{"id":71,"date":"2020-08-14T10:05:32","date_gmt":"2020-08-14T14:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/?p=71"},"modified":"2020-09-18T12:04:58","modified_gmt":"2020-09-18T16:04:58","slug":"robots-and-whats-not-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/2020\/08\/14\/robots-and-whats-not-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Robots, and what\u2019s not AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Think of a robot. Do you picture a human-looking construct? Does it have a human-like face? Does it have two legs and two arms? Does it have a head? Does it walk?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to <em>assume<\/em> that a robot that walks across a room and picks something up has AI operating inside it. What&#8217;s often obscured in viral videos is how much <em>a human controller<\/em> is directing the actions of the robot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Spot Launch\" width=\"739\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wlkCQXHEgjA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I am a <em>gigantic<\/em> fan of the Spot videos from Boston Dynamics. Spot is not the only robot the company makes, but for me it is the most interesting. The video above is only 2 minutes long, and if you&#8217;ve never seen Spot in action, it will blow your mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But how much &#8220;intelligence&#8221; is built into Spot?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The answer lies in between &#8220;very little&#8221; and &#8220;Spot is fully autonomous.&#8221; To be clear, Spot is <em>not<\/em> autonomous. You can&#8217;t just take him out of the box, turn him on, and say, &#8220;Spot, fetch that red object over there.&#8221; (I&#8217;m not sure Spot can be trained to respond to voice commands at all. But maybe?) Voice commands aside, though, Spot <em>can<\/em> be programmed to perform certain tasks in certain ways and to walk from one given location to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This need for additional programming <em>doesn&#8217;t<\/em> mean that Spot lacks AI, and I think Spot provides a nice opportunity to think about rule-based programming and the more flexible reinforcement-learning type of AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How Boston Dynamics&#039; Spot Robot Works!\" width=\"739\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R-PdPtqw78k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This 20-minute video from Adam Savage (of MythBusters fame) gives us a look behind the scenes that clarifies how much of what we see in a video about a robot is caused by a human operator with a joystick in hand. If you pay attention, though, you&#8217;ll hear Savage point out what Spot <em>can<\/em> do that is outside the human&#8217;s commands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two points in particular stand out for me. The first is that when Spot falls over, or is upside-down, he &#8220;knows&#8221; how to make himself get right-side-up again. The human doesn&#8217;t need to tell Spot he&#8217;s upside-down. Spot&#8217;s programming recognizes his inoperable position and corrects it. Watching him move his four slender legs to do so, I feel slightly creeped out. I&#8217;m also awed by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Given the many incorrect positions in which Spot might land, there&#8217;s no way to program this get-right-side-up procedure using set, spelled-out rules. Spot must be able to use estimations in this process \u2014 just like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/2020\/08\/10\/ai-programs-that-play-games\/\">AlphaGo<\/a> did when playing a human Go master.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second point, which Savage demonstrates explicitly, is accounting for non-standard terrain. One of the <em>practical<\/em> uses for a robot would be to send it somewhere a human cannot safely go, such as inside a bombed-out building \u2014 which would require the robot to walk over heaps of rubble and avoid craters. The human operator doesn&#8217;t need to tell Spot anything about craters or obstacles. The instruction is &#8220;Go to this location,&#8221; and Spot&#8217;s AI figures out how to go up or down stairs or place its feet between or on uneven surfaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The final idea to think about here is how the training of a robot&#8217;s AI takes place. Reinforcement learning requires many, many iterations, or attempts. Possibly <em>millions<\/em>. Possibly <em>more<\/em> than that. It would take lifetimes to run through all those training episodes with an actual, physical robot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, <strong>simulations<\/strong>. Here again we see how super-fast computer hardware, with multiple processes running in parallel, must exist for this work to be done. Before Spot \u2014 the actual robot \u2014 could be tested, he existed as a virtual system inside a machine, learning <em>over nearly endless iterations<\/em> how not to fall down \u2014 and when he did fall, how to stand back up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>See more robot videos on <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/BostonDynamics\/videos?view=0&amp;sort=p&amp;flow=grid\" target=\"_blank\">Boston Dynamics&#8217; YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"https:\/\/i.creativecommons.org\/l\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/88x31.png\"><\/a><br>\n<small><span xmlns:dct=\"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/\" property=\"dct:title\"><strong>AI in Media and Society<\/strong><\/span> by <span xmlns:cc=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#\" property=\"cc:attributionName\">Mindy McAdams<\/span> is licensed under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<br>\nInclude the author&#8217;s name (Mindy McAdams) and a link to the original post in any reuse of this content.<\/small><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Think of a robot. Do you picture a human-looking construct? Does it have a human-like face? Does it have two legs and two arms? Does it have a head? Does it walk? It&#8217;s easy to assume that a robot that walks across a room and picks something up has AI operating inside it. What&#8217;s often&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/2020\/08\/14\/robots-and-whats-not-ai\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Robots, and what\u2019s not AI<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[79,25,24],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robots","tag-faf","tag-motion","tag-spot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macloo.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}