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The UK Invited a Robot To 'Give Evidence' In Parliament For Attention (theverge.com)
"The UK Parliament caused a bit of a stir this week with the news that it would play host to its first non-human witness," reports The Verge. "A press release from one of Parliament's select committees (groups of MPs who investigate an issue and report back to their peers) said it had invited Pepper the robot to 'answer questions' on the impact of AI on the labor market." From the report: "Pepper is part of an international research project developing the world's first culturally aware robots aimed at assisting with care for older people," said the release from the Education Committee. "The Committee will hear about her work [and] what role increased automation and robotics might play in the workplace and classroom of the future." It is, of course, a stunt.
As a number of AI and robotics researchers pointed out on Twitter, Pepper the robot is incapable of giving such evidence. It can certainly deliver a speech the same way Alexa can read out the news, but it can't formulate ideas itself. As one researcher told MIT Technology Review, "Modern robots are not intelligent and so can't testify in any meaningful way." Parliament knows this. In an email to The Verge, a media officer for the Education Committee confirmed that Pepper would be providing preprogrammed answers written by robotics researchers from Middlesex University, who are also testifying on the same panel. "It will be clear on the day that Pepper's responses are not spontaneous," said the spokesperson. "Having Pepper appear before the Committee and the chance to question the witnesses will provide an opportunity for members to explore both the potential and limitations of such technology and the capabilities of robots." MP Robert Halfon, the committee's chair, told education news site TES that inviting Pepper was "not about someone bringing an electronic toy robot and doing a demonstration" but showing the "potential of robotics and artificial intelligence." He added: "If we've got the march of the robots, we perhaps need the march of the robots to our select committee to give evidence."
As a number of AI and robotics researchers pointed out on Twitter, Pepper the robot is incapable of giving such evidence. It can certainly deliver a speech the same way Alexa can read out the news, but it can't formulate ideas itself. As one researcher told MIT Technology Review, "Modern robots are not intelligent and so can't testify in any meaningful way." Parliament knows this. In an email to The Verge, a media officer for the Education Committee confirmed that Pepper would be providing preprogrammed answers written by robotics researchers from Middlesex University, who are also testifying on the same panel. "It will be clear on the day that Pepper's responses are not spontaneous," said the spokesperson. "Having Pepper appear before the Committee and the chance to question the witnesses will provide an opportunity for members to explore both the potential and limitations of such technology and the capabilities of robots." MP Robert Halfon, the committee's chair, told education news site TES that inviting Pepper was "not about someone bringing an electronic toy robot and doing a demonstration" but showing the "potential of robotics and artificial intelligence." He added: "If we've got the march of the robots, we perhaps need the march of the robots to our select committee to give evidence."
What's next -- bringing a toaster to see how it impacts chefs and other markets?
*facepalm*
Acting like that, is like saying your hammer is a person who hits nails!
It is in the same category of iTernal September clueles ness, as printing out the Internet, or saying "cyber", or wanting to ban something by blocking domains of websites because you confuse the Internet with the web!
The only difference with computers and robots, is that the delay between the action and the result happening, is bigger, and the actions can be more complex. That’s it.
When you ask a computer with a running program to do something, you are asking the programmer to do something. He might have a prepared reaction. He might not have. But it’s always him who’s doing the thing.
So can we at least stop this madness here on Slashdot? The zombie former home of people who actually had a clue about this things.
One day Chatbot went to paliament
The politicians all when oh ahhh because they understood fuck all
and then they fucked everyone
the end
Jake age 6.5
We've got Pepper at my office. She replaced two receptionists. Yes you have to pre-program her, but she can totally carry on conversations about all your basic office needs. She can notify you if you have a visitor, tell stories to kids, recommend places to eat, give directions to the bathroom etc etc.
and fix this once and for a!! Off with heads! And check for watches!
Perhaps they can dispense mental health advice to MP's, who have been busy using Brexit to destroy the UK.
Robot: Always with the big questions.
Robot: Don't worry if I got full Terminator.
Robot: I’ll be good to you.
Robot: Warm and safe in my open-range UK zoo.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Wonder what is next.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We're also going to automate the policy-making, deliberation, voting, execution, and judgment. We will have governments run exclusively by robot politicians backed by robot staffers, which, like their human predecessors, will smear each other, make false accusations, use emotion-laced arguments for everything, perform their duties in corrupt and scandalous ways, and see to it that accountability remains subservient to partisan objectives. Only they'll be faster, more efficient and more zealous about it.
I trust robots more than I trust liberals.
This could have been an episode of Matlock, the lawyer TV show from a few decades ago. While I don't recall Matlock bringing a robot into the courtroom, he did have a cooking demonstration done in court and he once used a dog as a witness. Matlock, with a fictional American law degree and license, also had an episode where he practiced law in the UK! Unrealistic.