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Showing posts with the label robots

The Humanity in Killer Robots

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Us humans are strange creatures.  Drones, which are like robots with wings that fly above a war zone waiting to pounce on an enemy like a hawk seem to be clever to us, but not if they walk upon the ground.  If they walk - that crosses some kind of line in the sand that we find intolerable.  Why is one clever, and the other unacceptable?   I wish for only peace and happiness, but understanding how humans interact with machines is going to be an increasingly important area of study. The following video clip is a parody of robots being trained by humans to be killer robots.  Look for the humanity in this clip. Thoughts? ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Partner | Futurist at TCS View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the co

Giving Our Own Moral Codes to Robots

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In military and other time sensitive environments the ability to shorten, or compress the time it takes to gather relevant information, make a decision and then act on it is critical.  For that reason, no matter how concerned people are about introducing artificial intelligence, automation and robots onto the battlefield, it will happen.   Already today, inexpensive swarms of commercial drones supported by open source software and algorithms, high definition cameras and commonly available weapons can be launched by the dozens to attack predesignated targets .  The low costs of these attack drones guarantee that large numbers will be used to overwhelm slow, human dependent defense strategies and responses.  These vulnerabilities today ensure that automated defense systems will need to be employed in the future.  The speed and complexity of an offense dictates what is required of a defense.

Must We be Good to Have a Good Future?

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The renowned Futurist Gerd Leonhard, in this short and impactful  video , says in order to create a good future - we must be good.  He suggests four focus areas for the future: people, prosperity, purpose and planet.  If you agree with Gerd, then the first question is "What is good?  Secondly, "How do we become good?"  And, thirdly, "How do we use that good to create the future we all want?" A satisfying definition of "good" for me is something that promotes happiness, community well-being, is loving, pleasing, admirable, kind, desirable and virtuous.  Once we figure out how to become these things ourselves, we must embed them in our technology in the form of AI, to help us shape a "good" future. As more of our daily activities and interactions involve artificial intelligence, we will want our interfaces and communications with AI (digital assistants, chatbots and robots) to feel and be "good."  We will want AI to make accurate, co

Will You Trust a Robot?

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Jeff Bezos and team launched 66.5 miles into suborbital space on a rocket ship with no pilot this week.  The rocket ship operated autonomously using sensors and artificial intelligence.  That takes trust. They had to believe in the science and that the AI system would get them safely there and back.  They had to have trust in the scientists, programmers, engineers, physicists and chemists.  They had to have trust in the math and physics.  They had to trust the coding and formulas used in the algorithms.  They had to trust in the data coming from the sensors.  Although there were likely many failures along the way, they trusted the process - the scientific method.

The Future of Managers

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Managers must explain a lot of things.  Early in my career I managed a team of six IT experts responsible for EDI and other forms of business-to-business data exchanges with suppliers.  Our data, from planning and manufacturing systems, was shared with our suppliers' to support the just-in-time manufacturing of electronics.  Our senior leadership would often ask us to defend our data, yet we often struggled to explain where it originated from or how the numbers were generated.  The data we were using came from a figurative "black box."  We received it without explanation.  That of course was an untenable position for a manager. In the near future managers will increasingly depend on artificial intelligence for assistance, and hopefully it will be explainable AI to avoid the challenges I faced.  Explainable AI (XAI) is artificial intelligence in which the results, and the logic and data used, can be understood by humans.  Understanding how the system works is critical to e

Future of Warfare and Its Gamification

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Technology is giving life the potential to flourish like never before - or to self destruct. ~ Future of Life Institute  In the future, warfare will be fought increasingly by engineers, software developers, scientists, accountants and politicians, which is a historical anomaly and worth some consideration. Historically war was conducted to compel a positive political outcome for the victor.  This was accomplished by diminishing an adversaries will, or resolve to fight by making them suffer.  Once an adversary suffered enough and they lost their will to continue - peace was achieved on the terms of the victor.  Here is where the entire twisted logic of war and violence breaks down.  In the future, warfare is likely to be increasingly fought between machines that don't suffer.  They just do it - as Nike advocated.

Fooled by Psychographic Profiles and Social Engineering

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In the 1960s psychographic researchers began studying how to understand consumers and their behaviors at a deeper level based on personality traits, emotional triggers, interests, needs, values and attitudes, etc.  A few decades later these findings were dusted off and combined with neuromarketing (the measurement of physiological and neural signals to gain insight into customers' motivations, preferences, and decision) to study how various advertisements and political messages impacted people with different psychological or psychographic profiles.   The data for a large number of psychographic profiles was infamously collected from personality quizzes, surveys and games on Facebook and other social media platforms without the knowledge of the user, or as claimed - the platforms themselves.  All of this data was eventually combined with social engineering strategies and methods, and a military tactic called “information operations” by political strategists for the purpose of  infl

Robots that Create Jobs and Construct Apartment Buildings

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An Idaho company, Autovol Volumetric Modular , is building apartments inside a Nampa, Idaho factory and shipping the modular components to the San Jose, CA area for installation.  In a 400,000 square foot manufacturing space they are maximizing the use of robots and automation to do the heavy lifting and to ensure precision manufacturing.  The value  according to CEO Rick Murdock , is saving 20% on costs and 40% on time.  "We’ll build it here (in Idaho), ship it and save the project about $100 a square foot.” What a great story!  Idaho, known worldwide for their farming of "famous potatoes," is innovating and shipping their finished products to Silicon Valley, and none too soon.  The oldest archaeological evidence of house construction is estimated to be around 1.8 million years old.  It's about time for innovation!  How do they designate what work the humans do, and what work the robots do?  Robots are used to build walls, floors and ceilings and to assemble the mod

Digital Anthropology, Covid-19 and the Future of Work

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In this interview we discuss Covid-19's impact on businesses, digital transformation, the impact of automation on humans and the second digital revolution with entrepreneur and future of work expert, Richard Skellett.  Richard is opinionated and calls the displacement of humans with robots and automation immoral.  Join us for a thought provoking exploration of the future of work. ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital Transformation for the Greater Good

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Adam Smith wrote about rational self-interest, which posits we work for the greater good when it benefits ourselves.  But what is the greater good, and how does digital transformation impact it? I believe most of us would agree that replacing large numbers of humans with machines that result in wide scale unemployment and suffering is not in our rational self-interest or the greater good. Having massive numbers of jobs terminated by the Terminator does not result in a safer, healthier, happier civilization or vibrant economy.  So what is the greater good that we, out of rational self-interest, can strive for? Just because something is possible, and VCs will fund it, does not mean it supports the greater good. Technology that takes all meaningful jobs away from humans resulting in their suffering will soon become a target for their wrath.  I can already imagine brands placing badges on their products that certify "Human-Made" to gain a competitive advantage over machine-

Hiding from Karma in an AI World

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Recently an artificial intelligence system in China successfully passed a medical exam for the first time.  This is a significant advance in healthcare.  Potentially AI can soon provide high quality medical diagnoses remotely anywhere around the world.   Another significant step in AI and robotics happen a couple of years ago in Saudi Arabia where they granted citizenship to a robot named Sophia.  I wonder if that robot will be forced to wear a burka?  With all these rapid advancements, I think it is time we explore the spiritual life of robots and artificial intelligence. Up until recently, human programmers coded and configured algorithms, AI, automation and machine learning system and took personal responsibility for all of their own code.  Today, however, AI has escaped the confines of human oversight and has been empowered and employed to self-program, self-optimize, self-test, self-configure and self-learn.  David Gunning writes, "Continued advances [in AI] promise to pr

An Interview with SAP's Futurist Tom Raftery

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In this episode, filmed at SAP’s SAPPHIRENOW 2018 conference, I have the opportunity to sit down with SAP’s Futurist Tom Raftery, and discuss the impact of artificial intelligence today and in the future.  Spoiler alert – data from thousands of different sources gets transformed into intelligence giving leaders the ability to improve and find competitive advantages in many new areas.  Enjoy! ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict SVP Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc. Website Regalix Inc. View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

IT Leaders Series: Nigel Willson, Microsoft's Global Strategist

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In this episode of the IT Leader Series, Microsoft's digital expert and guru Nigel Willson and I discuss IT trends, business strategies, emerging technologies and the future.   I learned a great deal and hope you will to. ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Senior Vice President Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc. Website Regalix Inc. View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Leadership: The Plan for Winning in Digital Transformation

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Last year the World Economic Forum labeled 2017 as the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. What value do we gain from defining industrial revolutions? I believe it is to define new sets of rules for winning in business. Let’s review the three previous industrial revolutions. Industrial Revolution #1. We move from reliance on animals, human muscles and biomass to the use of fossil fuels and mechanical power. A caveman/businessman wishing for a competitive advantage might be the first to use mechanical power fueled by fossil fuels to build cave-condos faster and cheaper than other Neanderthals. Industrial Revolution #2. Electricity is harnessed and distributed, both wireless and wired communication is developed, the synthesis of ammonia provides new fertilizers and harvests increase, and new forms of power generation are developed. A farmer wishing for competitive advantages could adopt mobile phones to communicate wirelessly with their workers, use lights around the far

Artificial Intelligence, Combined Actions and Digital Strategies

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Fingerspitzengefühl:  A German word used to describe the ability to maintain attention to detail in an ever-changing operational and tactical environment by maintaining real-time situational awareness. The term is synonymous with the English expression of "keeping one's finger on the pulse".  The problem with fingerspitzengefühl traditionally, in addition to pronouncing it, has been it is hard for an individual to scale up. Today that is changing.  In a world of sensors, AI and mobile devices, having real-time situational awareness is far easier than ever before.  In fact, today the challenge is not how to do it, but what to do with the massive volume of data that can be provided.

Competition, Artificial Intelligence and Balloons

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W. Edward Deming taught that quality is achieved by measuring as much as possible and reducing variations, and reducing variation is achieved by improving the system, not just pieces.  Japan widely adopted Deming's philosophies in the 1950s and became the 2nd biggest economy in the world.  Quality improvement didn't decrease jobs in Japan, it increased jobs. AI now has the ability to expand and codify Deming's philosophies - to take them to the next level. AI can improve and standardize decision making based on logic, rather than the fear of missing objectives, bonuses or losing one's job.  It can continuously monitor for quality against specifications by analyzing streams of real-time data coming from embedded sensors connected to the IIoT, IoT and IoA (internet of agriculture). This means companies that are aggressive early adopters of these digital technologies will have more knowledge, higher quality and significant competitive advantages, which means more dema

What Artificial Intelligence Can Teach Us

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Most of us understand that artificial intelligence (AI) offers opportunities for productivity improvements in the form of speed, automation, standardized actions and responses, plus the opportunity for continuous improvements via machine learning. These opportunities are enabled by data inputs that are analyzed and processed through AI algorithms that execute a desired decision and action. For all of the great capabilities and benefits that AI can provide, there is also a potential dark side. AI solutions can easily codify our prejudices, bias, gender stereotypes and promote injustices intentionally or unintentionally. This threat, as real and serious as it is, can also be seen as an opportunity to evaluate who we are, what we want the future to look like, and then codify a better tomorrow.

Digital Technologies and the Compression of Time and Distance

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Professor Paul Virilio , a philosopher of speed, urbanist and cultural theorist, wrote at length about the impact of speed on society.  He wrote that speed compresses both time and distance. Where once it took a letter 6 months to get to the other side of the world, an email can now arrive in seconds.  Today's near real-time communications has changed how nations are governed, markets operate and commerce is conducted.  The distance and time involved in communications has been compressed into seconds. Commanders of Roman armies could once estimate the day and time of battle based upon their soldiers ability to march 20 miles per day on purpose built stone roads .  Today, however, a ballistic missile can be launched and reach the other side of the earth in minutes.   As a result, nations and their military commanders must now prepare to make critical decisions in mere seconds rather than taking days, weeks or months to deliberate.  That's a big deal.  In the past, an army co

Chatbots Rising - Learning from Oracle's Suhas Uliyar

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I had the privilege today to interview Oracle's mobile and Chat Bot expert, Suhas Uliyar.  In this video interview we discuss the four components of Chat Bot development, how they utilize mobility platforms, sentiment analysis, APIs, personalization, decision-trees, AI and much more.  Enjoy! Video Link:  https://youtu.be/2A8oaJr1dcY    Follow Kevin Benedict on Twitter @krbenedict. ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant View my profile on LinkedIn Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the compan

Bots for President

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Presidents are powerful people facing and dealing with complex nation, market and economy sized problems.  Making good decisions and managing these deeply complex systems and organizations requires massive amounts of data, analysis, experience and understanding. They must process and analyze millions of data inputs, and have a clear understanding of what the data in aggregate means, and then have an understanding of how they can influence the outcomes by pulling the right levers of power and influence to achieve their goals.  The responsibility of dealing with these massive levels of complexity seems almost inhumane.  In fact, so inhumane, perhaps it would be better to not have a human, but a bot as President.  Bots are designed and programmed to react in a prescribed way to data inputs. Data is fed into the artificial intelligence (AI) system within the bot, and the bot responds and takes actions as programmed.  Add machine and deep learning, and the bot can learn and make decisi