%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Duk%2526usg%253DAFQjCNGGINFTffj4_1LiMcHZwKMs6FBskA%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526cid%253D52779187741224%2526ei%253DH8a8V8iOHdf3zAbB1baoCA%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fmashable.com%252F2016%252F08%252F23%252Frobot-communication-study%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: New study points to how we may work with robots in the future - Mashable
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Ffeeds.mashable.com%252F%7Er%252FMashable%252F%7E3%252FgoRqO5obVbk%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Humans may prefer expressive robots to competent ones, study finds
Humans may prefer to work with robots that can communicate and express emotions, even if that means they're less efficient, according to a new study from University College London and the University of Bristol.
Researchers tested how people reacted when robots messed up a given task. They had participants work with three different versions (A, B and C) of the same robot, BERT2. Each would bring the humans ingredients to make an omelet: BERT A never erred, but BERT B and C both dropped an egg at some point.
Only BERT C could communicate with the humans and say "I'm sorry." It would also be visibly dismayed at the mistake, with an exaggerated look of sadness displayed on its face. BERT C would then show that it was going to try a different approach to the task, thereby rectifying the mistake. Read more...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Ffeeds.gawker.com%252F%7Er%252Flifehacker%252Fvip%252F%7E3%252FLze766_loY8%252Ftodays-best-deals-12-tumbler-puma-gear-cuisinart-gr-1785638858%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Today's Best Deals: $12 Tumbler, PUMA Gear, Cuisinart Griddler, and More
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If you're sick of renting carpet washers every time you spot a new stain, you can buy your own for just $96. The Hoover Power Scrub Deluxe has a squeaky-clean 4.4 star review average from nearly 6,000 customers, and this all-time low price is only available today as part of a Gold Box deal.
Vizio's 2016 M-series TVs include basically every feature you could possibly want, including 4K resolution, Dolby Vision HDR (the good one), Google Cast, local dimming, and even a tablet remote. Do I have your attention? The 55" model is on sale for just $619 right now, or nearly $200 less than usual. I know this came out of nowhere, but it's one of the best TV deals I've ever seen, and I wouldn't expect it to last.
Nose hair is a problem a lot of people have but, for some reason, few people take care of. For a limited time, score thisPanasonic nose hair trimmer for just $10, and you can be one of those people doing something about it. Harambe didn't die so you could look like The Missing Link.
The Razer BlackWidow Ultimate is one of the most popular mechanical gaming keyboards out there, and you can pick one up for $90 today, which is one of the best deals we've seen. For that price, you're getting five lighting options, mechanical switches rated to 80,000,000 keystrokes, and fully programmable keys.
Humble Indie Bundle 17 brings with it Super Time Force Ultra, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, and Galak-7, along with four other games, some extras, and more to come.
If you like to do your own oil changes, or aren't afraid to tinker on the underside of your car, these inexpensive RhinoRamps are the quickest way to elevate your car. Obviously, they won't help you for tire changes, and they won't give you a ton of clearance, but for quick, basic maintenance, they should get the job done.
If you want a secondary TV for your bedroom, kitchen, or garage, you could do a lot worse than this 32” TCL. Yeah, it's only 720p and 60Hz, but it has Roku's streaming platform built right in, and it's only $150 today, an all-time low. It's not going to be your primary TV, but it's perfectly adequate for certain rooms and situations.
Huawei Watch, $125 off + $100 gift card on select models. Promo code SMARTW
If you've been waiting for a deal on Huawei's excellent-but-expensive Android Wear smart watch, B&H is taking $100 off select models, plus an extra $25 with promo code SMARTW, plus an extra $100 gift card for good measure (on certain models only).
If you've had your eye trained on the svelte new Xbox One S, you can get a 1TB Madden bundle for its standard $350 MSRP (with no tax for most), plus a $50 eBay gift card for good measure. That doesn't really hold a candle to the deals we've seen on the old Xbox One, but it's not bad if you need the new hotness.
$68 would be a pretty great price for the Griddler on its own, but the waffle iron plates usually sell for $25-$35 by themselves, so this bundle represents a pretty massive discount.
I've probably seen more USB battery packs than 99.9% of people living on this Earth, but I've never seen one like the ZeroLemon ToughJuice before. You get 30,000mAh of juice, five (!) USB ports, including a Quick Charge 2.0 port and a USB-C port, and a ruggedized exterior.
It's niche, and at $70 (with code JUXKCZZ4), it's not exactly cheap, but it truly stands apart in a world of commodity USB battery packs.
Everyone knows about Roombas, but did you know iRobot made a robotic mop as well? The iRobot Braava Jet has three different modes: Wet mopping, damp sweeping and dry sweeping, and can select the proper one automatically depending on which cleaning pad you attach. You can put it to work on your floors for just $169 today, the best price Amazon's ever listed.
Want wireless streaming and handsfree calling in your older car? This $13 dongle receives the Bluetooth signal from your phone, and transmits it to the FM radio station of your choice.
We've seen several deals on Bluetooth car kits in the past, but most require that your car include an AUX jack, whereas this only needs a working FM radio.
Note: The description of the product confusingly contains references to AUX cables, but that's optional. You can use this completely wirelessly, if you so choose.
What's that noise the car's making? It's all the crap rolling around in your trunk. This $24 pop-up organizer will keep everything in its place, and it even comes with a free bonus car cooler, as well as a reflective warning triangle for roadside emergencies.
Today you can grab a Fitbit Aria smart scale on eBay for just $67, the best price we've ever seen for a non-refurb. It only really makes sense to buy this scale if you own (and regularly use) a Fitbit, but if you do, the Aria sync your weight, BMI, and body fat % to the Fitbit app to track your goals and progress over time.
Playing With Power: Nintendo NES Classics promises to be an enlightening retrospective on your favorite classic video games. The book will feature overviews of 17 NES titles, interviews and commentary from Nintendo employees, hand-drawn maps, and more goodies when it's released in November
But let's be honest here, the real reason to buy it is the NES cartridge slip case.
Here's 20% off various chocolates and candies because....Halloween is about two months away? Trump is running for President? Your favorite blog is shutting down? Anyway, enjoy.
We see lots of deals these days on the original Philips Hue starter kit, but the second generation set includes a Siri-compatible bridge and brighter bulbs (800 lumens vs. 600), and you can save $20 on it today, with a $50 Best Buy gift card thrown in for good measure. That's easily the best deal we've seen to date.
There's almost always a $40 PlayStation Plus deal available through some eBay seller or another, but today, they're all suspiciously missing. We don't know if it's related to the price hike, but you could wait a few days to see if another one pops up. If not, I think it's safe to assume that those days are over.
Between shedding fur on your seats and a seemingly biological need to jump into the front seat while you're passing an 18-wheeler on the freeway, it's no secret that a lot of dogs don't do particularly well in the car. Personally, I put my dog in a collapsible fabric kennel in the backseat, but if you want your pooch to have a little more freedom, this backseat dog cover looks like a perfect solution.
The cover hooks into the headrests on both the front and back seats, creating a kind of loosely enclosed room that will keep your dog safely in the backseat, and her fur a layer removed from your upholstery.
Just when you thought you'd seen it all in the USB battery pack world, this 5,000mAh battery from RAVPower includes a Qi charging pad to power up your phone wirelessly. Sure, that's a little bit of a gimmick, but it does mean you don't have to carry an extra charging cable, and unlike most battery packs, this one can serve a purpose when you aren't traveling.
If you need a little extra push to get out and go for a run, Amazon will sell you a pair of Mizuno Wave Sayonara 3 running shoes for just $45 today. These shoes typically sell for about $60-$70 around the web, and you even get to pick your favorite color; just click through to the product pages to find the color selector.
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.slate.com%252Farticles%252Ftechnology%252Ffuture_tense%252F2016%252F08%252Fin_copyright_law_computers_and_robots_don_t_count.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Computers and Robots Don't Count
Copyright has a weird relationship with computers. Sometimes it completely freaks out about them; sometimes it pretends it can't see them at all. The contrast tells us a lot about copyright—and even more about how we relate to new technologies.
Start with the freakout. One thing that computers are good for is making copies—lots of copies. Drag your music folder from your hard drive to your backup Dropbox and congratulations: You've just duplicated thousands of copyrighted songs. If you look up the section of the Copyright Act that sets out what counts as infringement, the very first Thou Shalt Not is “reproduce the copyrighted work.” In theory, Congress could have added some language saying that putting your music in your Dropbox that no one else can access isn't infringement. In practice, well, it's Congress.
Congressional inaction has meant that the problem of explaining why the internet isn't just an infringement machine in need of a good unplugging has been kicked over the courts. (Yes, the courts staffed by judges who call Dropbox “the Dropbox” and “iDrop.”) And in the process of keeping computers legal, the judges who make copyright law have developed some surprisingly broad rules shielding automatically made copies from liability.
Take, for example, the 2009 case A.V. v. iParadigms, in which high schools compelled students to submit their term papers to Turnitin, a plagiarism-detection site. First it compares papers to those already in its database, looking for suspicious similarities; then it stores the paper to compare to future submissions. Four students sued, arguing that these stored copies infringed their copyrights in their papers.
The court disagreed, because of course you shouldn't be able to use copyright to keep your teachers from finding out whether you cheated on your homework. But its reasoning is fascinating. Turnitin, the court held, made a “transformative” use of the papers because its use was “completely unrelated to expressive content.” Turnitin's computers might have copied the papers, but they didn't really read them. The court added, “The archived student works are stored as digital code, and employees of [Turnitin] do not read or review the archived works.”
Courts use similar logic in case after case: It's not infringement if computers “read or review” the new copies, only if people do. Google famously scanned millions of books. Completely legal, fourcourtshaveagreed, because it's not as though Google is turning the complete books over to people. “Google Books ... is not a tool to be used to read books,” wrote one judge. In another strand of the litigation, the parties at one point proposed a settlement that would have allowed “non-consumptive” digital humanities research on the scanned books, defined as “research in which computational analysis is performed on one or more Books, but not research in which a researcher reads or displays substantial portions of a Book to understand the intellectual content presented within the Book.” This was fine, in the view of the author and publisher representatives who negotiated the proposed settlement. Computers can do what they want with books as long as no one actually “understand[s]” its “intellectual content.”
This attitude—computers don't count—isn't new, either. A century ago, the cutting edge in artistic robotics was the player piano. The Supreme Court heard a player-piano case in 1908 and held that the paper rolls “read” by the player pianos weren't infringing. The rolls, Justice William Day reasoned, “[c]onvey[] no meaning, then, to the eye of even an expert musician.” Instead, they “form a part of a machine. ... They are a mechanical invention made for the sole purpose of performing tunes mechanically upon a musical instrument.” The anthropocentrism is unmistakable. I've cataloged many different settings where copyright law finds ways to overlook copying as long as no humans are in the loop.
On the one hand, this makes perfect sense. Copyright is designed to encourage human creativity for human audiences. If a book falls in a forest and no one reads it, does it make an infringement? It seems like the only sensible answer is “No harm, no foul.” On the other hand, there's something strange about a rule that tells technologists just to turn the robots loose. It encourages uses that don't have much to do with human aesthetics while discouraging uses that do.
This hands-off approach to robotic readership stands in sharp contrast to copyright's surprisingly obsessive fretting about robotic authorship. We're at the dawn of a golden age of algorithmic authorship. Twitter bots like Olivia Taters and Hottest Startups, simple as they are, are capable of amazing poetry. From Push Button Bertha to Microsoft Songsmith, computer-generated music ranges from beautiful to banal. Special-effects artists and video-game programmers use procedural content generation to make vast imaginary worlds far beyond what any one person could hope to draw or design. And of course spambots and telemarketing robots (and counter-robots) are getting eerily good at mimicking human expression.
If all you knew about copyright was the way it treats computer-generated copies, you might think it would similarly look the other way and ignore computer-generated creativity. But no! No two plays of a video game are the same; the computer produces a new and different sequence of sights and sounds every time through. Copyright doesn't care; video games are still copyrightable. Now, of course they are; it would be ridiculous if you could just completely rip off games, and case after case holds that you can't.
But even as copyright law goes on recognizing copyright in computer-generated works, it can't help obsessively worrying about them with the same kind of nervous energy it gives to monkey selfies and for the same reason: What if there's no author? What if a creative work just popped into existence, without being clearly traceable to the artistic vision of a specific human? What then, buddy?
The funny thing is that just as the player piano roll shows that mechanical copying long predates computers, so does algorithmic creativity. You know what's a device for making art according to rigidly specified algorithmic rules? A spirograph. You know what else is? A Musikalisches Würfelspiel (sometimes apocryphally named for Mozart): a game in which you roll dice to select measures of music to string together into a minuet. Computers are faster and fancier but for the most part not fundamentally different. There's no need to futz around with speculating on whether your iPhone is a copyright-owning “author” of a Temple Run maze, any more than a spirograph is the author of a hypotrochoid drawing. Typically either the programmer or the user or both are authors, and that's good enough.
There will be harder cases of what Bruce Boyden calls “emergent works” that arise out of unpredictable algorithmic interactions. Where neither the programmer nor the user can reasonable foresee what a computer will do, the case for calling either of them an author is weak; they lack the kind of artistic vision copyright is supposed to promote and reward. But what's interesting and tricky about these emergent works is not that they come from computers but that they're unpredictable by anyone involved in their creation.
In an age of police killbots, worrying about whether Bender owns a copyright in his dream about killing all humans may seem a little beside the point. But copyright provides a useful window for thinking about hot-button issues in law and technology, ironically because the stakes are so much lower. There are low-tech precedents for new high-tech puzzles, if we care to see them.
The key is not to treat “computers” or “robots” or “drones” or other new kinds of technologies as unified phenomena we have to figure out all at once but instead to look at the different kinds of ways they operate and can be used. The Dallas bomb robot was under direct police control at all times; it was a tool for safely delivering lethal force from a distance in the same way that a sniper rifle is. The most important issue it raised was the security of its communications channel—because the last thing you want when you strap a pound of C-4 to a robot is for someone else to hijack the controls. That's a very different kind of problem than worrying about delegating life-or-death decisions to algorithms with a limited human presence in the loop. Lumping them together as “lethal robots” obscures more than it reveals; it makes it harder to identify which robots are dangerous and how and harder to figure out what to do about them.
The same is true for copyright, for privacy, for civil rights, and for the dozens of other pressing public policy problems surrounding new technologies. You learn more about augmented reality by thinking about Pokémon Go than vice versa. Technology policy is complicated because the world is complicated.
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.slate.com%252Fblogs%252Fbrowbeat%252F2016%252F08%252F22%252Fmr_robot_and_why_television_twists_aren_t_surprising.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Mr. Robot and Why TV Twists Don't Work Anymore
Spoilers ahead for Wednesday night's episode of Mr. Robot.
Well, what do you know? It turns out Elliot, the hacker hero of Mr. Robot, wasn't decompressing away from the internet at his mother's house while attending individual and group therapy and getting to know a half-kindly, half-menacing street criminal named Ray (Craig Robinson). He was actually in prison the whole time! His “mother” is a prison guard. Ray is a fellow inmate who apparently is running some kind of Tor-routed website that lets him deal in drugs, prostitution, and weapons from behind bars.
This is the big twist of Season 2, apparently. The big twist of Season 1 was a variation of the one in Fight Club: The title character (Christian Slater), the crazy-badass visionary renegade who “recruits” Elliot, turned out to be a figment of the hero's imagination, a stylized mental re-creation of his father, a computer salesman who died of leukemia caused by toxic leaks at a plant owned by Evil Corp.
Can we expect a twist, or “twist,” along these lines in every season of Mr. Robot? Because, if so, I might have to stop watching—not because it's devoid of other merits (it's brilliantly directed, photographed, edited, and scored and has a superlative cast), but the insistence on building perceptual tricks like these into the narrative diminishes the show's real and far more substantive virtues.
Series creator Sam Esmail, who wrote or co-wrote most of the episodes and directed all of Season 2, has gone on record repeatedly to say that he's not trying to fool anyone by doing this kind of thing. There are just enough clues dropped from the very beginning so that alert, film-history-conscious viewers have no trouble figuring out each season's structural sleight of hand. That's all true and fair. He's working in a tradition that also includes films like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, A Beautiful Mind, and, in its own way, The Usual Suspects: You get pretty deep into the film and realize that what you thought was one thing was actually another thing.
I didn't outright predict that the character of Mr. Robot was going to turn out to be a Tyler Durdenstyle hallucination, but I was worrying about it all the way up to the episode where Esmail finally showed his cards—dreading it, really, because the show was so good at constructing a partially subjective universe shaped by Elliot's sardonic narration and star Rami Malek's introverted yet expressive acting, which I still think constitutes the best ongoing performance by a lead actor in a serialized drama. In Season 2, I didn't think Elliot's “detox” might turn out to be a fantastic construction, à la Mr. Robot himself, because it just seemed like too much of an M. Night Shyamalan thing to do, and since Esmail had done that once, drawing more criticism than praise, why would he do it again immediately? (My colleague Abraham Riesman figured it out right away, and as I read his evidence for Elliot's latest fantasy, I felt my heart sink, because if he turned out to be right, it would diminish my respect for a show that's so original and unpredictable in so many other ways.)
I should probably ‘fess up here and admit that I don't watch Mr. Robot, or any other TV series, to test my knowledge of TV tropes and say, “I called it!” whenever I successfully predict where a show's plot might be headed. That particular viewing approach doesn't interest me. I know there's a pretty sizable contingent of people who watch films and TV series mainly to see if they can successfully guess what will happen next—Reddit is a virtual mecca for this sort of viewer—but I've never encouraged that impulse, because it seems to me that it rewards screenwriters who are thinking about their plots and characters on the most superficial level, constructing a puzzle for others to solve and to feel good about having solved; this also encourages some writers to cheat a bit, withholding evidence that might tip their hand early, or just obscuring details and piling twist upon twist and reversal upon reversal until none of the characters make sense anymore as anything but figures in a nonsensical dream.
I'm not saying Esmail is doing that: He dropped enough hints in both seasons that you could figure things out early if you were so inclined. He even salted the dialogue and the scenes themselves with what feel in retrospect like winks or shrugs. After Elliot figured out that Mr. Robot was a hallucination of his dead dad and Darlene was actually his sister, the show played an acoustic version of Fight Club's closing-credits theme, the Pixies' “Where Is My Mind?” In last week's episode, Elliot seems to half-sheepishly apologize to his unseen “friend”—the TV viewer—for the prison twist. “I know what you're thinking. And no, I didn't lie to you. All of this really happened.”
In an interview with my friend Alan Sepinwall, Esmail said that these sorts of techniques are not intended to outsmart anyone but to reflect the hero's “ability to reprogram his life: E Corp was turned into Evil Corp. When we thought about him being in prison, what would be that coping mechanism, this came to mind. The other approach was his relationship to us—to his ‘friend'—and how we left him at the end of the first season. He basically didn't trust us anymore, he felt we were keeping things from him. So we wanted to develop that relationship as well. That was the one approach of, ‘This is what Elliot would do in this situation, to cope with being in prison,' and then the other of keeping it from us because he felt betrayed by us from the first season.”
Fair enough, but that still leaves us with another question, not about Elliot but about Mr. Robot as a work of popular storytelling: Do twists or tricks like these add to the story or detract from it? I'd argue that, in this case, they detract.
What makes Mr. Robot so innovative, audacious, and delightful aren't the narrative overlays of “Is this person real?” or “Is this situation real?” It's the detail and conviction with which Esmail and his actors build this mesmerizing alternate universe, which is essentially our world unfolding along what Abed on Community would call “the darkest timeline.”
Experts have hailed the show as the most accurate portrayal of computer programming, hacking, and the fine points of cybersecurity that TV has ever seen, and it's so good at weaving this crucial material into the characters' lives that you don't need to be an expert yourself to grasp what's going on. The show's mastery of tone—sardonic and satirical but ominous—is just as unusual. Its distrust of both capitalism and the possibility of revolution and reform are unheard of on commercial television, and its alternately idealistic and despairing worldview is so sincere and distressed that you can't just hit it with the usual complaints of hypocrisy (“If it's so anti-Establishment, what's it doing on commercial TV, eh?”) and walk away thinking you've delegitimized Esmail as a political storyteller. The show is at least as good at world-building as Game of Thrones—every episode brings more tidbits about the economic and political effects of the 5/9 hack and makes sure you understand the motivation for, say, blackmailing Evil Corp and then forcing its CFO (Brian Stokes Mitchell) to burn the ransom money in a public park, where the act will be captured on camera phones and uploaded to social media, furthering the idea that the corporation literally has money to burn and that fsociety isn't in this to enrich themselves.
But all this is diminished by the games Esmail plays in presenting Elliot's view of the world. What's the point, ultimately? Why do it at all? And if you're going to do it, why not ‘fess up immediately and let the narrative tension come from juxtaposing reality and “reality” in ways that illuminate the hero's internal struggles? The show seems to be hedging its bets here, arranging the material in a way that suggests we're going to be gobsmacked and mind-effed at some point, while simultaneously building enough signals into the story that if viewers complain that they figured out the twist right away, it's because it was never meant to be a twist. Bear in mind that I'm not saying Esmail shouldn't make the show he wants to make and is making—only that Mr. Robot is devoting an inordinate amount of energy to an aspect of storytelling that's vastly less interesting than the things the tricks are meant to enhance and support.
I wouldn't mind seeing a moratorium on this kind of screenwriting for that very reason: It just never works anymore.
The twist movies of the late 1990s occurred during the last possible cultural moment when a storyteller could do something like that and not have millions of people instantly take to the internet to figure out what was “really” going on. You might figure it out on your own and share your evidence with your friends on a chat board or in the comments section of a blog post, but the phenomenon of literally millions of viewers simultaneously joining forces to stay one step ahead of a storyteller was still about five to 10 years away (depending on which social-media platform you think did more damage to a screenwriter's ability to keep a secret, Facebook or Twitter).
The funny thing is, you often find yourself appreciating the substance of a story more once you've gotten past the adrenaline rush of “What's going on?” and “What's really going on?” and are able to concentrate on the details of characterization, performance, and storytelling. As one personal example of this phenomenon, I offer The Sixth Sense: I accidentally found out the twist before I saw the film when my eye randomly fell on a particular paragraph of an Entertainment Weekly story with a spoiler warning at the top. But I still loved the movie because it painted such a haunting (in every sense) portrait of the human mind's capacity for denial and delusion. At its heart, the film is not merely about a man who had no idea he was dead but a man who refused to accept his fate and was going through the motions of an old life that no longer existed. Most people who saw it for the first time were probably preoccupied with guessing the twist, and if they guessed it early, they might have decided the film was a waste of their time: You promised you were going to be smarter than me, movie, but it turned out I was smarter than you, so I'm disappointed.
Seventeen years on, there are Facebook and Reddit and Twitter threads, video essays and blog posts dedicated to figuring out every last twist and trick that storytellers naïvely hope they're holding in reserve. For some reason—perhaps the social-media-age rush to jump ahead to the next thing—this kind of viewing has become endemic. Whether the topic of discussion is the meaning of the ending of Inception or The Sopranos or the lineage of Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it's guaranteed that somebody (or somebodies) will eventually guess the correct answer or, worse, insist that they've “solved” a work that was meant to be ambiguous and unresolved. The end result of this kind of discussion diverts attention from the deeper values of storytelling and re-centers interest on the hook, or on what viewers mistakenly believe is the hook, of any given tale. Art becomes a math problem, or a gift-wrapped present whose identity can be deduced by shaking the box a little.
Mr. Robot is encouraging this kind of reductive approach to engagement with art, however accidentally. And it's a shame, because the rest of the show is so rich with imagination and meaning that it could probably rivet us if it dropped the gimmicks entirely and just concentrated on doing what it already claims to be doing: telling the story of Elliot and the cruel world that he's trying to destroy and remake. As I've said of other series, including Mad Men, this show is smarter than the people who think they are smarter than the show. But it's not easy to make that case when Esmail is pulling another variation of “it was all a dream.”
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Automation Makes Immigration Obsolete: New Warehouse Robot Is Introduced VDARE.com Soon, yours could viably be the first human hands to touch what you've just bought online. “Drones have a lot of potential to further connect our vast network of stores, distribution centers, fulfillment centers, and transportation fleet,” Walmart has ...
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robots
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Ffeeds.mashable.com%252F%7Er%252FMashable%252F%7E3%252FC2g7fTu2ReE%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: 8 features Siri should have that would help our dating lives
Tech is such a huge part of dating in 2016 we meet mates on dating apps, we have endless forms of social media for researching and stalking our crushes, and bae is available 24/7 via text.
Sure, Siri's just a robot living in your phone. Maybe she's jealous that you can experience love and she can't.
But like we said, she's a robot. She isn't supposed to have emotions. It's time for Siri to get over her jealousy of the human connection and help us our with our dating lives.
Here are eight things we wish Siri could do that would help us become romance wizards: Read more...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Ffeeds.mashable.com%252F%7Er%252FMashable%252F%7E3%252FCH0R8H-yEo8%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: James Corden performs 'Nothing Compares 2 U' with Coldplay and kills it
Though James Corden's late night segment "Carpool Karaoke" puts the Late Late Show host's vocal skills on display, Corden is rarely (if ever) the center of musical attention. Not so at Coldplay's Sunday night show in Los Angeles.
Chris Martin brought Corden on stage — dressed as a long lost fifth Coldplay member — to pay tribute to Prince with a surprisingly great cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U." It's a delight to behold, and a convincing argument for Corden's very own solo "Carpool Karaoke" segment.
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Ffeeds.mashable.com%252F%7Er%252FMashable%252F%7E3%252FJchre-AHzME%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: China's Xpider robot is inspired by the magic of Pixar films
When the robots come for our weak human flesh during the Singularity, let's hope they're at least as cute as the Xpider, a robot being developed by a small team in Beijing.
The developers, who were originally inspired by the cyclops character, Mike, from Monsters, Inc., created a tiny spider-like machine that can walk, recognize objects and detect and record faces via its camera eye.
The team used 3D-printed components and Intel Edison and Curie modules, which were both designed to make it easier for open source device creators to quickly develop innovative prototypes and products.
Weighing just 150 grams, the robot isn't available just yet, but the team is planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign soon, which means the Xpider might be commercially available in the near future. Read more...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNEg9HOY3Lqki2bqiAlueqbcQBi3nw%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526cid%253D52779187711387%2526ei%253D27S8V4DtL6aXzAa194PwAg%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%252Fsciencetech%252Farticle-3754891%252FRobots-CRIMINALS-Police-not-able-stop-AI-breaking-law-warn-experts.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: US study suggest robots could soon become criminals - Daily Mail
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNFllYxn7lkmvaYm835vJGnR8-KeLg%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526cid%253D52779187613208%2526ei%253D27S8V4DtL6aXzAa194PwAg%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.smh.com.au%252Fbusiness%252Fthe-economy%252Fartificial-intelligence-to-help-prepare-tax-returns-report-20160822-gqykq6.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Artificial intelligence to help prepare tax returns: report - The Sydney Morning Herald
Artificial intelligence to help prepare tax returns: report The Sydney Morning Herald "Cloud robotics allows computers to draw on massive databases in the cloud for the learning experience. Deep learning is a form of artificial intelligence that uses complex algorithms to try to mimic the human brain through the recognition of patterns ...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdigg.com%252Fvideo%252Fsushi-robot%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: This Robot Puts Together Some Mediocre Looking Sushi, But We're Still Impressed The fish looks pre-cut and we're not sure why ketchup is involved. It's gimmicky, sure, but if we were at a restaurant where this was a thing we would be wide eyed and squealing with joy. robots
1471990464000
robots
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNF1JH93Krxj_2jPZtZ_QkZlKwVNTQ%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526cid%253D52779187440865%2526ei%253D27S8V4DtL6aXzAa194PwAg%2526url%253Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.finextra.com%252Fnewsarticle%252F29338%252Fcommbank-hires-chip-the-robot-for-ai-push%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: CommBank hires Chip the robot for AI push - Finextra - Finextra (press release)
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNHmT7wQyR_TOdpniBDJHytPQd1JKQ%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526ei%253D27S8V9idMrKuzAaj0KzIAw%2526url%253Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.yahoo.com%252Ftv%252Fsam-esmail-rami-malek-mr-213551956.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Sam Esmail & Rami Malek On 'Mr. Robot': Season 2 “About The Hangover Of Revolution” – AwardsLine - Yahoo News
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNF1Fd8OQkTYIapE7jrLjHZ7ulJwuQ%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526cid%253D52779186926618%2526ei%253D27S8V9idMrKuzAaj0KzIAw%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdeadline.com%252F2016%252F08%252Fmr-robot-rami-malek-sam-esmail-season-2-plans-emmy-interview-1201803141%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: 'Mr. Robot' Season 2 Interview With Rami Malek & Sam Esmail ... - Deadline
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdigg.com%252Fvideo%252Frobot-stairs%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: A Tiny Humanoid Robot Slowly Figuring Out Stairs We know the robot overlords will come for us eventually. But judging from how long it takes this little guy to descend a few steps, we should be okay for the time being if we camp out in basements. robots
1471990454000
robots
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNGtAVJnVgPgqyTjySLcUECAKIrkXA%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526cid%253D52779187302956%2526ei%253D3LS8V6jsHczNzAbIjIZQ%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.businessinsider.com%252Fthe-rise-of-automation-in-banking-and-finance-2016-8%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: This is what might happen when robots take over banking - Business Insider
This is what might happen when robots take over banking Business Insider David Reilly, CTO at Bank of America, believes that automation will "change how we insure property, loan money, invest money, deliver technology, write research reports, and what professionals in financial services do every day." For example, an ...
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdigg.com%252Fvideo%252Ffoosball-playing-robot%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: You're Nowhere Near As Good At Foosball As This Robot Swiss University students built this killer rig that can analyze any foosball game and plot its opponents demise. It's so good, that soon researchers plan on just have the robot play against itself. robots
1471985089000
robots
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.engadget.com%252F2016%252F08%252F19%252Ftiny-robot-caterpillar%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Tiny robot caterpillar can move objects ten times its size Soft robots aren't easy to make, since they require a completely different set of components from their rigid counterparts. It's even tougher to scale down the parts they typically use for locomotion. A team of researchers from the Faculty of Physics... robots
1471985087000
robots
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.slate.com%252Fblogs%252Ffuture_tense%252F2016%252F08%252F19%252Fbrain_corp_is_developing_artificial_intelligence_enabled_cleaning_machines.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Cleaning Machines Might be the Future, if the Unions Allow it
In September, San Diego robotics startup Brain Corporation will introduce artificial intelligence software that allows giant commercial floor-cleaning machines to navigate autonomously. The follow-up offering it wants to develop may be even more forward-looking: A training and certification program for janitors to operate the machines.
The program, still in early stages of planning, is aimed at helping janitors maximize efficiency and establishing standards and best practices for the use of robots in janitorial work, according to Brain Corporation. The company says it is not aware any other such training program exists.
There's additional incentive for Brain Corp. to offer training options. Buzz around artificial intelligence and robotics technologies has caused concerns about jobs being automated out of existence. It's prudent for Brain Corp. to frame its machine as non-threatening in the eyes of organized labor groups.
“Getting unions on board is essential,” says Brain Corp. vice president of marketing Phil Duffy. “The second you try and cut the union reps out, it's doomed to fail.” The company is not currently speaking with unions directly, however. Instead, customers that contract with union workers are relaying to Brain Corp. how unions may react to the technology and what practices they prefer.
Brain Corp., which started as a research and development contractor for Qualcomm in 2009, installs intelligent systems on existing machines. Its first “autonomy as a service” product is navigation software known as EMMA, for “Enabling Mobile Machine Automation.” Brain Corp plans to expand into automation modules for other devices including additional floor care machines, mobile medical equipment, and industrial forklift trucks.
The EMMA brain module is installed during manufacturing on products built by the startup's manufacturing partners. EMMA will first be in International Cleaning Equipment's RS26 floor scrubber. In addition to guiding movement of the machine, EMMA is designed to learn when to turn the scrubber on and off. Improvements in perception and navigation by EMMA are distributed to all machines that use the module.
CEO Eugene Izhikevich says teaching robots enabled with Brain Corp's AI technology “is like teaching an animal or teaching a child by giving instructions, but very instinctive, very intuitive.” Because it's so intuitive, those training the machines do not necessarily need engineering backgrounds, he says.
In the case of robotics technology geared toward commercial cleaning jobs, Brain Corp. would be wise to try to appeal to two million-member union Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents employees in a variety of labor fields, including janitorial services.
Andrew Stern, former president of SEIU, says the cost of disruption to a business from a union opposing the implementation of automation technology could outweigh benefits such as cost savings. Janitorial services, while critical to maintenance of buildings such as hospitals and apartment buildings, amount to only a small portion of overall operating costs, so possible savings from automation could be fractional, he says.
Stern says there are some U.S. markets where SEIU doesn't have much of a presence. Malls and warehouses in these regions may be ideal places to try out automated floor scrubbers and other robotic equipment without concern for union reaction.
SEIU declined to comment for this story.
Stern notes that Brain Corp. also can benefit from partnering with unions like SEIU because they have training facilities and practices in place that would help with scaling a training program.
While unions tend to be hesitant about automation, they are eager for training programs that can help advance their members' skills, says Daniel Wagner, the director of education, standards, and training for the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), which reviews and validates training programs. ISSA has been in communication with Brain Corp. about a potential partnership.
“There is always the possibility that we could ask Brain to develop a program for ISSA to administer and manage, but we are not at that point yet,” Wagner says.
In a statement, Brain Corp. said it is also testing its technology at its development partner sites. The trials “will ultimately enable us to develop the best program for integration with the janitorial industry. We plan to launch the training program by mid-2017.”
In September, San Diego robotics startup Brain Corporation will introduce artificial intelligence software that allows giant commercial floor-cleaning machines to navigate autonomously. The follow-up offering it wants to develop may be even more forward-looking: A training and certification program for janitors to operate the machines.
The program, still in early stages of planning, is aimed at helping janitors maximize efficiency and establishing standards and best practices for the use of robots in janitorial work, according to Brain Corporation. The company says it is not aware any other such training program exists.
There's additional incentive for Brain Corp. to offer training options. Buzz around artificial intelligence and robotics technologies has caused concerns about jobs being automated out of existence. It's prudent for Brain Corp. to frame its machine as non-threatening in the eyes of organized labor groups.
"Getting unions on board is essential," says Brain Corp. vice president of marketing Phil Duffy. "The second you try and cut the union reps out, it's doomed to fail." The company is not currently speaking with unions directly, however. Instead, customers that contract with union workers are relaying to Brain Corp. how unions may react to the technology and what practices they prefer.
Brain Corp., which started as a research and development contractor for Qualcomm in 2009, installs intelligent systems on existing machines. Its first "autonomy as a service" product is navigation software known as EMMA, for "Enabling Mobile Machine Automation." Brain Corp plans to expand into automation modules for other devices including additional floor care machines, mobile medical equipment, and industrial forklift trucks.
The EMMA brain module is installed during manufacturing on products built by the startup's manufacturing partners. EMMA will first be in International Cleaning Equipment's RS26 floor scrubber. In addition to guiding movement of the machine, EMMA is designed to learn when to turn the scrubber on and off. Improvements in perception and navigation by EMMA are distributed to all machines that use the module.
CEO Eugene Izhikevich says teaching robots enabled with Brain Corp's AI technology "is like teaching an animal or teaching a child by giving instructions, but very instinctive, very intuitive." Because it's so intuitive, those training the machines do not necessarily need engineering backgrounds, he says.
Developing a training program
In the case of robotics technology geared toward commercial cleaning jobs, Brain Corp. would be wise to try to appeal to two million-member union Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents employees in a variety of labor fields, including janitorial services.
Andrew Stern, former president of SEIU, says the cost of disruption to a business from a union opposing the implementation of automation technology could outweigh benefits such as cost savings. Janitorial services, while critical to maintenance of buildings such as hospitals and apartment buildings, amount to only a small portion of overall operating costs, so possible savings from automation could be fractional, he says.
Stern says there are some U.S. markets where SEIU doesn't have much of a presence. Malls and warehouses in these regions may be ideal places to try out automated floor scrubbers and other robotic equipment without concern for union reaction.
SEIU declined to comment for this story.
Stern notes that Brain Corp. also can benefit from partnering with unions like SEIU because they have training facilities and practices in place that would help with scaling a training program.
While unions tend to be hesitant about automation, they are eager for training programs that can help advance their members' skills, says Daniel Wagner, the director of education, standards, and training for the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), which reviews and validates training programs. ISSA has been in communication with Brain Corp. about a potential partnership.
"There is always the possibility that we could ask Brain to develop a program for ISSA to administer and manage, but we are not at that point yet," Wagner says.
In a statement, Brain Corp. said it is also testing its technology at its development partner sites. The trials "will ultimately enable us to develop the best program for integration with the janitorial industry. We plan to launch the training program by mid-2017."
In September, San Diego robotics startup Brain Corporation will introduce artificial intelligence software that allows giant commercial floor-cleaning machines to navigate autonomously. The follow-up offering it wants to develop may be even more forward-looking: A training and certification program for janitors to operate the machines.
The program, still in early stages of planning, is aimed at helping janitors maximize efficiency and establishing standards and best practices for the use of robots in janitorial work, according to Brain Corporation. The company says it is not aware any other such training program exists.
There's additional incentive for Brain Corp. to offer training options. Buzz around artificial intelligence and robotics technologies has caused concerns about jobs being automated out of existence. It's prudent for Brain Corp. to frame its machine as non-threatening in the eyes of organized labor groups.
"Getting unions on board is essential," says Brain Corp. vice president of marketing Phil Duffy. "The second you try and cut the union reps out, it's doomed to fail." The company is not currently speaking with unions directly, however. Instead, customers that contract with union workers are relaying to Brain Corp. how unions may react to the technology and what practices they prefer.
Brain Corp., which started as a research and development contractor for Qualcomm in 2009, installs intelligent systems on existing machines. Its first "autonomy as a service" product is navigation software known as EMMA, for "Enabling Mobile Machine Automation." Brain Corp plans to expand into automation modules for other devices including additional floor care machines, mobile medical equipment, and industrial forklift trucks.
The EMMA brain module is installed during manufacturing on products built by the startup's manufacturing partners. EMMA will first be in International Cleaning Equipment's RS26 floor scrubber. In addition to guiding movement of the machine, EMMA is designed to learn when to turn the scrubber on and off. Improvements in perception and navigation by EMMA are distributed to all machines that use the module.
CEO Eugene Izhikevich says teaching robots enabled with Brain Corp's AI technology "is like teaching an animal or teaching a child by giving instructions, but very instinctive, very intuitive." Because it's so intuitive, those training the machines do not necessarily need engineering backgrounds, he says.
Developing a training program
In the case of robotics technology geared toward commercial cleaning jobs, Brain Corp. would be wise to try to appeal to two million-member union Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents employees in a variety of labor fields, including janitorial services.
Andrew Stern, former president of SEIU, says the cost of disruption to a business from a union opposing the implementation of automation technology could outweigh benefits such as cost savings. Janitorial services, while critical to maintenance of buildings such as hospitals and apartment buildings, amount to only a small portion of overall operating costs, so possible savings from automation could be fractional, he says.
Stern says there are some U.S. markets where SEIU doesn't have much of a presence. Malls and warehouses in these regions may be ideal places to try out automated floor scrubbers and other robotic equipment without concern for union reaction.
SEIU declined to comment for this story.
Stern notes that Brain Corp. also can benefit from partnering with unions like SEIU because they have training facilities and practices in place that would help with scaling a training program.
While unions tend to be hesitant about automation, they are eager for training programs that can help advance their members' skills, says Daniel Wagner, the director of education, standards, and training for the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), which reviews and validates training programs. ISSA has been in communication with Brain Corp. about a potential partnership.
"There is always the possibility that we could ask Brain to develop a program for ISSA to administer and manage, but we are not at that point yet," Wagner says.
In a statement, Brain Corp. said it is also testing its technology at its development partner sites. The trials "will ultimately enable us to develop the best program for integration with the janitorial industry. We plan to launch the training program by mid-2017."
In September, San Diego robotics startup Brain Corporation will introduce artificial intelligence software that allows giant commercial floor-cleaning machines to navigate autonomously. The follow-up offering it wants to develop may be even more forward-looking: A training and certification program for janitors to operate the machines.
The program, still in early stages of planning, is aimed at helping janitors maximize efficiency and establishing standards and best practices for the use of robots in janitorial work, according to Brain Corporation. The company says it is not aware any other such training program exists.
There's additional incentive for Brain Corp. to offer training options. Buzz around artificial intelligence and robotics technologies has caused concerns about jobs being automated out of existence. It's prudent for Brain Corp. to frame its machine as non-threatening in the eyes of organized labor groups.
"Getting unions on board is essential," says Brain Corp. vice president of marketing Phil Duffy. "The second you try and cut the union reps out, it's doomed to fail." The company is not currently speaking with unions directly, however. Instead, customers that contract with union workers are relaying to Brain Corp. how unions may react to the technology and what practices they prefer.
Brain Corp., which started as a research and development contractor for Qualcomm in 2009, installs intelligent systems on existing machines. Its first "autonomy as a service" product is navigation software known as EMMA, for "Enabling Mobile Machine Automation." Brain Corp plans to expand into automation modules for other devices including additional floor care machines, mobile medical equipment, and industrial forklift trucks.
The EMMA brain module is installed during manufacturing on products built by the startup's manufacturing partners. EMMA will first be in International Cleaning Equipment's RS26 floor scrubber. In addition to guiding movement of the machine, EMMA is designed to learn when to turn the scrubber on and off. Improvements in perception and navigation by EMMA are distributed to all machines that use the module.
CEO Eugene Izhikevich says teaching robots enabled with Brain Corp's AI technology "is like teaching an animal or teaching a child by giving instructions, but very instinctive, very intuitive." Because it's so intuitive, those training the machines do not necessarily need engineering backgrounds, he says.
Developing a training program
In the case of robotics technology geared toward commercial cleaning jobs, Brain Corp. would be wise to try to appeal to two million-member union Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents employees in a variety of labor fields, including janitorial services.
Andrew Stern, former president of SEIU, says the cost of disruption to a business from a union opposing the implementation of automation technology could outweigh benefits such as cost savings. Janitorial services, while critical to maintenance of buildings such as hospitals and apartment buildings, amount to only a small portion of overall operating costs, so possible savings from automation could be fractional, he says.
Stern says there are some U.S. markets where SEIU doesn't have much of a presence. Malls and warehouses in these regions may be ideal places to try out automated floor scrubbers and other robotic equipment without concern for union reaction.
SEIU declined to comment for this story.
Stern notes that Brain Corp. also can benefit from partnering with unions like SEIU because they have training facilities and practices in place that would help with scaling a training program.
While unions tend to be hesitant about automation, they are eager for training programs that can help advance their members' skills, says Daniel Wagner, the director of education, standards, and training for the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), which reviews and validates training programs. ISSA has been in communication with Brain Corp. about a potential partnership.
"There is always the possibility that we could ask Brain to develop a program for ISSA to administer and manage, but we are not at that point yet," Wagner says.
In a statement, Brain Corp. said it is also testing its technology at its development partner sites. The trials "will ultimately enable us to develop the best program for integration with the janitorial industry. We plan to launch the training program by mid-2017."
robots
1471985082000
robots
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Ffeedproxy.google.com%252F%7Er%252FOpenCulture%252F%7E3%252FNdugsMIr72E%252Fread-the-original-32-page-program-for-fritz-langs-metropolis-1927.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927)
One of the very first feature-length sci-fi films ever made, Fritz Lang's Metropolis took a daring visual approach for its time, incorporating Bauhaus and Futurist influences in thrillingly designed sets and costumes. Lang's visual language resonated strongly in later decades. The film's rather stunning alchemical-electric transference of a woman's physical traits onto the body of a destructive android—the so-called Maschinenmensch—for example, began a very long trend of female robots in film and television, most of them as dangerous and inscrutable as Lang's. And yet, for all its many imitators, Metropolis continues to deliver surprises. Here, we bring you a new find: a 32-page program distributed at the film's 1927 premier in London and recently re-discovered.
In addition to underwriting almost one hundred years of science fiction film and television tropes, Metropolis has had a very long life in other ways: Inspiring an all-star soundtrack produced by Giorgio Moroder in 1984,with Freddie Mercury, Loverboy, and Adam Ant, and a Kraftwerk album. In 2001, a reconstructed version received a screening at the Berlin Film Festival, and UNESCO's Memory of the World Register added it to their roster. 2002 saw the release of an exceptional Metropolis-inspired anime with the same title. And in 2010 an almost fully restored print of the long-incomplete film—recut from footage found in Argentina in 2008—appeared, adding a little more sophistication and coherence to the simplistic story line.
Even at the film's initial reception, without any missing footage, critics did not warm to its story. For all its intense visual futurism, it has always seemed like a very quaint, naïve tale, struck through with earnest religiosity and inexplicable archaisms. Contemporary reviewers found its narrative of generational and class conflict unconvincing. H.G. Wells—“something of an authority on science fiction”—pronounced it “the silliest film” full of “every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own.” Few were kinder when it came to the story, and despite its overt religious themes, many saw it as Communist propaganda.
Viewed after subsequent events in 20th century Germany, many of the film's scenes appear “disturbingly prescient,” writes the Unaffiliated Critic, such as the vision of a huge industrial machine as Moloch, in which “bald, underfed humans are led in chains to a furnace.” Lang and his wife Thea von Harbau—who wrote the novel, then screenplay—were of course commenting on industrialization, labor conditions, and poverty in Weimar Germany. Metropolis‘s “clear message of classism,” as io9 writes, comes through most clearly in its arresting imagery, like that horrifying, monstrous furnace and the “looming symbol of wealth in the Tower of Babel.”
The visual effects and spectacular set pieces have worked their magic on almost everyone (Wells excluded) who has seen Metropolis. And they remain, for all its silliness, the primary reason for the movie's cultural prevalence. Wired calls it “probably the most influential sci-fi movie in history,” remarking that “a single movie poster from the original release sold for $690,000 seven years ago, and is expected to fetch even more at an auction later this year.”
We now have another artifact from the movie's premiere, this 32-page program, appropriately called “Metropolis” Magazine, that offers a rich feast for audiences, and text at times more interesting than the film's script. (You can view the program in full here.) One imagines had they possessed backlit smart phones, those early moviegoers might have found themselves struggling not to browse their programs while the film screened. But, of course, Metropolis's visual excesses would hold their attention as they still do ours. Its scenes of a futuristic city have always enthralled viewers, filmmakers, and (most) critics, such that Roger Ebert could write of “vast futuristic cities” as a staple of some of the best science fiction in his review of the 21st-century animated Metropolis—“visions… goofy and yet at the same time exhilarating.”
The program really is an astonishing document, a treasure for fans of the film and for scholars. Full of production stills, behind-the-scenes articles and photos, technical minutiae, short columns by the actors, a bio of Thea von Harbau, the “authoress,” excerpts from her novel and screenplay placed side-by-side, and a short article by her. There's a page called “Figures that Speak” that tallies the production costs and cast and crew numbers (including very crude drawings and numbers of “Negroes” and “Chinese”). Lang himself weighs in, laconically, with a breezy introduction followed by a classic silent-era line: “if I cannot succeed in finding expression on the picture, I certainly cannot find it in speech.” Film history agrees, Lang found his expression “on the picture.”
“Only three surviving copies of this program are known to exist,” writes Wired, and one of them, from which these pages come, has gone on sale at the Peter Harrington rare book shop for 2,750 pounds ($4,244)—which seems rather low, given what an original Metropolis poster went for. But markets are fickle, and whatever its current or future price, ”Metropolis” Magazine is invaluable to cineastes. See all 32 pages of the program at Peter Harrington's website.
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.slate.com%252Farticles%252Farts%252Fmovies%252F2016%252F08%252Fmorris_from_america_reviewed.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Morris From America
“We're the only two brothers in Heidelberg, man,” Curtis Gentry (Craig Robinson) reminds his 13-year-old son Morris (Markees Christmas) in writer-director Chad Hartigan's Morris From America. “We've gotta stick together, you know what I'm saying?” Morris From America is a foul-mouthed, but gentle-souled, coming-of-age comedy that follows the Gentrys' struggle to stick together as father and son—even as they adjust to their strange new lives as conspicuously black American expatriates in a provincial German town where the prevailing skin tone is not just white but marzipan-pig pink.
Curtis and Morris, we soon realize, are also mourning a beloved wife and mother who's referred to only obliquely, as if any more concrete evocation of her (a photo, a flashback) would be too much for even the camera to bear. The audience never learns precisely what sequence of events landed the Bronx-born Curtis—a former soccer player who now works on the coaching staff of a less-than-successful German team—and his shy, chubby son in this unlikely place. But this very absence of information works on the film's behalf, leaving the viewer as disoriented as the two shell-shocked protagonists.
Hartigan is at his most adept and original in the scenes involving this fractured two-person family, embodied to perfection by Robinson and then16-year-old newcomer Markees Christmas, a nonprofessional the director first spotted in a series of homemade comedy videos on YouTube, causing him to rewrite his script-in-progress around a character based on the boy.
A second plot, in which Morris falls head over heels for the 15-year-old school beauty, Katrin (Lina Keller), and subjects himself to a series of humiliations in an attempt to impress her, felt more overfamiliar from other teen coming-of-age movies. For example, the sporadic appearance of the blonde and beatific Keller (a ringer for a teenage Julie Delpy) in backlit, super-slo-mo fantasy sequences brought to mind the camera-as-horny-teenager move in such high-school classics as Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Risky Business. In fact, Hartigan (whose last film was 2013's This Is Martin Bonner) has spoken of his love for the 1998 romantic comedy Can't Hardly Wait, a movie that takes two decades of high-school movie clichés and whirs them merrily in a blender before serving them up sweeter than they already were.
Morris From America is both more nuanced and less sunny in its view of interteen relations. The interest that Katrin and, most especially, her bullying pack of pals take in Morris is initially motivated by the kind of racism-via-exoticization often experienced by blacks in Europe. Morris is constantly asked by his new schoolmates to demonstrate his authenticity: placed on the spot to prove his worth as a rapper, a player, or a gangster rather than as the quiet, awkward, secretly lonely 13-year-old kid he really is.
Gradually, Morris and Katrin develop something like a real friendship, maybe even—or is that only in Morris' dreams?—something more. The look of the fantasy-like party scenes is bold and jubilant, with the young characters (sometimes high on drugs, sometimes not) picked out in silhouette against backgrounds of pulsing color. But however lively the filmmaking got, whenever Craig Robinson wasn't around some part of me was just waiting for him to come back.
Robinson, best known as a comic sidekick in movies like Hot Tub Time Machine and Pineapple Express, and for TV roles on The Office and Mr. Robot, hasn't been given many big-screen chances to showcase his dramatic gifts, which come as this slight but easy-to-love movie's richest and most rewarding surprise. In one scene, the embattled Curtis tries to draw out his sullen son during a long car ride by telling a tale from his early courtship of Morris' mother. The speech that follows is a tour de force and serious acting challenge: the kind of lengthy parental soliloquy, delivered to a dead-silent and inexpressive audience, that requires both an ironclad ego and a healthy sense of one's own inherent ridiculousness.
Robinson invests that moment, and everything he does as this conflicted but loving dad, with so much brain and heart you find yourself hoping there are scripts with meaty dramatic parts stacking up even now on the comedian's front porch. I wish there were more films every year like Morris From America, the kind that surprise you by revealing a hidden side of something—an actor, a genre, a situation—you thought you had figured out.
robots
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.engadget.com%252F2016%252F08%252F19%252Fbasic-income-ai%252F%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: How will you survive when the robots take your job? The robots are coming, and they're taking our jobs. Or that's the concern, anyway. A recent Oxford University study surmises that over the next two decades, about 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of being made obsolete thanks to automation. This i... robots
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%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNFKzHf7YYhb4HaCwgU9eWAygOfJ8Q%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526ei%253DiZy3V4CCKYqM1AaFho_oCg%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.roboticstomorrow.com%252Fnews%252F2016%252F08%252F19%252Fwith-human-emotion-recognition-ai-mjis-communication-robot-tapia-can-now-understand-your-emotion%252F8644%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: With Human Emotion Recognition AI, MJI's Communication Robot Tapia Can Now Understand Your Emotion - Robotics Tomorrow (press release)
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fredirect.viglink.com%2F%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.google.com%252Fnews%252Furl%253Fsa%253Dt%2526fd%253DR%2526ct2%253Dus%2526usg%253DAFQjCNFVy78FY50rQYZyO45oUGhvQ-Fw7A%2526clid%253Dc3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331%2526ei%253DiZy3V4GCKYuN1Ab8nrPADA%2526url%253Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.brand-e.biz%252Frobots-pick-up-on-emotions-using-artificial-intelligence_37875.html%26key%3Dddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 r0B0t: Robot and I - brand-e.biz
Robot and I brand-e.biz AI robotics Those robots are slowly turning emotional on us, writes Steve Mullins. Take Olly, the maker of which claims will develop a unique personality through the interactions users have with it. That's because Olly is powered by 'nuanced ...
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Soft robots aren't easy to make, since they require a completely different set of components from their rigid counterparts. It's even tougher to scale down the parts they typically use for locomotion. A team of researchers from the Faculty of Physics... !["75388-Lang-525x700"]("https://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/18224503/75388-Lang-525x700.jpg")
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The robots are coming, and they're taking our jobs. Or that's the concern, anyway. A recent Oxford University study surmises that over the next two decades, about 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of being made obsolete thanks to automation. This i... 
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