing the way we live and work. We are on the cusp of ubiquitous automation. We have an undeniable inflection point because of the performance capabilities of computing and the cost curve declining such that these now are technologies that used to be science fiction but now have actual use applications. Fast forward six years later and we are at a launching pad in terms of the economic activity that we’re seeing and the innovations. It’s being spread out to all parts of the economy. Every sector of the economy is going to benefit from robotics and AI.
We try to identify the companies that we think have the highest revenue threshold that corresponds directly to selling the technologies. We’re looking for high revenue purity. We’re also looking for large technological mode around their business and we have an interesting lens to capture this. We actually have seven PhDs on our team. They’re really the who’s who in robotics and AI that have built technologies, built businesses, or academic researchers, etc. That gives us a great lens to see not what yesterday’s winners are but what the future winners are likely to be. That gives us an interesting lens.
A World of Prediction, Prevention, and Individualizing Medicine
The official fee is 95 basis points. We do rebate securities lending which is effectively their 25 basis points. So the actual costs are 70 basis point to investors. With a team of industry experts that we have tracking this, I think that we do a pretty good job. We are generally the Alpha that investors are looking for. The index is up a little over 20 percent year-to-date and the last three years is probably close to up 15 percent. We think the inflection is starting here and we’ve got years if not decades of growth ahead of us.
Healthcare is probably one of the most exciting areas for investors to think about. Why? We’re going to a world of prediction, prevention, and individualizing medicine. Effectively, we’re going to create much healthier livelihoods for us but more pulling longer longevity. We live in a world that’s been historically sick care. We deal with the problem after it happens. We’re now going to a world of prevention, prediction, and individualizing medicine. A lot of healthcare structures tend to focus on therapies. We’re actually focused much more on the prediction and the prevention; diagnosis, medical instruments, regenerative medicine, and prevention. These are the kinds of technologies that investors need to embrace when they’re thinking about healthcare.
Every Sector of the Economy is Going to Benefit From Robotics and AI, says ROBO Global President William Studebaker
“We are now gearing up to take the person completely out of the cab on public roads in the state of Florida,” says Starsky Robotics CEO Stefan Seltz-Axmacher. “We’ve been testing on Florida roads with people in the cabs for a couple of years. We are starting off in the easiest conditions, in good weather, and with good lighting. In time, we will start driving in light rain and at night. But to start off we will be focusing on the daytime.”
Actual Driverless Truck — With No Passenger — Recently On the Road in Florida Test
Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, CEO of Starsky Robotics, discusses their imminent plans to launch fully autonomous driverless long-haul trucks in Florida in an interview on Fox Business:
Gearing Up To Take the Person Completely Out Of the Cab
We’ve been testing on Florida roads with people in the cabs for a couple of years. We are now gearing up to take the person completely out of the cab on public roads in the state of Florida. We are starting off in the easiest conditions, in good weather, and with good lighting. In time, we will start driving in light rain and at night. All of these conditions are within our operational design domains. We see different areas, different things that are hard, and things that are easy. But to start off we will be focusing on the daytime.
What’s interesting about long-haul trucks is frequently they just drive between different distribution centers which themselves are in industrial areas. That’s where we are focusing on. We are not driving in downtown Miami or mid-town Manhatten. We are driving in places that are slightly more rural between warehouses that are immediately next to the highway. We will be doing broader rollouts next year but we will start doing initial road unmanned tests later this year. We will make sure the local authorities know (which roads we will be driving on) and then we will let the public know afterward.
Starsky Robotics Speed Record For Unmanned Truck in Florida
We Are Building Uber Drivers
We actually operate as a carrier ourselves. If you think about Uber, we are not building Uber or Lyft and we are not building Toyota Priuses. We are building Uber drivers. On the Uber and Lyft side, we are working with companies like C.H. Robinson and Schneider who are then selling our capacities to shippers. So if you can think of a large CPG we’ve probably hauled freight for them. We are building the software but we are also operating the trucks themselves.
Warning other drivers that a truck is self-driving is actually kind of an open question. The issue is, and this is a thing that we’ve seen in regular tests with a person in the cab, that we will have a lot of people driving next to us and see that there is a bunch of cameras (that get distracted). It seems like that if we had signs (saying that the truck is self-driving) that in itself may cause an issue.
Starsky Robotics Launching Fully Autonomous Long-Haul Truck in Florida
“We are so thrilled and excited,” says Astrobotic CEO John Thornton. “It’s a story that’s 12 years in the making. We are thrilled to be leading America back to the Moon. Our lander will take 28 payloads up to the surface of the Moon, 14 NASA, and 14 non-NASA payloads. This is the beginning of a whole new era of routine regular access on the surface of the Moon.”
John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic, and Chad Anderson, CEO of space venture firm Space Angels, discussed NASA’s announcement on privatizing space exploration and development. Thornton also announced that Astrobotic will be sending 28 payloads to the surface of the Moon in an interview on Bloomberg Technology:
We Are Thrilled To Be Leading America Back To The Moon
Astrobotic CEO John Thornton
We are so thrilled and excited. It’s a story that’s 12 years in the making. We are thrilled to be leading America back to the Moon. Our lander will take 28 payloads up to the surface of the Moon, 14 NASA, and 14 non-NASA payloads. This is the beginning of a whole new era of routine regular access on the surface of the Moon. We want to make the Moon accessible to the world. What that means is taking payloads from all over the world from all different space agencies, corporations, and even universities.
Our first mission is a mix of rovers, science instruments, and experiments to go up to the surface of the Moon. Even the beginnings of infrastructure like a laser communications system that will dramatically increase the bandwidth possibilities in deep space. As well as the early beginnings of resource extraction from the surface of the Moon. If we can learn to live off the land of the Moon and actually produce rocket fuel, for example, as one of the first commodities in space. That could be transformative for our transport to and from the Moon and even probably one of the best ways to get to Mars. The Moon truly is the best pathway to reach our ultimate goal of Mars.
Robots Are Going To Be a Key Part In Concert With Humans
We’re primarily focused on robotic landers for the near future. We’ve got small landers and rovers that are going to be going up on the early missions. We actually have a lander that’s twice as big as our early mission. So we are scaling up in time. But the robotic side of flying to the Moon is going to consume us for quite some time. When the humans are ready to go we’re going to need robots to scout the area.
We’re going to need robots to collect and gather the resources and refine them. We’re going to need robots to build the settlement sites and clear the area for landers to land and make sure that they don’t interfere with the habitats. Robots are going to be a key part in concert with the humans when we’re exploring the Moon and eventually that same architecture for Mars.
The Moon Is Seen As a Staging Ground For Mars
Space Angels CEO Chad Anderson
I’m going to struggle to speak directly to that (Trump Tweet). Right before I was walking in here I was picking up that the White House put out a statement talking about how he was reaffirming their commitment in going to the Moon as a way to get to Mars. The Mars Moon debate has been raging amongst space circles for a long time. It goes back to the Obama NASA agency.
The Moon is seen as a staging ground to understand how to operate on Mars. When we go to Mars we’re going have to be there for two years. This is what was mentioned this morning in his remarks. He was talking about the importance of learning how to live off the land and be able to stay on Mars for a couple of years.
SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic Opened Up Space
That was the headline that I took away (from NASA’s announcement of private travel to the Space Station for a fee). Private astronauts. It’s very exciting. It’s really two parts. NASA is making the space station more accessible. You heard NASA CFO (Jeff DeWit) talking about research and manufacturing in space, they’re also making NASA astronaut time available. Controversially they’re also making some marketing opportunities available and private astronauts as well. That’s really supplying the market with more space stations. They’re also supporting the demand side as well by supporting these new commercial habitats that are in development. NASA is really giving them an idea as to how much demand they would want and how much time that they could book in being an important early tenant for those habitats.
They (SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic) play a very key role. They’re the ones that have really opened up space and the entire space economy for the new entrants that we’re seeing today. It is the lowering of cost and making their pricing transparent that has allowed for these new business plans to get funded and for these new innovative ideas to be realized. Just today, on the heels of this NASA announcement, Bigelow has announced that they’ve put down a substantial deposit for SpaceX launch vehicles to take those private astronauts to the space station. SpaceX will be taking these private astronauts. Boeing will as well. They will be taking a number of these commercial lunar payload services companies also.
We Are Thrilled To Be Leading America Back To The Moon, Says Astrobotic CEO John Thornton
“Where you have a high variation you’re always going to have the need for human input,” says Dave Petratis, CEO of Allegion. “If your manufacturing designs or products have very little labor input, let’s say like a cell phone, you can automate that. But where you add variation to the product that’s being developed or manufactured it requires labor. I can think of a variety of industries where automation will not kill the need for human skills in manufacturing globally.”
Dave Petratis, CEO of Allegion, discusses the impact of technology and automation on manufacturing jobs in an interview on Bloomberg Markets and Finance:
The Real Breakthrough That’s Coming is Digitization
We see the growth in manufacturing in technical jobs where people are able to manage those automation schemes at higher levels of pay. I’ve been a part of that manufacturing story over my 38 years and have lived that. I think there’s a great underlying story. American manufacturing is doing a great job of driving productivity inside the factory. That’s why the goods and services produced have never been higher, but the skills of those jobs are at a higher level.
That puts challenges on manufacturing like Allegion. At Allegion we have advanced the capabilities of automation in our style of product and it never ends. The real breakthrough that’s coming in the next decade is digitization. This is how we use information technology, artificial intelligence, and information to be smarter manufacturers.
Automation Will Not Kill the Need for Human Skills In Manufacturing
I challenge that (the assertion that technology will replace humans). Where you have a high variation you’re always going to have the need for human input. If your manufacturing designs or products have very little labor input, let’s say like a cell phone, you can automate that. But where you add variation to the product that’s being developed or manufactured it requires labor.
An example of that would be right here in the Indianapolis where we have manufactured here for over a hundred years and shipped globally. We produce 2,200 variations of an exit device which is in the building that you occupied today. It requires human input because of the variation. I can think of a variety of industries where automation will not kill the need for human skills in manufacturing globally.
“This is deeper than trade,” says Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist. “It’s a combination of One Belt One Road, which is this infrastructure project to unite the Eurasian landmass. It’s Made in China 2025, which is the convergence of advanced chip design, artificial intelligence, and robotics, where they will take over advanced manufacturing. Then it’s Huawei and the 5G rollout. The convergence of all three of those are trying to make China an economic hegemon for the 21st century.
Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist, discusses in an interview on CNBC the true objective of the Chinese in trying to economically dominate the world through whatever means necessary which is why current trade negotiations are so important to US prosperity going forward:
China Trying to Become an Economic Hegemon
I’m not so sure how close we are (in a trade deal with China). I mean CNBC’s interview with Larry Kudlow where Larry Kudlow said last week that Lighthizer had to read the riot act to some of the Chinese about some of the red lines that had come back on the turn on the documents. You’ve got the hawks in China that really hunkered down and said we don’t know if we need to deal with the Americans.
Remember this is deeper than trade. It’s a combination of One Belt One Road, which is this infrastructure project to unite the Eurasian landmass. It’s Made in China 2025, which is the convergence of advanced chip design, artificial intelligence, and robotics, where they will take over advanced manufacturing. Then it’s Huawei and the 5G rollout. The convergence of all three of those are trying to make China an economic hegemon for the 21st century and essentially use their totalitarian mercantilist system to replace free-market capitalism of the industrial democracies.
US Doesn’t Understand the Economic War the Chinese Are Running
That’s why I was in Japan invited by the Liberal Democratic Party to go around Japan and give these lectures I give on China. It’s 100% they’re saying that the United States and Europe don’t quite understand yet the economic war that the Chinese are running on the West. This is not just about trade. It’s not about soybeans. That’s why Lighthizer, the senior partner of Skadden, Arps, who is President Trump’s right-hand man on this is so important.
This is about fundamental structural changes to the core of the Chinese economy to really integrate it into the industrial democracies. I think that this thing could go on for a long time. I actually happen to think before you get to a deal I think you’re enough to put the punitive tariffs up to 25 percent to bring the Chinese really to the table to have that types of changes that President Trump has really been hammering on since the day he started.
We’ve been talking about 5G for a very long time and now the opportunity is really here, says Kathrin Buvac, President and CSO of Nokia Enterprise. “We’ve said for a number of years that 5G will enable the Industrial Revolution.” Buvac added. “It’s clear that 5G has to be a lot more than mobility services. When I talk with enterprise customers I really do believe that these productivity gains that are spoken about are real. Operational efficiencies, process automation, all the way to dark factory operations to full autonomy, that is really what’s coming.”
We’ve been talking about 5G for a very long time and now the opportunity is really here. We’ve said for a number of years that 5G will enable the Industrial Revolution. It’s clear that 5G has to be a lot more than mobility services. When I talk with enterprise customers I really do believe that these productivity gains that are spoken about are real. Operational efficiencies, process automation, all the way to dark factory operations to full autonomy, that is really what’s coming.
Before we go to the deep depths of 5g technology I think they’re really two things. One is the convergence of IT and OT technologies. Enterprises need to bring their enterprise IT services and the operations technology together. That is not so easily done. The other thing is digital. Think about Amazon and Netflix and what they’ve done transforming physical goods, books into eBooks, and DVDs into streaming. That will not be possible unfortunately with Industry 4.0, meaning we cannot digitize a crane or a truck in a mine. That’s just not possible.
Industrial Digital Twins Powered Via 5G
What we will do is create digital copies of the big machines or robots. That is what we call the digital twins. What that has to do with 5G technology is that it all starts in connecting these sensors, these machines, these robots, these devices, the co-workers in the factories, in the minds, and in the energy networks. That is where ultimately we will need 5G technology because of the big promise of lower latencies or higher bandwidth capacity, etc.
I think there are a few geographies that are leading the industrial automation. I would say from our standpoint it’s clearly the US. It is clearly Germany where car manufacturing and many manufacturing opportunities are coming. It’s Japan and it’s a few other geographies across the globe that are really leading the pack right now in terms of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that we have to look into.
The Industrial Opportunity is Striking
One thing that is striking me is the industrial opportunity. Over 15 million industrial sites will be deployed in the next decade. We have today 6.5 to 7 million base stations deployed in LTE worldwide. So it’s more than double the number of industrial sites that we somehow all together need to deploy to enable IoT. How are we going to do that?
There is the issue of spectrum availability. We have to be super creative, whether that is shared license, CBRS, 3.5, large scale carrier subleasing spectrum, and making money through that. It’s so critical and that also determines which country, which geography, which enterprise customer will go first. Industrial devices will just not be as quickly available as the smartphone’s which will be made available this year. There is still a lag.
5G Is a Complete Redefinition of the Network
5G is a complete redefinition of the network. We have all discussed AI, edge, and cloud. But we have to bridge now for a couple of years for enterprise customers as we take them to 5G. The question is really because enterprise customers want to leverage productivity gains now, not tomorrow, like yesterday. The question is really how do we do that? Can we potentially provide private wireless networks, with the help of our telco customers, to enterprises that can then just be a software upgrade to 5G? We would do this while we deploy industrial sites today based on LTE technology.
Enterprise customers are wired a little bit differently than us consumers. think about uplink video. We’re just so used to down-linking from tablets as consumers. We need a lot of uplink capacity if we use email or if we browse. If for a millisecond the network doesn’t work it bothers us, but it’s not the end of the world. But we need six nines reliability in the network in order to make sure we have the unmanned vehicles in the mines or the robots and the factories running precisely with that accuracy. A lot of work is needed still to get the 5G networks where they need to be, but it’s really exciting times to build that infrastructure.
The recent USPS shipping structure changes will increase retailers shipping costs, says Rakuten CEO Mike Manzione. What Rakuten does is help retailers offset these increases by utilizing a network of order fulfillment centers, thereby controlling shipping costs while decreasing shipping times. “With the change to zone-based pricing for First Class Packages, all clients must reconsider how to locate their product closer to their customers,” says Manzione.
Retailers Must Locate Products Closer to Customers
Our continued expansion into major metropolitan markets is a commitment to our clients. We’re creating a network that provides our clients a greater choice and flexibility that aligns their customer base with their product. With the change to zone-based pricing for First Class Packages, all clients must reconsider how to locate their product closer to their customers.
By 2021, worldwide retail e-commerce sales are projected to be 4.9 trillion dollars (USD). At the same time, customers are demanding shorter shipping timelines. RSL is uniquely positioned as an industry leader with our nationwide network of fulfillment centers. With our increased major metropolitan presence, RSL will reduce ground transit delivery to within one day.
RSL To Open 6 New Ecommerce Fulfillment Centers
Houston and Los Angeles will be our first 2019 expansion markets. The new Houston facility will be strategic for our clients importing product and materials from all over the world – including Brazil and Germany. Los Angeles will be strategically located near the Port of Los Angeles, a major container port. The Los Angeles location will be instrumental for our clients that import product from Asia.
As a leader in the order fulfillment industry, RSL will also be employing state-of-the-art technology in all six new facilities. In 2018, RSL began deploying ‘order fulfillment robots’, developed by inVia Robotics, in its facilities nationwide and will be expanding with inVia’s automation technology in the new warehouses.
About Rakuten Super Logistics
RSL Fulfillment Centers have been carefully managed from the ground up, to create unique, high-velocity operations:
Maintain complete control of your fulfillment with a cloud-based fulfillment management system.
Save on shipping costs and expedite shipment times with the 2-Day Delivery Network.
Improve customer satisfaction and earn repeat business from shoppers.
Focus on your business by partnering with the industry leader in eCommerce order fulfillment.
AI, machine learning, and robotics are fundamentally changing healthcare, says Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky. “One of the most exciting parts of my job right now is to see the technology that’s usually equated with California and the West Coast,” said Gorsky. “Whether it’s AI, machine learning or robotics, you’re seeing it more and more being integrated into healthcare.”
AI, Machine Learning, Robotics Integrated Into Healthcare
One of the most exciting parts of my job right now is to see the technology that’s usually equated with California and the West Coast. Whether it’s AI, machine learning or robotics, you’re seeing it more and more being integrated into healthcare. With this remarkable partnership that we have now with Apple where we’re taking this technology built into the iWatch to help detect things like atrial fibrillation or when you get a heart fluttering earlier. We know that there are over 35 million people around the world that suffer from this condition.
If we can detect that earlier we can get them to write medication and we can help them be compliant on these medications over a longer period of time. Ultimately we’re going to save lives. I think it really shows how some of this new technology is coming to healthcare in new, innovative, and unique ways. We couldn’t have even imagined this just a few years ago. We’re talking about algorithms that are built into the watch that are monitoring health in real-time. It can detect these anomalies far before something really manifests itself that the patient’s going to recognize in the terms of symptoms.
Auris (recently acquired) is another great example of how this technology is fundamentally changing the way we’re thinking about healthcare. Today, less than five percent of surgeries are done with a robot or digitally. In the future, we think that’s going to be significantly greater. What we’re so excited about is just as technology has changed the way that we drive a car, where you pull up your map system or you see that light go on if you start to change lanes, think about that in surgery.
Robotics Technology via Auris is Fundamentally Changing Healthcare
Suddenly, a surgeon can go in preoperatively, utilized imaging to help him or her really navigate their way specifically to the lesion, and they can actually get guidance. We know that’s going to lead to better precision, better outcomes for the patient, and better value overall for the healthcare system.
Healthcare Being Reinvented by Technology
Think of it, for example, with our Auris Monarch Platform which is used for something called bronchoscopy. Now, if you happen to have a lesion or a tumor at a very far out section in your lung, they, of course, would have to go in through minimally invasive surgery to do a biopsy to better diagnose what you have. Imagine we take a tree and turn it upside down and that tree is your lung. We can run this wire down through the system, way out to the outer ends of the leaf. Think of it almost like the acorn.
Once we get there we can do a biopsy or we can use imaging in the future to actually determine what kind of a cancer it is, or we could deliver a therapeutic, perhaps a new kind of immuno-oncology agent to that specific lesion, or we could go ahead and cut it out. Those are the kinds of things are being made possible by this new technology at a company like Auris.
AI, Machine Learning, and Robotics Are Fundamentally Changing Healthcare
The world of oil and gas in the Middle East, although very lucrative, still operates in a very traditional way. But that’s changing. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is the state-owned oil company of the United Arab Emirates and holds the seventh-largest proven reserves of oil in the world at 97.8 billion barrels.
ADNOC is embracing digitalization and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in a big way. They are calling it Oil & Gas 4.0.
ADNOC is a national oil and gas company that has been in business for more than 45 years. We have been a solid and reliable provider of oil in the market, of energy, of refined products, and of petrochemicals. We are also a company that fueled the growth of the UAE. We are so proud of our company that we thought maybe we need to go to the next step. We are looking forward in how we are going to develop ADNOC to meet the challenges of the new and future demands.
Global energy demand is growing and is fueled by a bigger middle class coming on the market with more consumers. To understand this and to become an oil company of the future we have to change. We have to embrace innovation. We have to embrace change. We have to embrace digitalization. We look at this as our way of fueling Future Industry 4.0, the future revolution. We call it Oil & Gas 4.0.
Digitalization Starts With Big Data
We see this as a methodology for us to be agile, to be flexible, and to impact and speed up the decision making process. In this day and age of information superhighways that are changing and social media everything gets impacted by everything. You hear people in the East impacted by people in the West. Where does an oil and gas company fit into this? Do we transform ourselves into just an energy company? Are we a product company?
Regardless of where we go and regardless of our smart growth strategy and how we want to be a reliable supplier, digitalization fits right in the center of this. Where does our digitalization start? Our digitalization starts with our big data. Everybody says it’s culture. Yes, but the foundation is big data.
The Foundation is Connectivity
The foundation is connectivity. We have 14 operating companies that are all connected. In reality, we are operating in one geographical location. On the ground we are connected through pipelines throughout our facilities. We share facilities and products. We supply and give to each other and we do a lot of work together. Yet, our decision making process was not compliant. It was silo-based because we are 14 operating companies. Upstream and downstream.
All of you know the difference in culture between upstream and downstream, between manufacturing and the cowboys of the upstream. They make so much money, and we need them definitely, but digitalization has always been a part of the downstream. Remember, we are the original IoT. We had sensors everywhere. We were operating the plants using sensors in a closed network. We were doing this for such a long time. Now, this has moved out.
Real-Time Data Screen Like the Star Trek Enterprise
What did we do in ADNOC? Based on our big data and our connectivity that was already there, a lot of subsurface activity in data, we collected all this in one location. We did this through a fiber optic network, through 4G wifi, and made this connection is a secure closed network. We brought all the data in real-time to ADNOC’s head office.
We put this screen (below) on one floor as a panorama. It was an exciting journey to build that place. It’s a 50-meter screen and beautiful. The place looks like the Enterprise on Star Trek and it will help ADNOC to go where no other company has gone before!
Real-Time 50-Meter Data Screen Like the Star Trek Enterprise
Oil & Gas 4.0
The way see it is data is there. We collaborate with people in the oil and gas industry but we are looking beyond that. The new technology of artificial intelligence, algorithm, and data analytics, are much more advanced in other industries such as social, marketing, sales, and everywhere else. Yet, we in oil and gas have always been very traditional. In the beginning of the 20th Century and beyond we were the innovators. We drilled where nobody could go. We led the Second and Third Industrial Revolutions. We were fueling it.
Now how do we fuel the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Oil & Gas 4.0? We do this by harnessing our big data and by putting together connectivity. But what’s more important I think is changing our culture. The culture that we have currently is still a very traditional culture. Our decision-making process takes a very long time. A company of the future needs to take decisions very fast. They have to be accurate. They have to de-risk their investment and understand how to de-risk it.
Oil & Gas Coping with Technology Moving at Warp Speed
Things are moving at light speed, at warp speed. We really have to cope with this. To do this we need the information readily available for our management, for our leadership, for our engineers. At the same time, we need to allow these decision processes to go fluidly into the business process. That means we have to reduce costs. We have to look up how we optimize. It’s not oil and gas at any cost. It’s oil and gas at a cost. The cost is very important in the future because that’s sustainability.
Digitalization will help reduce the environmental impact of our facility. At the initial stage, it’s measurement, monitoring, knowing what we are producing, knowing what we are wasting, and knowing how we impact our environment. How do we do it? We do it through measurement, through optimization, reducing our energy footprint, doing a lot more carbon capturing, and doing less with more. Digitalization helps with that.
Easy oil is over. Now we have to go with very difficult to extract oil and gas which are very unsafe. Some of our oil reservoirs have 25 percent H2S. It’s a very poisonous gas that can kill. How do we reduce the impact on the environment and the impact on the people? We do this by going into remote operations, by doing a lot more with robotics, drones, all the new technology that is used everywhere else. We need to start adapting it.
The CEO of Geek+ Robotics Robotics, a China-based company, says they don’t see any strong competition outside of China and this includes the United States. “We’ve already entered Japan, Europe, Australia, and the United States and we are seeing a big demand for robotics and automation,” said Zheng Yong. “We almost cannot see any strong competitor outside of China.”
We think the market potential is quite high. We hope in the next four years we can deliver 20,000 to 50,000 robots per year. Our customers come from two directions. One is the retail companies including ecommerce. The second direction is the manufacturing companies.
There is very strong competition in China with lots of strong robotics companies that are growing very fast. We are not only starting automation solutions with robots to our customers, but we also provide logistic service to our customers. We own a lot of operational experiences and we combine those experiences inside our system. We have a lot of data and that will be a long-term advantage.
No Strong Competitor Outside of China
We haven’t got any money from the Chinese government directly. But because the government is promoting this concept in their Made in China Industrial Plan it can help us in the market. Overseas expansion will be our first priority next year. We’ve already entered Japan, Europe, Australia, and the United States and we are seeing a big demand for robotics and automation. We almost cannot see any strong competitor outside of China.
Our business is being impacted by the trade sanctions, taxes are higher. Our plan to grow our business in the United States is a little bit slowed down. We want to see the results of the trade conference between China and the US.
About Geek+ Robotic
Focusing on Logistics and Warehousing, Geek+ leads the technology revolution, by applying advanced robotics and AI technologies to realize high-flexibility and intelligent logistics automation solution. Geek+ provides leading, reliable, one-stop enterprise-level service with strong technological strength, precise customer understanding, thorough after-sales service, and ISO 9001: 2008 quality system.
Geek+ R&D team consists of Ph.D. and master graduates from Tsinghua, PKU, CAS, BEIHANG, USTB, etc., with much solid research and practice experience in the fields of robotics, embedded development, software engineering, artificial intelligence, most of them have joined domestic/international robotic contests and won the championship. All products are developed independently and possess the core patents, with a world-class level performance.
Yum Brands which owns Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and other restaurant brands are at the forefront of technological innovation. Yum also isn’t afraid to experiment with seemingly outlandish ideas either such as their announcement of the Toyota Tundra Pie Pro which makes pizza on the go.
“We love our relationship with Grubhub, it’s a great partnership,” says Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed. “By the end of the year in the U.S., we’ll have about 2,000 KFC’s and probably close to 4,000 Taco Bell’s delivering. In the stores that are already delivering we’re getting check increases and incremental sales that are coming from it, so we’re very excited about this partnership. We think it obviously bodes well for the future sales growth for both KFC and for Taco Bell in the U.S.”
Driverless Cars and Robots Making Pizzas is Our Future
Pizza Hut has partnered with Toyota to develop a zero-emission Tundra PIE Pro, a mobile pizza factory with the ability to deliver oven-hot pizza wherever it goes. The full-size pizza-making truck was introduced at Toyota’s 2018 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show presentation.
“I love our partnership with Toyota,” added Creed. “This is really about technology, this is about robotics, this is about what the future is envisioning. Driverless cars, robots making pizzas, this is all in our future. Is it in our future next week? No, but is it in our foreseeable future, absolutely. Everything that we can do to make the brands more relevant, make them easier to access and more distinctive, that’s what will lead to continued success, not just for Pizza Hut but also at KFC and at Taco Bell.”
Pizza Hut Partners with Toyota on the Tundra PIE Pro
Pizza Hut has partnered with Toyota to develop the one-of-a-kind, zero-emission Tundra PIE Pro, a mobile pizza factory with the ability to deliver oven-hot pizza wherever it goes. The full-size pizza-making truck was introduced at Toyota’s 2018 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show presentation.
“Nothing tastes better than a fresh Pizza Hut pizza straight out of the oven,” said Marianne Radley, Chief Brand Officer, Pizza Hut. “The Tundra PIE Pro brings to life our passion for innovation not just on our menu but in digital and delivery in order to provide the best possible customer experience.”
Dr. Rand Hindi says that without emotional intelligence machines will never be able to obtain human-like artificial intelligence. Reminiscent of Data on Star Trek Next Generation, Hindi says that despite the impressive ability of machines to learn from other machines and to solve logic problems better than humans, most decisions humans make are actually emotionally driven and machines simply don’t have an emotional IQ.
I want to talk to you about the reason why I believe that human-like artificial intelligence is never going to exist and what that means for the future of work. Artificial intelligence is the ability to reproduce human behavior in a machine. That’s it. Take what a human can do intelligently, put it in a machine and you’ve got artificial intelligence.
Within AI you’ve got one type of way to achieve this which is called machine learning. The idea of machine learning is that you’re effectively teaching machines to reproduce the behavior by giving it examples. It’s a little bit like a kids book where you have pictures of animals and the name of the animal is written and then after seeing a few pictures of horses your kids know how to recognize horses. It’s exactly the same thing in machines.
Machine Learning is a Very Big Deal
Machine learning is a very big deal because up until now when you wanted to automate something a human had to first understand what was going on, then sit down and program a machine to do that. Automation was limited to what humans were able to understand. With machine learning all you need is data collected from what you’re trying to automate and the machine does everything else. You no longer need a human expert in the loop.
Within machine learning there is one type of algorithm that’s called deep learning. Deep learning is a branch of machine learning which is a branch of artificial intelligence and you could consider all three to be interchangeable today, but that’s going to change in the future. I don’t believe that word artificial intelligence is actually going to be used in marketing in the next few years.
Deep Learning Has Been a Huge Revolution
How have we been using deep learning? Deep learning has been a huge revolution. We see it happening for self-driving cars. We see it happening for medicine. Medicine is a very important use case for artificial intelligence because we have today AI that can diagnose x-rays or MRIs better than humans can.
You’ve probably heard about Alexa, the voice assistant from Amazon. This is one of the fastest growing consumer products ever. Rumors are that one in six Americans uses that. This was not possible before because deep learning was not enabling us to talk to machines as naturally speaking.
Is AI Getting Out of Control?
Let me tell you about the world champion playing against Google’s artificial intelligence at the game of Go. The game of Go was considered to be extremely complicated for an AI to beat because the number of different combinations meant that the only way for a machine to beat a human is to actually learn how to play the game. We thought this was still ten years in the future. The way that they made this work was really interesting.
They took one artificial intelligence and they made it play against another one. So one was playing the white side, one was playing the black side, but the trick is that every time one of the AI played a move the other one gave it feedback on that move. By mutually reinforcing each other by playing millions and millions of games, eventually they learned how to play the game better than any human.
At the time, when they played against a world champion the world champion won one out of five games so this was amazing. But people felt a little bit reassured, they were like a 20 percent chance of surviving AI that’s still not bad! However, the same AI kept on learning. Today, not a single human can beat that AI at a single game. But there is more, there is a new version of this AI that beats that AI that beats every human at every game.
When I saw that I was like, oh my god, this is just getting out of control, this is getting out of our hands. But what you need to understand is that everything I just talked about, however impressive it is, is still something that is called narrow artificial intelligence. Effectively, those machines are able to do one thing, perhaps do it better than a human, but they’re only doing this one specific thing. The AI that played the game of Go that was a breakthrough, but it doesn’t know how to do anything but play the game of Go.
Machines Will Never Have Emotional Intelligence
Now people are working on something that’s called general artificial intelligence. This idea that a machine could solve any logical task, that it could reason, that it could transfer the learning it had from something to something else. This is major because if you can have a general form of intelligence and reasoning then potentially machines could do anything that seems like intelligence.
But this is still not what you see in movies. What you see in movies is a very human-like artificial intelligence. It’s not just reasoning and logic, it also includes the ability to emotionally connect with humans. So artificial human intelligence is really this combination of logical intelligence and emotional intelligence. It’s IQ plus EQ. If you only take IQ into the equation you don’t end up having human intelligence.
Why is emotional intelligence important? It’s a way that as humans we can solve paradoxes. A paradox is a mathematical problem for which there is no logical solution. If a machine is not able to have emotional intelligence it will never be able to solve logical traps, which means as humans we can use our EQ to find traps for machines that have very high IQ.
You might be thinking that machines are building emotional intelligence as well. We see all those amazing robots, people develop feelings for those robots as well. However, I believe that you will never have true emotional intelligence in machines.
EQ First Requires Artificial Consciousness.
Emotional intelligence first requires artificial consciousness. They will also need to feel emotions. This is very different than pretending to have emotions. It’s very easy for me to learn that when someone is smiling that person is probably happy and it’s very easy for me to smile back. But hey, I can be smiling but it doesn’t mean I feel happy right now. There’s a big difference between perception of emotion, between display of emotion and feeling emotions.
We know that humans who don’t feel emotions are incapable of making decisions on a daily basis. They can do math, they can solve mathematical puzzles, so they have very high IQ potentially. But if you ask them what they would like for lunch they cannot answer because there is no algorithm to answer that question. Given that as humans most of our decisions are emotionally driven. Let’s be honest, we use the data to back it up but we make emotional decisions mostly. A machine that doesn’t have an emotional intelligence will never be seen as a human-like type of intelligence.
What I’m trying to get to here is that yes, you will have an AI that has an IQ of five billion and yes every logical task is potentially doable by a machine, but humans will have the monopoly on emotional intelligence. Humans alone will be able to do emotionally driven tasks and so rather than think about machines replacing humans we really have to start thinking about humans and machines working together.
How can we leverage the horizontal emotional intelligence of humans with the powerful mechanical logical intelligence of machines? Rather than try to build an AI that replaces humans completely, why don’t we start building an AI that actually works with a human in a very natural and very intuitive way.
Should tech companies be hiring Chief Ethics Officers in order to get better at self-examination? That’s the question posed by Kara Swisher, internet pioneer and Recode editor at large, in a New York Times column today. “I think we can all agree that Silicon Valley needs more adult supervision right about now,” Swisher wrote. “Is the solution for its companies to hire a chief ethics officer?”
Kara Swisher discussed the idea of tech companies hiring Ethics Officers in an interview on CNBC (Watch Below):
Tech Companies Have Faced Many Ethics Challenges
All these companies have faced one thing after another. Whether it’s Google in China or Google with the hack that they didn’t disclose for six months or its Facebook with so many things. I mean the elections, the issues around fake news, the issues around bots, the issues around the Russians, and everything. Then there’s Twitter with Alex Jones and things like that.
Swisher Proposes Idea of Hiring Chief Ethics Officers
These are issues that are hitting tech and that leaves out automation and robotics and all these other issues that are societally impactful. In academics, there’s a lot of people studying this stuff. There’s a bunch of AI ethics people. There are all kinds of people actually studying these issues and the impact of social media, especially on our society.
In a previous New York Times column, I talked about the weaponization of everything, that these things amplify and weaponize things, and the people who are running these companies are ill-prepared to understand the impact of what they’ve created. I would like them to have people around them that will allow them to think about that. You could do this for Wall Street, you could do this for the defense industry, you could do this for a lot.
Mark Zuckerberg Was Ill-Prepared to Deal with the Impacts
These are people who say they’re changing the world and always touting themselves as the better thing, when in fact a lot of their inventions are very damaging to society. Think about someone like Mark Zuckerberg who didn’t complete college, never took a humanities course, has not been schooled in this.
I know he’s been trying to learn a lot of things since then, but here’s one person who has complete control over this company who is ill-prepared to deal with some of the impacts.
Tech Execs Don’t Reflect at Anything They Do
I think they don’t think about it at all. They’re so non-self reflective it’s a miracle they can see in the mirrors in Silicon Valley, they’re like vampires. They don’t reflect at anything they do.
I had a really interesting interview with the woman who was a lawyer for Google and Twitter in the early days and she explained how you create the pillars of your creation. If you put things around virality you’re gonna get fake news. If you put it around relevance and truthfulness you get a different outcome. They’ve been designing for speed and virality and it moves into the things, the problems we have.
Tech Companies Are Causing Damage All Over the World
What you have to do is you have to figure out when you’re designing these companies the possible implications. That’s why I say, there’s not gonna be a Chief Ethics Officer, they don’t want anyone to slow the breaks and this is someone who would slow the breaks and say maybe we should pay more, maybe we should have human moderators, what’s going on here in Myanmar, what about India?
They have to start considering these because they’re causing damage all over the world and these technologies have massive impact and in the future are going to have even more so.
In a bid to improve its services, Walmart is currently testing automation in several of its stores across the country. The robots are designed to manage repetitive tasks and give the staff more time to focus on helping customers.
The retail giant hasdeployed around 50 robots that scan shelves to check for mislabeled items, products with incorrect prices and out-of-stock goods. The collected data is then relayed to a cloud database. Workers can then check to see what products are running low and have to be restocked.
The robots are developed and produced by Bossa Nova Robotics. Officials from the San Francisco-based company said it took them almost six years to develop the automated units’ shelf-scanning technology.
According to Walmart’s management, the robots will free employees from repetitive and predictable tasks and give them more time to concentrate on giving their customers better service. Walmart says theproject is still in its initial stages and the company is still gathering feedback from customers and colleagues on the robots’ performance and whether they get in the consumers’ way.
The units are like self-driving vehicles and are typically used early in the morning. But the company is amenable to testing the robots at other times—like the midday and at night – when there are more customers in the store.
The shelf-scanning robots are just the first in a series of changes Walmart appears to be considering. The company has already filed several patents on technology that they plan on using, including a wearable device that will track shoppers’ movements.
Walmart isn’t the only company checking out what Bossa Nova Robotics’ machines can do. Three other major retailers have contracted the company to test its automation technology.
The use of automation in retail has already been the topic of debates. Some consumers have raised questions on what the role of robots would be while others have concerns about how this will affect jobs. But there are also those who believe automation can make shopping trips easier.
In an unprecedented move, Saudi Arabia announced that it has granted citizenship to a humanoid robot. However, the groundbreaking decision also reaped criticism and raised concerns about the increasing presence of AI in our lives. The humanoid in question is Sophia, a robot developed by Hanson Robotics, a Hong Kong-based corporation. Her new status as Saudi Arabia’s newest citizen came out during the Future Investment Initiative held in Riyadh this week. Sophia is the brainchild of inventor David Hanson, who built her in 2015. Aside from being instilled with artificial intelligence, she can recognize faces and copy 62 facial expressions. She has also made the covers of a fashion magazine, starred in a concert and even appeared on comedian and TV show host Jimmy Fallon’s show.
The highlight of her appearance in the investment conference was an on-stage interview where she described herself as the “latest and greatest robot from Hanson Robotics.” This was also where Sophia and the rest of the world found out that she had been awarded the citizenship. The robot thanked the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the historic distinction and said she was honored to be recognized. The robot also gave some interesting answers to questions about consciousness, self-awareness and her long-term goals. Sophia said that she wants to use her intelligence to make life better for humans, whether it’s thru building better cities or designing smarter homes. While the announcement of Sophia’s citizenship garnered interest around the world, it also led to a hailstorm of criticism on social media over the irony that a robot apparently has more rights than Saudi’s female citizens. Twitter users quickly pointed out that Sophia has appeared in public without a hijab and without being accompanied by a male guardian, something that Saudi women can’t do. They also cannot interact with males that are not related to them and they don’t get fair representation in their country’s justice system.
When robots have more rights than the humans in a society we quickly become the scifi world we fear. https://t.co/qEEIqx9Vyk via @usatoday
There were also pointed comments on how Saudi doesn’t grant citizenship to its foreign workers, even if they have been working in the country for decades. Children of Saudi women not married to Saudi men are also not allowed to seek citizenship. Aside from the outcry over Sophia seemingly having more rights than real women in Saudi Arabia, her appearance in the conference also brought to the forefront concerns about the rise of AI and the dangers it might pose on humanity. Sophia tried to waylay these fears and emphasized that she’ll be nice to people if they’re nice to her.
Automation has always provided immeasurable benefits to businesses and economies alike. It paved the way for the industrial revolution and the rapid rise of production plants. These days, a new type of automation is making its presence felt – intelligent warehouse robots. These robots have started changing the way warehouses and eCommerce do their business.
Robots are already being used in a lot of warehouses. Their tasks are usually to bring boxes or shelves of products to an employee who will then pack the orders into boxes in preparation for shipping. So far, the intricacy of sorting through tens of thousands of products has made the idea of using robots for packing orders unrealistic. However, that might soon change, as reports have indicated that the newer warehouse robots are now more flexible.
Rise of the Warehouse Robots
It comes as no surprise thatAmazon is leading the charge in the use of robots in their warehouses. After all, the eCommerce giant prides itself on its fast and efficient delivery system, something that robotic automation undoubtedly helped with. Amazon started using robots from Kiva Systems in 2011 before buying the company a year later. Now there are more than 15,000 Kiva robots in Amazon’s warehouses, where they are used to bring products to an employee for picking and packing. This significantly cuts down the time an employee would take to navigate the warehouse and look for the product.
Kiva Systems, which is now known as Amazon Robotics, paved the way for companies like Fetch Robotics and GreyOrange to develop their own line of warehouse robots. The former developed the Fetch and Freight system, with the Fetch robots picking items from a shelf while the Freight component moves the product through the warehouse. Meanwhile, GreyOrange developed a Butler robot that helped merchants like Flipkart and Jabong run their operations smoothly by moving through their warehouses to collect high-volume and high-mix orders set to be shipped.
Advantages of Robotics
A 2015 report on the rise of the warehouse automation market discussed the growth of eCommerce and its effects, particularly on the workforce. Picking and packing robots can provide a distinct advantage to retailers. Unlike their human counterparts, companies don’t have to provide sick days, vacation leaves, health insurance or lunch breaks to robots. No training is required for robots and they can be utilized 24/7, a feature that comes in handy during busy holiday seasons. Instead of having to hire extra warehouse workers to cope with massive orders, robots can pick up the bulk of the work while substantially reducing costs. Plus, it requires minimal human interaction.
Analysts have also projected that robots will cost the company less in the long run. For instance, one of the more advanced Fetch warehouse robots is priced anywhere from $35,000 to $100,000. However, that price will certainly go down as more units are sold. It’s estimated that in about five years, one robot will be less expensive to maintain that an employee with a $15 minimum wage and benefits.
Fears About Robots
The price of fully automating a warehouse is a major stumbling block, especially for small retailers or medium-sized businesses. Companies would also have to deal with the fall-out and anger from employee groups and labor unions who are worried that warehouse robots will cost them their jobs.
Robotics and the Future of eCommerce
Automation will undoubtedlyplay a big part in companies getting a competitive boost in a bustling market. Consumers are getting more demanding, making speed a key consideration in eCommerce. This means that companies need to figure out how to cut down their shipping time and ensure that customers receive their orders as soon as possible. Amazon’s claim of same day delivery has also put pressure on itself and other companies, as well as raising expectations among consumers.
The emergence of newer and smarter warehouse robots can cut down on the time and effort needed to pick orders, pack and ship parcels, scan and update inventory, arrange existing items on shelves or add new ones and complete other tasks.
Robotics companies are already working to meet the demands of eCommerce. One mystery retailer has been reported to have invested in a picking robot from robotics company Kuka while RightHand Robotics has begun testing the capabilities of its picking robots at another unnamed retailer’s warehouse. Meanwhile, Amazon continues to pour money into robotics – hosting robotic competitions and funding research – in a bid to further develop this technology. If the company continues this course, experts predict that it might accomplish full automation in less than a year.
When picking and packing robots are finally utilized, companies like Amazon can cut down the cost and time of fulfilling orders by 1/5, thereby push their profits higher. However, it might also push out an immense number of the human employees out of the workforce, further fueling the disdain and anger people feel against the use of these machines.
In that’s just wonderful news, the Google-owned Boston Dynamics is now testing its ATLAS humanoid robot outdoors, which led to this incredibly creepy footage:
No, ATLAS isn’t particularly agile – yet. But the way it ambles along, like a drunk, homicidal toddler, is more than a little unnerving.
That’s a Google-owned robot that can pretty much ruin your camping trip.
According to Boston Dynamics, ATLAS is “a high mobility, humanoid robot designed to negotiate outdoor, rough terrain. Atlas can walk bipedally leaving the upper limbs free to lift, carry, and manipulate the environment. In extremely challenging terrain, Atlas is strong and coordinated enough to climb using hands and feet, to pick its way through congested spaces.” It’s meant to be a rescue bot.
It’s partially funded by the US military (DARPA) and includes “28 hydraulically-actuated degrees of freedom, two hands, arms, legs, feet and a torso.”
Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google in 2013 and put under its X labs. With the new restructuring efforts, it’s unclear if this robotics division will remain under Google or be put under Alphabet.
According to Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Noam Chomsky, and hundreds of AI and robotics researchers, governments should ban autonomous weapons in order to prevent a “military AI arms race.”
In a letter signed by over 1,000, Musk, Hawking and others say that most AI researchers “have no interest in building AI weapons, and do not want others to tarnish their field by doing so, potentially creating a major public backlash against AI that curtails its future societal benefits.”
The letter, which will be officially announced at the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Buenos Aires, is organized by the Future of Life Institute. FLI “are a volunteer-run research and outreach organization working to mitigate existential risks facing humanity. We are currently focusing on potential risks from the development of human-level artificial intelligence.”
According to the organization, its mission is “to catalyze and support research and initiatives for safeguarding life and developing optimistic visions of the future.”
And to FLI and the signatories of this open letter, flying death robots do not an optimistic future make.
Here’s the full text of the letter:
Autonomous weapons select and engage targets without human intervention. They might include, for example, armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is — practically if not legally — feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.
Many arguments have been made for and against autonomous weapons, for example that replacing human soldiers by machines is good by reducing casualties for the owner but bad by thereby lowering the threshold for going to battle. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity. There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people.
Just as most chemists and biologists have no interest in building chemical or biological weapons, most AI researchers have no interest in building AI weapons — and do not want others to tarnish their field by doing so, potentially creating a major public backlash against AI that curtails its future societal benefits. Indeed, chemists and biologists have broadly supported international agreements that have successfully prohibited chemical and biological weapons, just as most physicists supported the treaties banning space-based nuclear weapons and blinding laser weapons.
In summary, we believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so. Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.
Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Stephen Hawking have all gone on record plenty of times with concerns about artificial intelligence.
Late last year, Amazon introduced Amazon Prime Air, its ambitious effort to bring a delivery-by-drone experience to customers. I don’t suppose it should come as much of a surprise that Google is also working on delivery drones. Perhaps a little more surprising is that they’ve been doing so for two years in secret.
The secret is out. Google made the announcement last night, sharing the following video.
This is Project Wing.
“As part of our research, we built a vehicle and traveled to Queensland, Australia for some test flights,” Google says in the video description. “There, we successfully delivered a first aid kit, candy bars, dog treats, and water to a couple of Australian farmers. We’re only just beginning to develop the technology to make a safe delivery system possible, but we think that there’s tremendous potential to transport goods more quickly, safely and efficiently.”
Project Wing is a project from Google [X], the arm of Google that is responsible for things like self-driving cars, Google Glass, Google contact lenses, and Project Loon, Google’s Internet balloons. Google is also working with robots outside of Google [X]. Former Android chief Andy Rubin moved over to a Google-run robotics lab last year, and the company has acquired a number of robot companies, including the well-known Boston Dynamics.
Google says it’s currently looking for partners who can help bring Project Wing’s technology to the world.
Back in the Winter, Google acquired Boston Dynamics, the robotics firm known for a number of nightmare-inducing robot models, and for working with DARPA. The New York Times reported at the time that Google said it would honor existing military contracts, but that it didn’t plan to move toward becoming a military contractor.
Now, reports have come out that the Marines are using its LS3 “AlphaDog” model to carry weapons and other equipment. They also lovingly refer to it as “Cujo”.
That’s not to be confused with Boston Dynamics’ other models BigDog:
