Unit 1 - Intro Flashcards
How do we measure what human developments have bent the curve?
Using index to measure human social development (Morris)
What 4 attributes define human social development?
- Energy capture (per person calories)
- Organisation (size of largest city)
- War-makingCapacity (number of troops and power/speed of weapons)
- Info Technology (sophistication of available tools)
What was the Industrial Revolution?
Sum of nearly simultaneous developments in mechanical engineering, chemistry, metallurgy and other disciplines.
Primary was the steam engine, as developed by James Watt
What improvements did James Watt make to steam engines?
Three-fold improvement in efficiency, from 1%
What is the 2nd machine age?
Computers and other digital advances doing for mental power what the steam engine did for muscle power.
What are the three broad conclusions of the 2nd machine age authors?
1) We live in a time of astonishing progress with digital technologies. We are at an inflection point, where the curve starts to bend a lot.
2) Transformations brought about by digital technology will be profoundly beneficial - we will increase both variety and volume of consumption.
3) Digitisation is going to bring some thorny challenges, particularly economic disruption as companies need fewer of some kinds of worker
What did the 2004 Frank Levey and Richard Murnane “New Division of Labour” book state?
That people should focus on the tasks and jobs where they have comparative advantage over computers, leaving computers the work for which they are better suited
What tasks are computers good at?
Those that require the application of well-understood rules, e.g. arithmetic
What are computers not so good at?
Info processing tasks that can’t be boiled down to rules or algorithms. I.e. Pattern recognition
What is ‘DARPA’?
Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency
What 4 examples are there of when technology has developed gradually, then rapidly?
- Driver-less cars
- Speech recognition
- Natural Language Processing, incl translation
- Jeopardy (combination of pattern recognition and complex communication)
What are the 3 laws of robotics, according to Isaac Asimov?
1) Robot may not injure human, or by inaction allow one to come to harm
2) Robot must obey human orders, except where conflicts with 1st law
3) Robot must protect own existence unless conflicts with first 2 laws
What is ‘Moravec’s Paradox’?
The discovery by AI and robotics researchers that high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensorimotor skills (sensing physical world and controlling body to move through it) require enormous computational resources
Who are most of risk of losing their jobs to machines?
Stock analysts, petrochemical engineers and parole board members.
More safe will be gardners, receptionists and cooks
What does Brookes hope his untraditional robots will do to make progress against Moravec’s paradox?
They will be cheap machines, taught by factory workers, not high-paid engineers.
