Xiaoyu Liu

Robotics&The future

The other day I went over my friend's house and we were playing a card game that was similar to Monikers. So bascially just one person describes the name on the card with one or two sentences and the other person guesses the answer, very straightforward. I have the card said "Robot" on it, so I told my friend that there was only one word. And my friend asked, "Does it have a gender?" I said, " It could be male or female and it is artificial mechanics and programmed by computers." No doubt that my friend guessed the answer right immidiately. It was a silly game but the point I am trying to make here is that how commonly the concept of robot already is in our everyday lives. Everyone knows what robot is and it is already accepted in the society mostly as a tool to replace some of the human works such as the use in construction field for building structures and the use in health care for assisting patients and so on. Very common term until I had to think about the future of it and where robotics will be leading us in the next decades. In the article I read, it introduced "the machine that grips objects with an octopus" designed by Festo. What makes it interesting is that its joints are powered by air and it gives the freedom of grabbing any shape of objects compare to other robot arms. As mentioned in the article, this new innovation will open up more opportunities in the construction fileds due to the fact that the materials are more safe for humans. I like this design a lot because it is creative and bring some real use into the real life. However, I think both form and function and equally important and it is a good start on the next level design but hopefully it could be improved more on its look.


Resources:

https://m.curiosity.com/topics/the-octopusgripper-is-an-oceanic-addition-to-factory-automation-curiosity/

AI&The Future

As we all know, computer engineering or computer science has become the most popular majors these days which means machine learning has become more and more mainstream. It is interesting that the article is making a point on how realiable the information provided by the machines is. For sure it is a question that worths the thinking, like it questioned in the article, "people won't trust an AI unless it can expain itself." One example I found it interesting in the article is that a few researchers tried to make AI explained it itself by describing its thinking process such as describing the content of a picture. What the researchers did was to create two deep neural networks, one reconize the image and one translate the language, so that it could explain itself the activity it is doing to humans. However, after the presenting to some computer scientists, it was questioned again by saying that the techniques he presented would never be explainable. To sum up the story, the answer is "The solution to expaninable AI is more AI." I found the example very interesting because seems like theres no way for humans to explain the technology that humans invented on their own. So what do we do? I agree with the second article I read where it talks about that people should work on giving more trust on AI but obviously it will require a lot of efforts due to the lack of the sense of morality. The solution meantioned in the articles were creating transparency such as through education programs.

Resources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/magazine/can-ai-be-taught-to-explain-itself.html
"Can AI Be Taught to Explained Itself"

https://www.ibm.com/watson/advantage-reports/future-of-artificial-intelligence/building-trust-in-ai.html

3D Printing&The Future

3D printng is getting more advances nowaday. This youtube video introduces the new teconology of printing building envelops with 3D printing machines. It is just mind-blowing to know the fact that the development of 3D printing has become so powerful. With taking the bulding envelop class last term, I was able to learn the very complicate process of designing building enevelop and there were so many factors that designers need to comsider when it comes to design the envelop. I have some positive feelings about this printable envelop teconology and for sure it still need to be improved more such as its visual connection, acoustic reflection, and it aesthetics, but overall I believe it will bring building design to the next level.

Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMWsqo82I4

https://www.nytimes.com/video/science/space/100000005449852/3-d-printing-for-space-exploration.html

Hi Allison! We watched the same video about 3D printing! Isn't it so cool to see that building envelop can actually be printed with 3D printers nowadays? I agree with you that I also think 3D printing can bring building design to a bright future and I am really looking forward to it. However, I think it is also important to think about problems like sound insulation and visual connections.

Hi Jordan. I found your point about the robotics very interesting. I agree that we need to consider more about the fact that a lot of people are unemployed while robots are replacing the jobs they could possibly do. However, example like robotics being used in healthcare industry in Japan proved an opposite point such as there were not enough workers in the healthcare industry in Japan due to its small population. I think for almost all technologies it has two sides of it and it was interesting to see your point of view.

Hi Luciana! I found the second article you mentioned in your article about AI very interesting. I agree with your point about the fact that AI is on its path to superseding both average and intelligent humans. One of the articles I read was about scientists tried to seperate the neural networks in AI to two so that one could recognize the image and the other translate the language. The whole point of this experiment is to make AI explained itself. I just think it is also important to think about the solutions towards the trust issues between people and AI.