Categories
-Inventing the Future 11.3 Automation, Globalization, and Outsourcing 15.5 Question-Answering Machines 15.6 The Robot Revolution

Skilled labor joins the Race Against the Machine

Here’s a quote from the first edition of Digital Planet (then called Computer Currents), written almost two decades ago:

“It seems likely that, at some time in the future, machines will be able to do most of the jobs people do today. We may face a future of jobless growth–a time when productivity increases, not because of the work people do but because of the work of machines. If productivity isn’t tied to employment, we’ll have to ask some hard questions about our political, economic, and social system…”

Back then, this prediction seemed farfetched to most people. This NPR story about the Race Against the Machine conference suggests it’s not farfetched anymore.
www.npr.org/2011/11/03/141949820/how-technology-is-eliminating-higher-skill-jobs

Categories
-Updates 10.5 Human Questions for a Computer Age 15.5 Question-Answering Machines

What Is Watson?

This year Watson, an IBM computer, beat two champions on TV’s Jeopardy. This PBS Nova program goes behind the scenes and explains how Watson’s creators pulled it off.

Categories
-Multimedia 15.0 Alan Turing, Military Intelligence, and Intelligent Machines 15.1 Thinking About Thinking Machines 15.2 Natural-Language Communication 15.5 Question-Answering Machines 15.6 The Robot Revolution 4.4 The User Interface: The Human-Machine Connection 4.7 Inventing the Future: Tomorrow's User Interfaces I 5.4 Beyond the Printed Page 8.5 Interpersonal Computing: From Communication to Communities 9.3 Internet Issues: Ethical and Political Dilemmas

Conversations with Robots

Be careful–you may be falling in love with a software robot. This episode of Radiolab—NPR’s clever and entertaining broadcast/podcast—explores many ways people talk to machines, including those alluring bots that populate online dating sites. Eliza, Furbie, Clever Bot, Bina—they’re all talking to us, and we’re listening. Radiolab puts it all in perspective in this fascinating program.

Categories
-Multimedia 15.6 The Robot Revolution 7.0 The Google Guys Search for Tomorrow Chapter 1 Exploring Our Digital Planet Chapter 15 Is Artificial Intelligence Real? Chapter 7 Database Applications and Privacy Implications

Google’s Driverless Car—A TED Presentation by Sebastian Thrun

Robotic cars aren’t just science fiction fantasies anymore. This short presentation takes you on a road trip in Google’s amazing driverless car as it navigates through crowded city streets and curvy mountain roads. Sebastian Thrun suggests that our roads will be much safer when we let machines do the driving. What do you think?

[ted id=1109]