Robert Hickson • Apr 03, 2019 •
It’s easy to get momentarily excited about robots on the farm, particularly if they are close to home, picking apples or herding stock. Robots have been rolling out onto farms elsewhere for several years and the pace is picking up, so NZ is in … Read More
Robert Hickson • Mar 27, 2019 •
It’s hard to find a way through the forest of forecasts about the impact new technologies will have on work and life. Is it going to be terrible, awesome, same same, all of the above, or something else? The answer is no one knows, or can really know. However, it’s useful to explore the issues and consider what policy options … Read More
Guest Author • Nov 09, 2018 •
Helen Dickinson, UNSW and Catherine Smith, University of Melbourne If you have seen science fiction television series such as Humans or Westworld, you might be imagining a near future where intelligent, humanoid robots play an important role in meeting the needs of people, including caring for children or older relatives. The reality is that … Read More
Guest Author • May 01, 2018 •
David Tuffley, Griffith University Imagine you live in a smart city that knows your face and follows your every move – the places you go, the people you see, and all of the things you do along the way. Over time, autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) builds a profile that reports on how likely you are to commit a … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 23, 2018 •
Dan Crimston, The University of Queensland This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. When psychologists talk about a “moral circle” they are referring to how far we extend our moral consideration towards others. That is, whether we care about the well-being of others, and act accordingly. For most of us, the … Read More
Guest Author • Jan 11, 2018 •
Matt Beane, University of California, Santa Barbara. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Artificial intelligence and robotics spell massive changes to the world of work. These technologies can automate new tasks, and we are making more of them, faster, better and cheaper than ever before. Surgery was early to the robotics … Read More
Guest Author • Aug 30, 2017 •
By Prof Michael Winikoff, University of Otago Self-driving cars, personal assistants, cleaning robots, smart homes – these are just some examples of autonomous systems. With many such systems already in use or under development, a key question concerns trust. My central argument is that having trustworthy, well-working systems is not enough. To enable trust, the design of autonomous systems … Read More
Robert Hickson • Aug 24, 2016 •
Ten years ago we were largely communicating with computers through key pads and mice. Then came touch screens, and more recently voice recognition systems such as Siri, Google Now, and Cortana. Tim O’Reilly has written a good article on LinkedIn about the voice recognition technology that sits within Amazon’s Echo, and what it signals for the future. O’Reilly makes … Read More
Robert Hickson • May 25, 2016 •
In one of my very first Ariadne posts I referred to the prediction pundits. You have, perhaps, noticed the prevalence of this species in the technology world. In a recent newsletter the folks at CB Insights have called this the pundit industrial complex, and illustrate it with various headlines about the future market size for drones and virtual … Read More
Robert Hickson • May 21, 2016 •
Here’s a really absurd mis-reading of biology from a Professor of History in a Huffington Post interview: The whole of biology since Darwin can be summarized in three words: “Organisms are algorithms.” I wasn’t aware that we were living in the Matrix. This is the type of talk you most commonly hear from Silicon Valley folk talking or writing about technological progress and what … Read More