Robots’ role as police officers, bankers, lawyers – even wives
WITH the entry of humanoid robots such as Sophia and a startling carbon copy of Albert Einstein, the era of trans-humanism appears to officially be upon us, say trend forecasters Dion Chang and Khumo Theko of FluxTrends. Top trends include: Robot citizens
“Co-bots” – robots that work alongside human beings doing menial or basic tasks – are already a norm in countries like Japan. But Saudi Arabia went a step further last year and granted full citizenship to Sophia – the first female humanoid robot, created by Hanson Robotics, according to Chang and Theko.
Meanwhile in China, engineer Zheng Jiajia went beyond the contentious issue of sex-bots and built his own female robot, which he married in a traditional wedding ceremony. Robot diplomacy
In pursuit of harnessing future skills and investing in the development of science and technology, the United Arab Emirates has become the first nation to appoint a Minister of Artificial Intelligence, FluxTrends notes. Omar Bin Sultan, 27, will focus on rebranding the country as a Middle Eastern tech hub.
The plans are ambitious: not only is Dubai intended to achieve a 25% robot police force by 2030; it has also joined the race to place autonomous vehicles on the country’s roads and launch flying taxis in the skies – that’s besides the parallel investments in various Hyperloop projects and a plan to reach Mars. Robo-accountants and financiers
Finance, accounting, management and economics are popular university subjects worldwide due to high employability, but this is changing, says finance professor Nafis Alam and his associate, computer science professor Graham Kendall.
Writing for The Conversation last year, they cited research indicating that universities will find it harder to sell business-related degrees because by 2025 at least 230 000 “human jobs” in the sector will be lost to “artificial intelligence agents” .
In the US alone 47% of all jobs are thought to be at “high risk” of being automated within 20 years – 54% of them in finance.
This is already happening in India where the head-count in banks is diminishing due to robots at work.
HDFC, one of India’s largest private banks, has introduced Eva – India’s first AI-based banking chatbot.
“Eva can assimilate knowledge from thousands of sources and provide answers in simple language in less than 0.4 seconds. At HFDC Eva joins Ira, the bank’s first humanoid branch assistant,” say the professors.
The match between finance and robotics should not be surprising given that both banking and finance are principally built on processing information, and key operations are already highly digitised.
But the academics warn that too much reliance on AI could backfire. Robo-advisers may be cheap and time-saving for simple investment portfolios, but nuanced judgment is vital to deal with market volatility. Military and police robots
Dubai last year started deploying robot cops to assist its police force.
Meanwhile in armies worldwide, robots are widely used – for bomb disposal, landmine removal, maintaining safety zones and espionage.
They offer greater precision in attacks and reduce the risk of collateral damage to civilians, says Sean Welsh, a doctoral candidate in robot ethics at the University of Canterbury. Ethics and need for robo-rules
With algorithms predicting and helping to solve crimes, is there a downside to artificial intelligence, especially when it is weaponised?
What, for instance, if sophisticated robots are used to commit crimes, asks Christopher Markou of Cambridge University’s law faculty. Should we actually all be terrified?
While the hope for AI is for safe and beneficial behaviour, he says a parallel regulatory framework must be built to ensure it does not manifest into something illegal, unethical or dangerous in the future. This is the urgent work demanded of the present. —