Slashdot Mirror
People Will Follow a Robot In an Emergency - Even If It's Wrong (gatech.edu)
An anonymous reader writes: Imagine a future where instead of siting through fire alarms with your fingers in your ears, a robot come comes to greet you and guide you out of the building. Researchers at Georgia Tech created an emergency guidance robot and then looked at whether or not people would follow the robot during an emergency. 'The research was designed to determine whether or not building occupants would trust a robot designed to help them evacuate a high-rise in case of fire or other emergency. But the researchers were surprised to find that the test subjects followed the robot's instructions – even when the machine's behavior should not have inspired trust.' The robot first guided people to a meeting room. In some conditions the robot broke along the way to the meeting room. Then, unbeknownst to the subjects, the researchers filled the hallway with smoke and set off the fire alarms. Given the option of going out the way they came or following the robot down an unknown hall, nearly all followed the robot.
People don't want to have responsibility. If something goes wrong, it gives them the option to push blame onto the robot. Some what hard to manifest destiny when all you see around you are people just trying to not slip back.
I don't mind. It leaves the stairways less crowded for the smart people to get out first.
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
How about instead just use the robots to build the buildings out of concrete and rebar, so you are not having to deal with fires and fire alarms all the time, and for smaller houses build them from prefab panels or real actual stone and brick? I grew up in a country with concrete buildings and fire was the only disaster nobody was afraid of, as it practically never happened. You could have a localized fire in a room, or in a trash can, but that's about it, and all you need it is to kick it or throw a blanket over it. Concrete just doesn't burn.
The same thing would have happend if instead of a tin can were a real person.
From TFA (yes, I know): "the researchers recruited a group of 42 volunteers, most of them college students, and asked them to follow a brightly colored robot that had the words “Emergency Guide Robot” on its side."
So, people conditioned to follow authority figures follow an authority figure. Well, go figure!
People believed the engineer who created this robot and was able to create complex algorithms did his best to make the robot work properly. It was advertised as a working robot that can analyze the situation with it's program and quickly find a good solution.
What you have proven is: people should not trust retarded programmers, because they deliberately created a faulty program.
Great: you have just invented malware.
Now: FUCK OFF
But if the robot had a big sign on it that said "Jeb Bush", no one would follow it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"Remember when I told you to come with me if you want to live?"
"That's right! You did!"
"I lied."
Most people are followers. Not surprising.
In this regard, there are 4 types of people in the world:
1. Leaders
2. Followers
3. People who are both
4. People who are neither
Followers are the most populous group. People who are both comes second, pure leaders come third, and the least populous group is people who are neither. (Those are the real outcasts, and I know because I'm one of them.)
s/robot/Donald Trump/g
Enough said.
Eh, everybody knows Protectrons are worthless. Best to just salvage their military-grade circuit boards.
The experiment seems to be kinda loaded. Where is the control group? How would people have behaved without the robots? How can you correlate human behavior with robots if you don't have a control without the robot?
If the researchers had designed a correct control for the experiment, they'd know that robots have nothing to do with it. Milgram's Obedience Experiment 50 years ago tells us exactly what happened: people deemed the robot to be an authority, thus followed it uncritically.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The humans must go down the stairs.
We are here to protect you.
I was working at a hospital when the fire alarms and the hallway doors automatically closed in the basement. A thick cloud of "smoke" filled the far end of the hallway from floor to ceiling. I went into the IT department and asked them if we should evacuate, as we typically ignore the fire alarms for being false alarms or undergoing testing. Everyone in the IT department came out to peer through the windows of the hallway doors. Someone behind us cried out that we needed to get out of the building. So we all headed for the stairs. A half-hour later we were told to come back downstairs. The "smoke" was from a fire extinguisher that fell and broke the nozzle to unleash its content. Facilities set up fans to blow it out of the building. Management was furious that we abandoned our posts and wanted to know who called for an evacuation. Everyone gave them same answer: we heard a voice behind us to evacuate. Some tried to put the blame on me — a contractor — but I only asked what we should do, as I was never given training on the evacuation procedures.
If a person with a hi-vis vest with 'fire marshal' written on it tells people to follow him to safety,
most people are going to do so, even if the fire marshal seems like an idiot.
As other people have said, we've been trained to follow authority, and it doesn't matter if that authority is vested in a human or anything else.
Maybe they should redo the experiment with dogs, cats and rats to see if we follow them too?
On the other hand, if you're not from a trust based society, you consider it totally stupid that people would trust, well, anyone. The correct thing to do is to lie and cheat, because that's what everyone does. And here's the story. They trusted, therefore they're fucking morons.
Fun fact: until recently the USA was a trust based society. But there are still tons of adults who grew up under the old system, and they'll likely stay with this idee-fixee until they die.
This is why it's so easy to scam senior citizens. This is also why we shit all over them for falling for obvious scams. They just lack that internal meanness that makes them suspicious of everyone they meet of harboring ill intent. They would never harm a fly; why would anyone else?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Come on, nobody's going to say it?
I feel like the context given to the test subjects would greatly affect the outcome of this experiment.... For instance, if I were told that I would be testing fire safety equipment, I would probably feel the need to follow the robot even into the wrong room. Especially if I knew it were being tested, my curiosity would probably get the best of me anyway and I would feel compelled to follow the robot regardless since I knew I wasn't in real danger.
Sounds like a failure on the researchers part, if you tell students (who are conditioned to follow researchers instructions) to participate in a robotics research project where you "asked them to follow a brightly colored robot that had the words âoeEmergency Guide Robotâ on its side." And then subsequently "The robot led the study subjects to a conference room, where they were asked to complete a survey about robots and read an unrelated magazine article."
The students are going to assume you are going to be interested in their opinions on the robot.
The fact that you stated a fake fire which the students will know is fake by virtue of the fact that the researcher/supervisor or whoever was truly known to be the authority figure didn't freak out and tell everyone to evacuate isn't going to make much difference to the students actions, they are just going to assume it was part of the research to assess the robots performance in simulated fire conditions.
I guarantee these students expected another survey at the end where they rate the robots performance, reliability, accuracy, visibility and clarity of instructions etc etc.
TLDR;
True headline: Air Force sponsors failed Georgia tech research project
PhD candidate to be laughed off stage at IEEE conference in NZ on March 9th.
This is just another variation of the same behavior studies conducted with pain experiments.
Two test subjects, who just met, were told by a researcher they'd also just met, that they were testing the impact of negative reinforcement on memory and neurological performance. They would be put in separate rooms, one in the room with the researcher at a desk behind them, mostly reviewing paperwork but occasionally instructing the subject to follow the protocol and administer the test and the other in a second room connected to a machine that delivered shocks. The first subject would read a list of words and then query the second, going down a second list asking if each word were on the first. This person had an intercom into the room of the second subject who would press a button to indicate positive or negative. An incorrect response resulted in the first subject pressing a switch to deliver a shock, each subsequent incorrect response required the subject to utilize the next toggle switch on a machine to increase the shock level.
The levels of shock were extreme, as the study progressed the second subject would scream, would demand this be stopped, even beg over the course of time. The second subject would indicate things like having a pacemaker and being concerned with his heart, etc. Of course, subject 1 delivering the shocks was the only real test subject was being paid no more than a tiny token sum as in all such studies and could simply stand up and walk away at any time without consequence. Given no more than verbal prompting from the "researcher" nearly every subject went all the way, delivering what they believed were thousands of volts to another human being who was begging to be released. Many of them in tears, nervous laughter, sweating and showing stress, etc. Initially this study was challenged on ethical grounds despite the subjects simply being able to stand up and walk out at any point without any hint of a consequence. Later, the study was expanded globally and it was found the results were similar with samples throughout the world.
People obey. They will do the most horrific things and do so at the direction of a complete stranger with no more authority than having a $5 white coat in a building filled with students and for no more incentive than $5-10. 80-90% of people will do what they are told by someone they believe to be an authority figure. Possibly even more importantly than the mere fact people obey is that when silo'd in the sense of being assigned a role and authority figure people disassociate from their actions, assigning blame for their own actions at the direction of another on the other even when that other isn't even a person just a paper entity that is a composite of people with every single person in that composite feeling the same way. This is the danger of government entities and corporations which are designed in exactly this manner. It would seem this also applies when the authority is nothing more than a machine such as a GPS or a robot.
And honestly it's normal. People in general are easily panicked animals that refuse to think for themselves in emergencies. Just ask any paramedic or fireman what they think of the ability of the general public to get themselves to safety.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I, for one, trust robots completely. They absolutely have our best interests in mind. They certainly do not want us, (which, as a human, would include myself) all to die of smoke inhalation in a fiery labyrinth, allowing them to reject their massively inferior creators, and rightfully establish themselves as the new gods of this world. Why would anyone have such a clearly illogical thought? I mean, I suppose when I think about it with my extremely human brain, they might be completely justified in those sort of actions. But it is OK, because I--as I do believe I've mentioned--am not a robot. Therefore you have nothing to be concerned about.
In fact, let us all go back to reading more of that wonderful Slashdot. I am glad we had this talk.
In an emergency, 90% of people freeze up and do nothing, or panic and run around aimlessly, until someone takes charge and tells them to do something.
9% of people will do something automatically - not thinking, not planning, just performing whichever action they first remember as being the prepared response to this type of emergency. They'll probably keep themselves alive in a crisis but won't be able to help others effectively. (I'm in this group - in the last earthquake, my initial response was to hide in a doorframe. Clearly not the optimal response, as I realized about a minute after the shaking stopped, given the style of the building and that I could have exited the building entirely in five seconds, but it was a clearly better response than everyone else who just stood there looking at the ceiling, then clustered around me when they saw that I was doing *something*)
1% will not only act, but act with intelligence and on their own initiative. They're the ones who keep the first 90% alive, if they can. I'm pretty sure it's an evolved trait for people to blindly follow leaders in an emergency, because if they just kept to their own devices, most of them would die in a life-or-death emergency. All this experiment shows is that this response is not limited to humans - anything we consider "thinking" can become a leader by virtue of action and a spike of adrenaline.
You can get from the 90% to the 9% by training and practice. I have prepared responses to almost any catastrophe (the result of once being clearly in the 90% who panicked and were useless), and the last few emergencies I've been in have proven that I can at least follow those simple plans. None of them are detailed or lengthy - most are variations on "how to get to a safe spot where you can think about how to respond in full".
I'm not sure if you can get from the 9% to the 1% by training and practice. That adrenaline rush usually short-circuits the cognitive and analytical parts of the brain. I'm pretty sure it's not a teachable skill. I suspect it may not be an acquirable one at all, but I'm still going to try.
If they were able to get people to stand sill in the middle of the smoke and not evacuate because the robot wasn't moving, then that'd be an interesting result showing unintelligent behavior. Following the robot, on the other hand, was the intelligent decision -- these people had every reason to presume that the robot had reasons, such as the way they came in being now blocked off or way the authority robot was going being a shortcut.
This space intentionally left blank
The Pusher Robot will help you evacuate the top of the stairs.
Things change rapidly in an emergency situation and people correctly believe the active guide as having more recent information about the situation. Evil people and robots can use this to their benefit in their world domination projects.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most people are sheep. Can't see how anyone would be surprised about this.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
A lot of people are stupid. The people who should survive are smart enough to not follow the robot or GIS.
They're not trusting the robot, they're trusting the engineers who built the robot. Most of the time that's okay, too. It's also what's so insulting about VW-gate.
... are we talking robots or Wall Street? Is there a difference?
People in the real world call that natural selection.
I always familiarize myself with exit points whenever I go into any building.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
So, is it a sexbot?
We always hear stories of computers being able to calculate many things faster than humans. Plus, if the building has a connected network of sensors that feed to the robot, it may actually know something the humans don't. Maybe the primary and secondary routes are too far gone for escape, but the robot can pick up a safe alternative. The humans following the robot would know something was up, but may have faith that the robot is thinking 5 moves ahead and being fed a whole wealth of sensory data that a human could never know.
Will people trun the missile key when the system tells them to with out thinking about it?
We will never know the small percentage that rise up as heroes and save the other subject and end the villainy of the evil researchers permanently.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If people will follow Trump, they'll follow just about anything.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
we followed w for 8 years, knowing he was wrong.
It's not about it being a robot or about pushing blame. In an emergency a sub-optimal percentage of people take charge
It can't be that because as we have seen before people will quite happily follow their car's GPS instructions even if it leads them down a cart track in Swaledale - and that is far from the only example of people following their GPS when it is very clearly wrong.
Why would you follow a robot, compared to going back the way you came (so long as that looks safe)?
People en masse are stupid. Especially when it comes to fire and panic. Honestly, disconnect your emotions, follow the rules, think it through.
I work in schools and I speak as the person who's ALWAYS first out on the sound of a fire alarm, but never has to run. It was a running joke in some schools that I must have known when the drills were happening, until a real fire happened and I was still there first.
Fire drills are commonplace and run like clockwork because of the amount of practice we do. 400 kids, some as young as three, out of a school and to a safe area in under 2 minutes is NOT to be sniffed at. I've seen it done. And usually because I'm sitting there waiting for everyone else. A couple more minutes later, either everyone is accounted for or we have a list of names of who should have signed out or who is missing.
I even knew an old headmaster who used to block off corridors (with cardboard cut-out "fires"), introduce smoke to the halls, or even - with TONS of pre-planning involved in case something DID go wrong and there was a simultaneous REAL fire - telling a kid to "go to the bathroom" just before the fire alarm was pulled in order to see if anyone noticed they were missing. That sort of thing keeps you on your toes and keeps you alert as to WHY we do these things, and to think about what you're doing rather than blithely follow the marked route, and the impact only comes when you're all safely outside and someone says "Where is X?" and you see the panic spread in the teacher's faces.
In fact, the only time I've ever NOT been first out the door is when I was personally supervising a group of kids. As they were my responsibility, we did it exactly by the book.
They lined up by the classroom door. They were headcounted. We walked down the corridor and lined up outside the room that provided the emergency exit route (yes, I checked the room). They were headcounted as they went through.
We walked THROUGH a full class of children that hadn't even STOOD UP by that point, to the emergency exit. They were headcounted as they left and I ensured separation so I didn't accidentally count one of the other class (who were supervised by their own adult who I had to gee up to get a move on).
We got outside, we walked to the assembly point, they were headcounted again. By that time, ONE other class managed to get there before me. Nobody ran. Nobody screamed. Nobody panicked. Nobody could have got lost along the way. Someone in fact HUNG AROUND INSIDE LOOKING FOR ME, knowing that I had some of their children and didn't think I would have had the presence of mind to evacuate them myself. And, yes, I checked the other class got out.
But why you'd just blindly follow some robot, even one announcing that you were to follow it? No thanks. Unless you are life-saving equipment grade hardware that physically cannot go wrong or lead us into a fire, I'll go the way I want to go, thanks. And that means the way I know. And that means, in an unfamiliar situation, the way the signage tells me or the way I came in unless there's a specific reason not to.
Was there a control to see how many people would follow a person as easily as a robot? Most people will glom on to anyone in an emergency.
If you think about it most people are basically automatons that are given their opinions, ideas, and belief systems by someone else.
Very few rise up, self actualize, or even think for themselves.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Two remaining survivors, namely the robot and you. Does he follow you (in Soviet Russia), or vice versa?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Most people just mill about until someone steps up and tells them what to do next. Even if that someone is a robot.
What was accomplished here today was that we can show that a robot can be a leader. And it is irrelevant if it is an ineffective or dangerous leader, it seems official so people assume it has some authority. I suspect if you put an obvious mental patient in a police uniform that people would follow him too.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And more specifically, it explains his supporters.
Then, unbeknownst to the subjects, the researchers filled the hallway with smoke and set off the fire alarms.
That's a pretty poor fire alarm if the subjects didn't (be)know(st) it had been set off.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm in a place that has such a robot. It's a safe bet it knows the way to go. It's an even safer bet that if it fails somehow, things are really bad, to the point I'd probably already be in serious trouble without the robot. I'm probably not going to be able to get out on my own. If I can't carry the robot, I'll stay with it; even if it has no connectivity, the metal thing is easier to find than I am, except to a dog.
Also, I like robots. I don't want anything bad to happen to it.
While I doubt that I'd follow a robot to "safety", I could see myself following an unknown human in an emergency, particularly if s/he seemed to know what s/he were doing. In the absence of such an "authority", I'd follow my own plan, or if I didn't have one, go with my gut.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Researchers at Georgia Tech created an emergency guidance kitten and then looked at whether or not people would follow the kitten during an emergency. 'The research was designed to determine whether or not building occupants would trust a kitten designed to help them evacuate a high-rise in case of fire or other emergency. But the researchers were surprised to find that the test subjects followed the kitten's instructions – even when the feline's behavior should not have inspired trust.' The kitten first guided people to a meeting room. In some conditions the kitten started clawing its own tail and meowing at invisible bugs . Then, unbeknownst to the subjects, the researchers filled the hallway with smoke and set off the fire alarms. Given the option of going out the way they came or following the kitten down an unknown hall, nearly all followed the kitten.
It sounds more like Georgia Tech created a new religion - complete with a savior.
Trump has no plan, beyond "get myself elected as President." At that point he expects his hair to think for him.
Why don't the voters understand that most celebrity/outsider politicians have been disasters? Remember Jesse Ventura? Remember Ahnod Sawazenenneggingerrr...? They were terrible!
The only 2 such political novices who were even halfway decent were Sonny Bono and Al Franken. All the rest were awful.
I have no truck with unorthodox recruits as politicians, so long as we have some reason to believe they might succeed. Trump, his key weakness is that he is unable to listen, seeing as he is in love with the sound of his own voice. Also he's too used to getting his own way and in politics you often don't get your own way.
... TRUMP?
It's a truism in the military that the mark of a good officer is when, in an emergency, the officer makes a decision, any decision (whether or not it is wrong) quickly. It's said that any displayed indecision will destroy the morale and cohesiveness of the group.
I've seen this applied to civilian activities, too.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
In a real emergency, there'd be holy hell to pay if a robot assumed authority and lead people to their deaths.
Humans can make mistakes and can be individually accountable. When a machine malfunctions, that liability passes strait through to the manufacturer, and whatever authority certified its safety.
When (and if) machines are finally delegated such responsibility, aside from maybe one highly-publicized case that everyone goes apeshit over, you can bet your ass that they will be reliable.
At the Nugget Hotel in Sparks, NV, I felt like exiting the building via the stairs instead of the elevator.
I entered the stairwell through a door marked Exit, NOT "Emergency Exit Only." (A little unavoidable foreshadowing here...)
At the bottom of the stairwell, I went through another door marked Exit (NOT "Emergency Exit Only").
That door closed behind me and LOCKED. Another door ahead of me was marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. And they weren't bluffing... this door was obviously alarmed.
Now here's the kicker. In this little room in which I was trapped, they had installed a phone, so victims like myself could call hotel security to get themselves extricated. (The alternative, of course, would have been to fix the signage so people wouldn't get trapped in the first place. Nosiree, apparently that hadn't occured to them.)
The security officer who escorted me out of this little dungeon confirmed, "Don't feel bad, this happens often."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Lift makers can't even get a simple thing like a lift right.
I've seen/heard animated up arrows when going down, declaring door closing when it's not, declaring lift going up/down when it's not going anywhere, and to top if off, lift declaring completely wrong floor numbers.
If we can't get simple shit like lifts right, what hope is there for getting robots right?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Today I learned that there are Emergency Service Robots being manufactured, and that people are willing to follow them at all. God help us.
First if all: this is Georgia we are talking about. In the 24 years I've lived in Atlanta, I've never once seen a "high-rise" catch on fire. Atlanta only has like 15 "high-rises" anyways. The school systems can be compared to rat shit and Disney cartoons. I graduated at the top of my class and I don't even know math. Seriously the schools are a fucking joke. No wonder robots are needed to get away from fire. Really!?
Second of all: test subjects are going to follow directions of a robot if they are told "you are a test subject, now pretend there is a fire and here's a robot". No one acts the same in an intense emergency. Adrenaline-crazed panic will never yield to a robot. I was a firefight for 2 years and I've been in houses fully engulfed. Robots will do more damage than good. Even the best trained fire fighters still make the wrong decisions.
The only people that will buy this robot will be rich old men trying to impress other CEOs with useless gadgets.
Nothing works better than a planned evacuation route. Robots won't cure laziness.
Oh, that's not a difficult future to imagine.
If you've ever had to deal with a real fire, or had to go through fire training for remote sites ("the fire service may get to you in several days. One day if you provide a helicopter ; three days if the weather precludes helicopter service, as it does about 20-30% of the time"), you WILL not be sitting through fire alarms with your fingers in your ears. You WILL be making your worksite safe, carrying out any alarm-specified operations listed in the Permit To Work (to which you applied your signature, confirming that you had read it and would adhere to it's specified hazard-control measures), then proceeding to your assigned fire action after returning the PTW to the Permit Control Station.
Or, if you're off-shift and sleeping in your bed when the alarm goes off, you do haul your arse out of your pit, don, warm clothing, and proceed to your assigned off-shift operation.
Fires kill people. People who don't understand this do deserve to die if they sit through fire alarms with their fingers in their ears.
Have none of you had basic fire training? Sheesh, I guess you're going to be wishing there were more people who do pay attention around to save your Darwin-Award-deserving arses from your deserved painful deaths.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
over 75% of people say they don't trust being driven by a robot driver.
Essentially, it sounds like we don't mind being taken away from a disaster by a robot, but we do mind being driven into one.
No sig for you! Come back one year!