Thursday, January 24, 2013

I Robot Aibo a Good Boy or Bad Boy

I read the title of an article today "Skilled robots to infiltrate schools and military" and somehow I found myself thinking about the terrible tragedy of the school shooting in Connecticut. This article about robots in schools didn't seem to set well with me. Perhaps it was the word used in the title "infiltrate" that set my mind wheeling in multiple directions.

 
Skilled robots set to infiltrate schools and military  
 
 
Hmmm, robots as waiters or butlers perhaps?     (see Robot waiter arrived in Abu Dhabi)    

Or perhaps it was the suggestion of robots in schools as compared to the military that upset my stomach.

Hmmm, robots for national security perhaps?    (see The Rise of the Drone)    

They say that new details about the Connecticut tragedy suggests that the shooter was awkward, peculiar, rarely spoke, and that he even gave a school presentation entirely by computer while never uttering a word. He reportedly liked tinkering with computers and gadgets and enjoyed violent video games ( New details emerge about Connecticut school shooting gunman).

Side note: the shooters weapon of choice when playing violent video games was a military-style assault rifle.

Second side note: On Friday, the National Rifle Association reportedly called for armed police officers to be stationed in schools. NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre is said to have stated "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Hmmmm, how about robot with a gun for a security guard?     

Would that take out the human error factor? Scary thought of the possibilities of weapons, robots, and bad guys with visions of violent video games get together. Hmmmm!   Not meaning to get into a gun control debate in this post. I sort of got off track here and I need to regroup -----   :)

Instead my purpose when I first started to write this was to talk about the good possibilities for robots and the social factors that influence and effect implementation (after all, for a short while I was heavily involved with FIRST - which stands For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, where school students entered competitions with robots while discovering science and engineering). You know, the good kind of Robots!!!  Humanoid robots serving mankind's every need. Those cute little robots like the ones the Japanese made for Honda and Fujitsu.... I heard they have even made a female-like robot that walks with a swing in the hips like the real thing???

See the Top 10 robots of 2012




My wife says I need a Robot or a Clone or something to help me with my school work so that I can spend more time with her, LOL.... now that is social impact. Similarly, here is a robot that cooks 360 hamburgers an hour....

http://youtu.be/HPacuqn5Gn8

Funded by Lemnos Labs in San Francisco and developed to replace fry cooks in burger restaurants (like they are a big expense to afford, LOL). But it's estimated that the patty flipping machine will save US $9 billion a year. For real???? That tells me that $9 billion will go out to settling up some fry cooks with unemployment because they certainly won't be employed by the robot manufacturers. Is there an ethical issue here? Where is the trade off? Silicon Valley technology for replacing minimum salary workers?