"What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots"
New book explores a future populated with robot helpers.
15 November, 2020
Oli Scarff/Getty Images
As Covid-19 has made it necessary for people to keep their distance from each other, robots are stepping in to fill essential roles, such as sanitizing warehouses and hospitals, ferrying test samples to laboratories, and serving as telemedicine avatars.
<p>There are signs that people may be increasingly receptive to robotic help, preferring, at least hypothetically, to be picked up by a self-driving taxi or have their food delivered via robot, to reduce their risk of catching the virus.</p><p>As more intelligent, independent machines make their way into the public sphere, engineers Julie Shah and Laura Major are urging designers to rethink not just how robots fit in with society, but also how society can change to accommodate these new, "working" robots.</p><p>Shah is an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT and the associate dean of social and ethical responsibilities of computing in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Major SM '05 is CTO of Motional, a self-driving car venture supported by automotive companies Hyundai and Aptiv. Together, they have written a new book, "What to Expect When You're Expecting Robots: The Future of Human-Robot Collaboration," published this month by Basic Books.</p><p>What we can expect, they write, is that robots of the future will no longer work for us, but with<em> </em>us. They will be less like tools, programmed to carry out specific tasks in controlled environments, as factory automatons and domestic Roombas have been, and more like partners, interacting with and working among people in the more complex and chaotic real world. As such, Shah and Major say that robots and humans will have to establish a mutual understanding.</p><p>"Part of the book is about designing robotic systems that think more like people, and that can understand the very subtle social signals that we provide to each other, that make our world work," Shah says. "But equal emphasis in the book is on how we have to structure the way we live our lives, from our crosswalks to our social norms, so that robots can more effectively live in our world."</p>
<h3>Getting to know you</h3><p>As robots increasingly enter public spaces, they may do so safely if they have a better understanding of human and social behavior.</p><p>Consider a package delivery robot on a busy sidewalk: The robot may be programmed to give a standard berth to obstacles in its path, such as traffic cones and lampposts. But what if the robot is coming upon a person wheeling a stroller while balancing a cup of coffee? A human passerby would read the social cues and perhaps step to the side to let the stroller by. Could a robot pick up the same subtle signals to change course accordingly?</p><p>Shah believes the answer is yes. As head of the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT, she is developing tools to help robots understand and predict human behavior, such as where people move, what they do, and who they interact with in physical spaces. She's implemented these tools in robots that can recognize and collaborate with humans in environments such as the factory floor and the hospital ward. She is hoping that robots trained to read social cues can more safely be deployed in more unstructured public spaces.</p><p>Major, meanwhile, has been helping to make robots, and specifically self-driving cars, work safely and reliably in the real world, beyond the controlled, gated environments where most driverless cars operate today. About a year ago, she and Shah met for the first time, at a robotics conference.</p><p>"We were working in parallel universes, me in industry, and Julie in academia, each trying to galvanize understanding for the need to accommodate machines and robots," Major recalls.</p><p>From that first meeting, the seeds for their new book began quickly to sprout.</p>
<h3>A cyborg city</h3><p>In their book, the engineers describe ways that robots and automated systems can perceive and work with humans — but also ways in which our environment and infrastructure can change to accommodate robots.</p><p>A cyborg-friendly city, engineered to manage and direct robots, could avoid scenarios such as the one that played out in San Francisco in 2017. Residents there were seeing an uptick in delivery robots deployed by local technology startups. The robots were causing congestion on city sidewalks and were an unexpected hazard to seniors with disabilities. Lawmakers ultimately enforced strict regulations on the number of delivery robots allowed in the city — a move that improved safety, but potentially at the expense of innovation.</p><p>If in the near future there are to be multiple robots sharing a sidewalk with humans at any given time, Shah and Major propose that cities might consider installing dedicated robot lanes, similar to bike lanes, to avoid accidents between robots and humans. The engineers also envision a system to organize robots in public spaces, similar to the way airplanes keep track of each other in flight.</p><p>In 1965, the Federal Aviation Agency was created, partly in response to a catastrophic crash between two planes flying through a cloud over the Grand Canyon. Prior to that crash, airplanes were virtually free to fly where they pleased. The FAA began organizing airplanes in the sky through innovations like the traffic collision avoidance system, or TCAS — a system onboard most planes today, that detects other planes outfitted with a universal transponder. TCAS alerts the pilot of nearby planes, and automatically charts a path, independent of ground control, for the plane to take in order to avoid a collision.</p>
<p>Similarly, Shah and Major say that robots in public spaces could be designed with a sort of universal sensor that enables them to see and communicate with each other, regardless of their software platform or manufacturer. This way, they might stay clear of certain areas, avoiding potential accidents and congestion, if they sense robots nearby.</p><p>"There could also be transponders for people that broadcast to robots," Shah says. "For instance, crossing guards could use batons that can signal any robot in the vicinity to pause so that it's safe for children to cross the street."</p><p>Whether we are ready for them or not, the trend is clear: The robots are coming, to our sidewalks, our grocery stores, and our homes. And as the book's title suggests, preparing for these new additions to society will take some major changes, in our perception of technology, and in our infrastructure.</p><p>"It takes a village to raise a child to be a well-adjusted member of society, capable of realizing his or her full potential," write Shah and Major. "So, too, a robot."</p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a target="_blank" href="http://news.mit.edu/">MIT News</a>. Read the <a target="_blank" href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/expect-when-expecting-robots-1022" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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Should facial recognition software be banned on college campuses?
A heated debate is occurring at the University of Miami.
28 October, 2020
Credit: asiandelight / Adobe Stock
- Students say they were identified with facial recognition technology after a protest at the University of Miami; campus police claim this isn't true.
- Over 60 universities nationwide have banned facial recognition; a few colleges, such as USC, regularly use it.
- Civil rights groups in Miami have called for the University of Miami to have talks on this topic.
<p><br></p>
<p>Silicon Valley has led the technological revolution since the early seventies. Journalist Don Hoefler coined the term "Silicon Valley USA" to pin the region dominating the growing computer industry. The products imagined and invented in that small coastal area in Northern California have changed the world, yet a deep mistrust of technology has always seeded in the very same locale. Dystopian fervor never lies far away from utopian bliss. </p><p>Case in point: in May, the San Francisco Board of Advisors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/facial-recognition-ban-san-francisco.html" target="_blank">blocked the use</a> of facial recognition technology by police forces by a vote of 8-to-1. Using this emerging tech to identify criminals was not as important as protecting civil liberties to this council. Critics have long feared the potential emergence of a surveillance state. The Board agreed. </p><p>Arthur Holland Michel has been studying surveillance technology for years. In his book, "Eyes in the Sky," he <a href="https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/gorgon-stare-surveillance" target="_self">warns</a> that such tech in the hands of police, even if promoted as protective of citizens, "could engender a style of relentless activity-based intelligence that treats all individuals as unknown unknowns—possible criminals who can only be discerned through persistent surveillance." </p><p>There's already creepy precedent. Insurance companies employ drones to spy on claimants suspected of lying about home claims or injury compensation—a practice legal in America. As Michel says of high-tech surveillance, "Everyone I've met who has been involved, even peripherally, with the all-seeing eye believes that they have created a force for good."</p>
Arthur Holland Michel: The Future of Surveillance Technology
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8c330ab8c4df396f5313be796c0d96da"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hIC-kaYcq34?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Americans don't always agree with that assessment, especially on college campuses. Over 60 universities—Harvard, MIT, and UCLA are on the list—have banned facial recognition. Of the few schools that utilize it, USC lets students enter their rooms via face scans; the software also ensures intruders cannot access buildings.</p><p>These are great uses of this technology. You could argue it's how any progress with our devices should work: in service of people. The problem, of course, is that those in power don't tend to stop when they have a little taste of the possibilities.</p><p>University of Miami is the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/27/human-rights-groups-call-on-the-university-of-miami-to-ban-facial-recognition/#a11c8bf2965a" target="_blank">latest school</a> to be embroiled in a battle over facial recognition. The ACLU of Florida was joined by 21 other groups when requesting that the university hold an open forum so that students can express their concerns. A piece of their letter is below. </p><p>This call for action was inspired after a September incident in which students <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/university-of-miami-tracked-protesters-with-video-surveillance-11712139" target="_blank">protested</a> returning for in-person classes during the pandemic. The students, concerned about their health, predominantly wore face masks. Still, a number of them were identified, leading to concerns that facial recognition was used. Campus police denied it—the chief even claimed the tech "doesn't work," though that notion <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/tech/face-recognition-masks/index.html" target="_blank">has been refuted</a>—yet civil liberties groups are worried that an invasion of privacy occurred.</p><p>Lia Holland, a member of the digital rights nonprofit <a href="https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2020-10-27-20-human-rights-organizations-call-on-university-of-miami-to-ban-facial-recognition-and-meet-f6f2119fd41b/" target="_blank">Fight for the Future</a>, wants answers from school administrators. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"UMiami is struggling to answer to their creepy surveillance practices, and clarify whether they are using their own facial recognition system, or Florida's state facial recognition database."</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDYwODQxMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1ODUzMjQxNn0.-Ise_5gOYd0QfIB1-U5YMh9rAyCuL_F1fG9vqvTaYzI/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0&height=700" id="68621" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3fe51e61be121912cc894c086c4b301c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Credit: Pixel Shot / Adobe Stock
<p>The police chief in question, David Rivero, claims overhead surveillance cameras provided identification at the protest. Yet speaking of another case involving facial-recognition software, he's <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/university-of-miami-tracked-protesters-with-video-surveillance-11712139" target="_blank">on the record stating</a>, "We were able to [easily] identify and arrest him. We've [detected] a few bad guys that way."</p><p>The letter sent to the Board of Administrators <a href="https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2020-10-27-20-human-rights-organizations-call-on-university-of-miami-to-ban-facial-recognition-and-meet-f6f2119fd41b/" target="_blank">includes the following demands</a>: </p><ol><li>Issue a campus-wide policy banning non-personal use of facial recognition technology, and issue a statement that you have done so.</li><li>Immediately schedule an open forum with students and faculty/staff to discuss community concerns and clarify how student activists who participated in First Amendment protected protest activities were identified by campus police.</li><li>Immediately schedule a meeting with the UMiami Employee Student Alliance (UMESA) to address their COVID-19 safety concerns, the subject of the original protest.</li></ol><p>There's no doubt facial-recognition technology has a place in law enforcement. Victims of unsolved crimes are relieved when the perpetrators are brought to justice, regardless of the means. As Michel writes, some police forces are already surveilling large regions of their districts using the Gorgon Stare, a camera used from airplanes. Cameras are ubiquitous, and that's not going to change. </p>As a society, we need honest discussions regarding the application of surveillance. Nearly every citizen in China has <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/in-china-facial-recognition-public-shaming-and-control-go-hand-in-hand/" target="_blank">already been logged</a> by facial recognition software, which has led to human rights abuses. While the stated intention of this tech by American police is pure, good intentions are known to pave the way...well, we know how that ends. <p>--</p><p><em>Stay in touch with Derek on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook</a>. His new book is</em> "<em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KRVMP2M?pf_rd_r=MDJW43337675SZ0X00FH&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy</a>."</em></p>
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AI reveals the Sahara actually has millions of trees
A study finds 1.8 billion trees and shrubs in the Sahara desert.
22 October, 2020
Credit: bassvdo/Shutterstock
- AI analysis of satellite images sees trees and shrubs where human eyes can't.
- At the western edge of the Sahara is more significant vegetation than previously suspected.
- Machine learning trained to recognize trees completed the detailed study in hours.
<p>Satellite imagery of the Sahara desert presents an arid expanse, the endless rolling dunes we know from movies. The thing is, normal satellite images don't show individual trees, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're not there. Researchers from the <a href="https://news.ku.dk/all_news/2020/10/artificial-intelligence-reveals-hundreds-of-millions-of-trees-in-the-sahara/" target="_blank">University of Copenhagen</a> and NASA taught artificial intelligence about trees and had them take another look. It turns out there is lots of vegetation in the Western Sahara: an estimated 1.8 billion trees and shrubs.</p><p>"We were very surprised to see that quite a few trees actually grow in the Sahara Desert, because up until now, most people thought that virtually none existed," says lead author <a href="https://ign.ku.dk/english/employees/geography/?pure=en/persons/504589" target="_blank">Martin Brandt</a> of the university's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management. "We counted hundreds of millions of trees in the desert alone. Doing so wouldn't have been possible without this technology."</p><p>The research is published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2824-5" target="_blank">Nature</a>.</p>
Why this matters
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDU2MDQ1OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTkyODg5NX0.O3S2DRTyAxh-JZqxGKj9KkC6ndZAloEh4hKhpcyeFDQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="3770d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3c27b79d4c0600fb6ebb82e650cabec0" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Area in which trees were located
Credit: University of Copenhagen
<p>As important as trees are in fighting climate change, scientists need to know what trees there are, and where, and the study's finding represents a significant addition to the global tree inventory.</p><p>The vegetation Brandt and his colleagues have identified is in the Western Sahara, a region of about 1.3 million square kilometers that includes the desert, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel" target="_blank">the Sahel</a>, and the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/subhumid-zones" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">sub-humid zones</a> of West Africa.</p><p>These trees and shrubs have been left out of previous tabulations of carbon-processing worldwide forests. Says Brandt, "Trees outside of forested areas are usually not included in climate models, and we know very little about their carbon stocks. They are basically a white spot on maps and an unknown component in the global carbon cycle."</p><p>In addition to being valuable climate-change information, the research can help facilitate strategic development of the region in which the vegetation grows due to a greater understanding of local ecosystems.</p>Trained for trees
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDU2MDQ3MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNTk5NTI3NH0.fR-n1I2DHBIRPLvXv4g0PVM8ciZwSLWorBUUw2wc-Vk/img.jpg?width=980" id="e02c0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="79955b13661dca8b6e19007935129af1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Credit: Martin Brandt/University of Copenhagen
<p>There's been an assumption that there's hardly enough vegetation outside of forested areas to be worth counting in areas such as this one. As a result the study represents the first time a significant number of trees — likely in the hundreds of millions when shrubs are subtracted from the overall figure — have been catalogued in the drylands region.</p><p>Members of the university's Department of Computer Science trained a machine-learning module to recognize trees by feeding it thousands of pictures of them. This training left the AI be capable of spotting trees in the tiny details of satellite images supplied by NASA. The task took the AI just hours — it would take a human years to perform an equivalent analysis.</p><p>"This technology has enormous potential when it comes to documenting changes on a global scale and ultimately, in contributing towards global climate goals," says co-author Christian Igel. "It is a motivation for us to develop this type of beneficial artificial intelligence."</p><p>"Indeed," says Brandt says, "I think it marks the beginning of a new scientific era."</p>Looking ahead and beyond
<p>The researchers hope to further refine their AI to provide a more detailed accounting of the trees it identifies in satellite photos.</p><p>The study's senior author, Rasmus Fensholt, says, "we are also interested in using satellites to determine tree species, as tree types are significant in relation to their value to local populations who use wood resources as part of their livelihoods. Trees and their fruit are consumed by both livestock and humans, and when preserved in the fields, trees have a positive effect on crop yields because they improve the balance of water and nutrients."</p><p>Ahead is an expansion of the team's tree hunt to a larger area of Africa, with the long-term goal being the creation of a more comprehensive and accurate global database of trees that grow beyond the boundaries of forests.</p>
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Why aligning AI to our values may be harder than we think
Can we stop a rogue AI by teaching it ethics? That might be easier said than done.
19 October, 2020
Credit: STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images
- One way we might prevent AI from going rogue is by teaching our machines ethics so they don't cause problems.
- The questions of what we should, or even can, teach computers remains unknown.
- How we pick the values artificial intelligence follows might be the most important thing.
<p><br></p>
<p> Plenty of scientists, philosophers, and science fiction writers have wondered how to keep a potential super-human AI from destroying us all. While the obvious answer of "unplug it if it tries to kill you" has many supporters (and it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">worked on </a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the </a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">HAL </a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">9000</a>), it isn't too difficult to imagine that a sufficiently advanced machine would be able to prevent you from doing that. Alternatively, a very powerful AI might be able to make decisions too rapidly for humans to review for ethical correctness or to correct for the damage they cause. <br> </p><p>The issue of keeping a potentially super-human AI from going rogue and hurting people is called the "control problem," and there are many potential solutions to it. One of the more frequently discussed is "<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-ai/#Sing" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">alignment</a>" and involves syncing AI to human values, goals, and ethical standards. The idea is that an artificial intelligence designed with the proper moral system wouldn't act in a way that is detrimental to human beings in the first place. <br> <br> However, with this solution, the devil is in the details. What kind of ethics should we teach the machine, what kind of ethics <em>can</em> we make a machine follow, and who gets to answer those questions? </p><p><br> Iason Gabriel considers these questions in his new essay, "<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11023-020-09539-2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Artificial Intelligence, Values, and Alignment.</a>" He addresses those problems while pointing out that answering them definitively is more complicated than it seems. </p>
What effect does how we build the machine have on what ethics the machine can follow?
<iframe width="730" height="430" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IHE63fxpHCg" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><p> <strong><br> </strong>Humans are really good at explaining ethical problems and discussing potential solutions. Some of us are very good at teaching entire systems of ethics to other people. However, we tend to do this using language rather than code. We also teach people with learning capabilities similar to us rather than to a machine with different abilities. Shifting from people to machines may introduce some limitations. <br> <br> Many different methods of machine learning could be applied to ethical theory. The trouble is, they may prove to be very capable of absorbing one moral stance and utterly incapable of handling another. </p><p>Reinforcement learning (RL) is a way to teach a machine to do something by having it maximize a reward signal. Through trial and error, the machine is eventually able to learn how to get as much reward as possible efficiently. With its built-in tendency to maximize what is defined as good, this system clearly lends itself to utilitarianism, with its goal of maximizing the total happiness, and other consequentialist ethical systems. How to use it to effectively teach a different ethical system remains unknown. <br> <br> Alternatively, apprenticeship or imitation learning allows a programmer to give a computer a long list of data or an exemplar to observe and allow the machine to infer values and preferences from it. Thinkers concerned with the alignment problem often argue that this could teach a machine our preferences and values through action rather than idealized language. It would just require us to show the machine a moral exemplar and tell it to copy what they do. The idea has more than a few similarities to <a href="https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/virtue-ethics-the-moral-system-you-have-never-heard-of-but-have-probably-used" target="_self">virtue ethics</a>. </p><p>The problem of who is a moral exemplar for other people remains unsolved, and who, if anybody, we should have computers try to emulate is equally up for debate. <br> <br> At the same time, there are some moral theories that we don't know how to teach to machines. Deontological theories, known for creating universal rules to stick to all the time, typically rely on a moral agent to apply reason to the situation they find themselves in along particular lines. No machine in existence is currently able to do that. Even the more limited idea of rights, and the concept that they should not be violated no matter what any optimization tendency says, might prove challenging to code into a machine, given how specific and clearly defined you'd have to make these rights.</p><p>After discussing these problems, Gabriel notes that:<br> <br> "In the light of these considerations, it seems possible that the methods we use to build artificial agents may influence the kind of values or principles we are able encode."<br> <br> This is a very real problem. After all, if you have a super AI, wouldn't you want to teach it ethics with the learning technique best suited for how you built it? What do you do if that technique can't teach it anything besides utilitarianism very well but you've decided virtue ethics is the right way to go? </p><iframe width="730" height="430" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/91TRVubKcEM" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><p>If philosophers can't agree on how people should act, how are we going to figure out how a hyper-intelligent computer should function?</p><p> The important thing might not be to program a machine with the one true ethical theory, but rather to make sure that it is aligned with values and behaviors that everybody can agree to. Gabriel puts forth several ideas on how to decide what values AI should follow. </p><p> A set of values could be found through consensus, he argues. There is a fair amount of overlap in human rights theory among a cross-section of African, Western, Islamic, and Chinese philosophy. A scheme of values, with notions like "all humans have the right to not be harmed, no matter how much economic gain might result from harming them," could be devised and endorsed by large numbers of people from all cultures. </p><p> Alternatively, philosophers might use the "Veil of Ignorance," a thought experiment where people are asked to find principles of justice that they would support if they didn't know what their self-interests and societal status would be in a world that followed those principles, to find values for an AI to follow. The values they select would, presumably, be ones that would protect everyone from any mischief the AI could cause and would assure its benefits would reach everyone. <br> <br> Lastly, we could vote on the values. Instead of figuring out what people would endorse under certain circumstances or based on the philosophies they already subscribe to, people could just vote on a set of values they want any super AI to be bound to. <br> <br> All of these ideas are also burdened by the present lack of a super AI. There isn't a consensus opinion on AI ethics yet, and the current debate hasn't been as cosmopolitan as it would need to be. The thinkers behind the Veil of Ignorance would need to know the features of the AI they are planning for when coming up with a scheme of values, as they would be unlikely to choose a value set that an AI wasn't designed to process effectively. A democratic system faces tremendous difficulties in assuring a just and legitimate "election" for values that everybody can agree on was done correctly. </p><p>Despite these limitations, we will need an answer to this question sooner rather than later; coming up with what values we should tie an AI to is something you want to do <em>before</em> you have a supercomputer that could cause tremendous harm if it doesn't have some variation of a moral compass to guide it. <br> <br> While artificial intelligence powerful enough to operate outside of human control is still a long way off, the problem of how to keep them in line when they do arrive is still an important one. Aligning such machines with human values and interests through ethics is one possible way of doing so, but the problem of what those values should be, how to teach them to a machine, and who gets to decide the answers to those problems remains unsolved. </p>
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Designer uses AI to bring 54 Roman emperors to life
It's hard to stop looking back and forth between these faces and the busts they came from.
05 October, 2020
Credit: Daniel Voshart
- A quarantine project gone wild produces the possibly realistic faces of ancient Roman rulers.
- A designer worked with a machine learning app to produce the images.
- It's impossible to know if they're accurate, but they sure look plausible.
<p>Imaginative as humans are, it's often hard not to see historical figures depicted in black-and-white photos as being somehow of another species. Confronted with colorized images can be startling — hey, they look like us — bringing home at last what they were really like. Maybe that person evens look like someone we know.</p><p>The same is true of figures whose appearance we know only from their statues, maybe even moreso. We may know their names and something about them, but, again, it's all sort of not quite real. Now cinematographer and virtual reality designer <a href="https://voshart.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Daniel Voshart</a> has published amazing, life-like images of 54 Roman emperors based on their statues. He used machine learning and filled in the (many) remaining blanks with his imagination. While he's careful to point out that his renderings are merely what these individuals <em>may</em> have looked like, they're remarkably plausible, and also remarkably familiar.</p><p>Voshart describes the whole thing as a quarantine project that got out of hand, but lots of people are excited about what he's done, and are <a href="https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/Voshart" target="_blank">purchasing posters</a> of his Roman emperors.</p>
How the Roman emperors got faced
<a href="https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/6/201108/14127595/2K-ENGLISH-24x36-Educational_v8_WATERMARKED_2000.jpg" ><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NDk2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyOTUzMzIxMX0.OwHMrgKu4pzu0eCsmOUjybdkTcSlJpL_uWDCF2djRfc/img.jpg?width=980" id="775ca" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="436000b6976931b8320313478c624c82" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="lineup of emperor faces" /></a>Credit: Daniel Voshart
<p>Voshart's imaginings began with an AI/neural-net program called <a href="https://www.artbreeder.com" target="_blank">Artbreeder</a>. The freemium online app intelligently generates new images from existing ones and can combine multiple images into…well, who knows. It's addictive — people have so far used it to generate nearly 72.7 million images, says the site — and it's easy to see how Voshart fell down the rabbit hole.</p><p>The Roman emperor project began with Voshart feeding Artbreeder images of 800 busts. Obviously, not all busts have weathered the centuries equally. Voshart told <a href="https://www.livescience.com/ai-roman-emperor-portraits.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Live Science</a>, "There is a rule of thumb in computer programming called 'garbage in garbage out,' and it applies to Artbreeder. A well-lit, well-sculpted bust with little damage and standard face features is going to be quite easy to get a result." Fortunately, there were multiple busts for some of the emperors, and different angles of busts captured in different photographs.</p><p>For the renderings Artbreeder produced, each face required some 15-16 hours of additional input from Voshart, who was left to deduce/guess such details as hair and skin coloring, though in many cases, an individual's features suggested likely pigmentations. Voshart was also aided by written descriptions of some of the rulers.</p><p>There's no way to know for sure how frequently Voshart's guesses hit their marks. It is obviously the case, though, that his interpretations look incredibly plausible when you compare one of his emperors to the sculpture(s) from which it was derived.</p><p>For an in-depth description of Voshart's process, check out his posts on <a href="https://medium.com/@voshart/photoreal-roman-emperor-project-236be7f06c8f" target="_blank">Medium</a> or on his <a href="https://voshart.com/ROMAN-EMPEROR-PROJECT" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">website</a>.</p><p>It's fascinating to feel like you're face-to-face with these ancient and sometimes notorious figures. Here are two examples, along with some of what we think we know about the men behind the faces.</p>Caligula
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NDk4Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMDM4MzE5NX0.GoQRSUIBzxpGC2gtcxICAre9U71VkIsI7PC2TwyPGE0/img.jpg?width=980" id="5ee59" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ce795c554490fe0a36a8714b86f55b16" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />One of numerous sculptures of Caligula, left
Credit: Rogers Fund, 1914/Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Voshart
<p><span style="background-color: initial;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula" target="_blank">Caligula</a></span> was the third Roman Emperor, ruling the city-state from AD 37 to 41. His name was actually Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus — Caligula is a nickname meaning "Little Boot."</p><p>One of the reputed great madmen of history, he was said to have made a horse his consul, had conversations with the moon, and to have ravaged his way through his kingdom, including his three sisters. Caligula is known for extreme cruelty, terrorizing his subjects, and accounts suggest he would deliberately distort his face to surprise and frighten people he wished to intimidate.</p><p>It's <a href="https://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-caligula" target="_blank">not totally clear</a> if Caligula was as over-the-top as history paints him, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood from churning out some <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080491/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">howlers</a> in his name.</p><p>A 1928 journal, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4172009" target="_blank">Studies in Philology</a>, noted that contemporary descriptions of Caligula depicted him as having a "head misshapen, eyes and temples sunken," and "eyes staring and with a glare savage enough to torture." In some sculptures not shown above, his head <em>is</em> a bit acorn-shaped. </p>Nero
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ2NTAwMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTQ2ODU0NX0.AgYuQZzRQCanqehSI5UeakpxU8fwLagMc_POH7xB3-M/img.jpg?width=980" id="a8825" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9e0593d79c591c97af4bd70f3423885e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />One of numerous sculptures of Nero, left
Credit: Bibi_Saint-Pol/Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Voshart
<p>There's a good German word for the face of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nero</a>, that guy famous for fiddling as Rome burned. It's "<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Backpfeifengesicht" target="_blank">backpfeifengesicht</a>." Properly named Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, he was Rome's fifth emperor. He ruled from AD 54 until his suicide in AD 68.</p><p>Another Germanicus-family gem, Nero's said to have murdered his own mother, Agrippa, as well as (maybe) his second wife. As for the fiddling, he <em>was</em> a lover of music and the arts, and there are stories of his charitability. And, oh yeah, he may have set the fire as an excuse to rebuild the city center, making it his own.</p><p>While it may not be the most historically sound means of assessing an historical personage, Voshart's imagining of Nero does suggest an over-indulged, entitled young man. Backpfeifengesicht.</p>
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