NYU plans to make Abu Dhabi global robotics hub
New centre to develop artificial intelligence and its effect on society
Who should be held responsible if a robot commits a crime? How can we prevent androids from being hacked by criminals? What is the best appearance for a service humanoid?
These are some of the questions researchers will tackle in a planned new robotics centre expected to open at New York University Abu Dhabi in 2019.
Prof Mohamad Eid, member of the scientific and organising committee of the third Joint UAE Symposium on Social Robotics hosted at NYUAD yesterday, said hiring was under way for the robotics centre, which will foster multidisciplinary studies of artificial intelligent systems and their effect on society.
“The idea is that NYUAD will be one of the hubs in robotics in general, including social robotics,” Prof Eid, who teaches electrical and computer engineering at the university, said at the symposium.
“We will have faculty affiliated in security, in social sciences, arts, humanities, in sciences and engineering, so all of these people will come together and try to look at the programme of robotics from all these different angles.”
While initially dedicated to publishing research, the centre may eventually offer a certificate programme related to robotics, possibly leading to other courses and post-graduate programmes, said Prof Eid. “We were told in a year we will have the physical space and then we will start acquiring technologies and platforms,” he said.
The centre will be unlike any other existing robotics institutes in the region, because it will go beyond simply investigating the mechanics of building and operating a robot, Prof Eid said.
“For example, we have ethical issues related to building robots, we have legal issues, we have economic consequences that we have to discuss, we have social aspects, so we have all these things that we want to bring to the table,” Prof Eid said.
The issues that arise from the interaction of humans and humanoids or androids have been the focus of the social robotics symposium this week at NYUAD and UAEU. One recurring theme was the issue of jobs and how they might be affected by future AI systems.
“The UAE is one of the leading countries in the GCC to adopt the latest technologies in terms of the internet of things, robotics, wearables, 3-D printing,” said Mona El-Sholkamy, a Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government researcher who presented findings of research about the future of work in the UAE.
“The threat that’s posing itself here is to what extent will these technologies shift or change how the labour market looks and to what extent will some jobs disappear and others begin to mushroom? There is a dire need for the skills in the market to change and for employees to adapt to what the labour market is looking for.”
Prof Massimiliano Lorenzo Cappuccio, director of UAE University’s cognitive science lab, said the introduction of robots offers an opportunity to countries like the UAE, where the Government is already leading the way in supporting artificial intelligence.
“There are only 10,000 experts of artificial intelligence in the world who really know how to put their hands in this kind of work and create real artificial intelligence,” Prof Cappuccio said. “There is such demand. It’s difficult to find really competent people, so you need to create the kind of ecosystem that attracts this kind of talent to share their knowledge and train and share their capacity here.”
With the right strategic plan, Dr Cappuccio said it would not be far-fetched to suggest that the UAE could be home to the next Silicon Valley.
“One area where the UAE is excellent is smart government, e-government, smart services and generally the idea of building a smart city, so that already exists, and we are very strong in that,” Dr Capuccio said.