Munky101 tipped us off to some interesting comments from New York's activist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. TechCrunch reports: It's impossible to discuss the seismic shift toward automation without a conversation about job loss. Opponents of these technologies criticize a displacement that could someday result in wide-scale unemployment among what is often considered "unskilled" roles. Advocates, meanwhile, tend to suggest that reports of that nature tend to be overstated. Workforces shift, as they have done for time immemorial. During a conversation at SXSW this week, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered another take entirely.

"We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work," she said in an answer reported by The Verge. "We should be excited by that. But the reason we're not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don't have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem... We should be excited about automation, because what it could potentially mean is more time educating ourselves, more time creating art, more time investing in and investigating the sciences, more time focused on invention, more time going to space, more time enjoying the world that we live in," The Verge quoted Ocasio-Cortez as saying. "Because not all creativity needs to be bonded by wage."

And Ocasio-Cortez cited Bill Gates' suggestion (first floated in a presentation on Quartz) that a robot tax might be a way to make that vision real. "What [Gates is] really talking about is taxing corporations," she reportedly said. "But it's easier to say: 'tax a robot.' "
Science fiction writer William Gibson called her comments "shockingly intelligent" for a politician. Fast Company adds that robots "have put half a million people out of work in the United States, and researchers estimate that bots could take 800 million jobs by 2030" -- then quotes Ocasio-Cortez's assessment of the unfair state of labor today.

"We should be working the least amount we've ever worked, if we were actually paid based on how much wealth we were producing, but we're not," she said. "We're paid by how little we're desperate enough to accept. And then the rest is skimmed off and given to a billionaire."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Robotic hands have a tough time getting a grip on pliable objects, but it's not for lack of trying -- most make do with rigid pincers that aren't designed for precision grasping. Fortunately, if a newly published paper is any indication, more versatile systems are on the horizon. In it, researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Harvard describe a novel gripper design that's capable of lifting items in a range of weights, shapes, and sizes.

The team's hollow, cone-shaped gripper comprises three parts -- a 3D-printed, 16-piece silicone rubber skeleton with a gripper-to-mount connector encased by an airtight skin -- that together collapse in on objects as opposed to clutching them. It was inspired by the "magic ball," an origami design that's folded from a rectangular piece of paper pre-creased with a repeating, offset pattern that reversibly changes between a spherical and cylindrical shape. The gripper is powered by a pneumatic vacuum and covered by either a 27-inch latex rubber balloon or a TPU-coated nylon fabric sheet, depending on the configuration. The researchers tested three: one with a self-folded fabric skin skeleton, a second with a rubber-molded skeleton, and a third with a tougher rubber skeleton.

[...] In one experiment where the team mounted the gripper on a robot to test its strength, it managed to lift and grasp objects -- 12 food items, 19 different bottles and cups, and 14 miscellaneous items, some weighing over four pounds -- that were 70 percent of its diameter and up to 120 times its weight without damaging them. It currently works best with cylindrical objects like bottles and cans, according to Shuguang Li, a joint postdoctoral student at MIT CSAIL and Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), which makes it a natural fit for factory production lines.

Humans will always make the final decision on whether armed robots can shoot, the US Department of Defense said today. From a report: The statement comes as plans emerge for gun platforms that can choose their own targets on the battlefield. The plans seek to upgrade existing aiming systems, using developments in machine intelligence. The US said rules governing armed robots still stood and humans would retain the power to veto their actions. The defense department's plans seek to upgrade the current Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (Atlas) used on ground combat vehicles to help human gunners aim. The military is seeking commercial partners to help develop aiming systems to "acquire, identify, and engage targets at least three times faster than the current manual process."

What if a robot came to your house to retrieve library books? An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup: Residents in downtown Mountain View have gotten their first peek at the future with the debut of BookBot, the library's newest non-human helper. A creation of Google's Area 120 -- an experimental division of the technology juggernaut -- the bot is the company's first personal delivery robot to hit the streets and begin interacting with the public, said Christian Bersch, the project's team lead. It's part of a program to test the waters of what could be possible for autonomous, electric robots, he said...

The pilot will run for nine months with a human handler following behind the BookBot for the first six months, he said. That's just to make sure it's operating as planned, get it out of trouble as needed and observe how people are responding. After that, a human will sit behind the controls remotely. And, on a recent Thursday, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Children shrieked at the sight of the robot and immediately jumped in its path to see if it would stop. (It does...) Users must schedule the pickup time in advance, which -- because the bot is fairly popular -- means planning at least a week ahead. It can carry up to about 10 items, Bersch said, depending on the size of the books.

dryriver quotes the BBC: A doctor in California told a patient he was going to die using a robot with a video-link screen. Ernest Quintana, 78, was at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont when a doctor — appearing on the robot's screen — informed him that he would die within a few days. A family friend wrote on social media that it was "not the way to show value and compassion to a patient". The hospital says it "regrets falling short" of the family's expectations.

Mr Quintana died the next day.

"Baseball's potential future will be showcased in the independent Atlantic League this year, and it includes robot umpires..." reports ESPN, calling it part of "a wide variety of experiments that the Atlantic League will run this season as part of its new partnership with Major League Baseball." While MLB has long tested potential rule changes in the minor leagues, its three-year partnership with the Atlantic League -- an eight-team league that features former major leaguers trying to return to affiliated ball -- offers the ability to try more radical rules. MLB has chafed at using technology to replace ball-and-strike-calling duties for umpires, fearful that it's not yet consistent enough to warrant implementation... [W]ith the TrackMan system installed at Atlantic League stadiums, MLB will have a trove of data to analyze and see the effect of doing so.
Other changes aim to speed up the game, including bans on visits to the pitcher's mound and shortening the amount of time between innings.

MGM, one of the largest global casino companies in the world, is considering replacing some workers with robots. The company's 2020 plan calls for reducing its workforce by about 2,100 people to save roughly $300 million in the coming years. Vegas Slots Online reports: Among those who could be replaced are cashiers and bartenders. Automatic technology that can make drinks would replace the bartenders and monetary transactions could be done through standard payment technology. There would also be mobile payment processors going around the floor with the wait staff, eliminating the need for cashiers. There is no indication as to how many such jobs would be replaced at the MGM properties. The unions and workers will not be happy with this news. Jobs will be lost and it may also violate the labor agreement that MGM struck with the unions last summer. The Las Vegas Culinary Union (LVCU), which represents bartenders, kitchen staff, and wait staff, reached a five-year deal in June 2018 with the MGM. The agreement guarantees that MGM will not implement any technology that would have a negative impact on employment. However, the news that the MGM is considering replacing some workers with robots could mean that the company is not willing to fulfill this agreement. MGM CEO Jim Murren unveiled the new "MGM 2020" plan earlier this year, describing it as a "company-wide, business-optimization initiative aimed to leverage a more centralized organization to maximize profitability and, through key investments in technology, lay the groundwork for the company's digital transformation to drive revenue growth."

MikeChino writes: The world's first home designed, planned, and built with mainly digital processes just opened its doors in Switzerland. Developed by eight ETH Zurich professors, DFAB House is a pilot project showcasing futuristic building technologies that may someday work their way into our homes. It's topped with a solar array that generates, on average, 1.5 times more energy than the unit needs (an intelligent control system eliminates the risk of load peaks), [and there are waste heat recovery systems to recycle heat from shower trays back into the boiler.] Some of the pioneering ETH-developed construction processes include: "Mesh Mould technology, in which an autonomous 'In Situ Fabricator' robot builds a 3D mesh formwork for concrete load-bearing walls; Smart Slab, a lightweight concrete slab with 3D-printed sand formwork that's less than half the weight of a conventional concrete slab; Smart Dynamic Casting, an automatic robotic slip-forming process; and Spatial Timber Assemblies, a digital prefabrication process that uses a dual robot system to create timber frame modules," reports Dwell, adding that people "manually filled in formwork, bolted CNC-milled and 3D-printed pieces into place, and tweaked the digital design process."

Last month, the U.S. Army asked private companies for ideas about how to improve its planned semi-autonomous, AI-driven targeting system for tanks. "In its request, the Army asked for help enabling the Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (ATLAS) to 'acquire, identify, and engage targets at least 3X faster than the current manual process,'" reports Gizmodo. "But that language apparently scared some people who are worried about the rise of AI-powered killing machines. And with good reason." Slashdot reader darth_borehd summarizes the U.S. Army's response: Robot (or more accurately, drone) tanks will always have a human "in the loop" just like the drone plane program, according to the U.S. Army. The new robot tanks, officially called the Multi Utility Tactical Transport (MUTT), will use the Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (ATLAS). The Department of Defense assures everyone that they will adhere to "ethical standards." Here's the language the Defense Department used: "All development and use of autonomous and semi-autonomous functions in weapon systems, including manned and unmanned platforms, remain subject to the guidelines in the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 3000.09, which was updated in 2017. Nothing in this notice should be understood to represent a change in DoD policy towards autonomy in weapon systems. All uses of machine learning and artificial intelligence in this program will be evaluated to ensure that they are consistent with DoD legal and ethical standards."

Directive 3000.09 requires that humans be able to "exercise appropriate levels of human judgement over the use of force," which is sometimes called being "in the loop," as mentioned by above.

Reader AmiMoJo writes: Jibo was a "social robot" startup that burned through $76 million in venture capital and crowdfunding before having its assets were sold to SQN Venture Partners late last year. Earlier this week, reporter Dylan J Martin tweeted a video of a $899 Jibo robot bidding its owner farewell, announcing that the new owners of his servers were planning to killswitch it; the robot thanked him "very very much" for having it around, and asked that "someday, when robots are more advanced than today, and everyone has them in their homes, you can tell yours that I said 'hello.'" Then, the Jibo performed a melancholy dance.

Biting your tongue at yet another questionable article shared in your message group? Add artificial-intelligence fact-checker Meiyu, she will jump in with 'False.' From a report: The artificial-intelligence bot will interject in real time when she detects posts about the news, pointing out factual errors and alternative interpretations. The technology, created by Taiwanese developers, is a step ahead of most fact-checking apps, including versions offered in Brazil and Indonesia, which don't jump into conversations. Other popular fact-checkers, such as Snopes in the U.S., are public databases that users consult for reviews of news items. Meiyu quickly became hot in Taiwan, which had just gone through divisive local elections and is rife with rumors of China's interference in social media. The bot now has more than 110,000 users on the Japanese messaging app Line, which covers about 90% of the mobile-messaging market in Taiwan.

U.S. companies installed more robots last year than ever before, as cheaper and more flexible machines put them within reach of businesses of all sizes and in more corners of the economy beyond their traditional foothold in car plants. From a report: Shipments hit 28,478, nearly 16 percent more than in 2017, according to data seen by Reuters that was set for release on Thursday by the Association for Advancing Automation, an industry group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Shipments increased in every sector the group tracks, except automotive, where carmakers cut back after finishing a major round of tooling up for new truck models.

FedEx is the latest company to join the delivery robot craze. The company said Wednesday it will test a six-wheeled, autonomous robot called the SameDay Bot in Memphis, Tenn. this summer and plans to expand to more cities. From a report: It's partnering with major brands, including Walmart, Target, Pizza Hut and AutoZone, to understand how delivery robots could help other businesses. FedEx's interest highlights how businesses are increasingly focused on automating deliveries. It also raises concerns about the impact on cities and employment, as robots crowd sidewalks and delivery jobs are automated. FedEx's robot has a top speed of 10 mph and can carry about 100 pounds. A company spokesman said its typical speed would vary depending on the route. The robot relies on sensors typically used on self-driving cars to identify and avoid pedestrians.

A startup called Veo Robotics is preparing to roll out sensor technology that lets industrial robots work safely side-by-side with humans. "Veo's proprietary technology uses lidar sensors to create real-time maps of factory work spaces, so that robots can slow or stop completely when human workers get too close," Bloomberg reports. From the report: There are more than 2 million industrial robots in operation worldwide, mostly toiling inside metal safety cages. The seclusion is fine for repetitive tasks that can be done entirely by machines, such as arc welding, but the majority of work even in the most automated factories requires involvement of people. Embedding force sensors into industrial limbs is one way to prevent them from plowing through obstacles, but the same technology that makes the arms safe also makes them weak. Most so-called cobots cannot handle weights heavier than 10 kilograms (22 pounds). Computer vision offers a way to get robots into more complex environments, without compromising their strength. Another obstacle is that manufacturers increasingly have to make multiple products on the same assembly line and are constantly retooling their production to accommodate shifting consumer tastes. There are also not enough workers to do the job.

Veo, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, is working closely with the world's biggest robot makers Fanuc Corp., Yaskawa Electric Corp. and Kuka AG. But Veo's first customers are likely to be car companies, manufacturers of durable goods such as household appliances and oil and gas equipment makers, where the shale revolution created demand for more customization. The technology could be used to get machines to present parts to human workers, for loading and unloading fixtures and in palletizing.

PepsiCo is kicking off a four-year restructuring plan that is expected to cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars in severance pay. "This week, PepsiCo employees in offices including Plano, Texas, and the company's headquarters in Purchase, New York, were alerted that they are being laid off," reports Business Insider, citing two people directly impacted by the layoffs.

The latest job cuts come after CFO Hugh Johnston told CNBC that the company plans to lay off workers in positions that can be automated. CEO Ramon Laguarta said on Friday that PepsiCo is "relentlessly automating and merging the best of our optimized business models with the best new thinking and technologies." From a report: This week, PepsiCo employees in offices including Plano, Texas, and the company's headquarters in Purchase, New York, were alerted that they are being laid off, according to two people who were directly impacted by the layoffs. These two workers were granted anonymity in order to speak frankly without risking professional ramifications. At least some of the workers who were alerted about layoffs will continue to work at PepsiCo until late April as they train their replacements in the coming weeks, the two workers told Business Insider.

By PepsiCo's own estimates, the company's layoffs are expected to be a multimillion-dollar project in 2019. Last Friday, PepsiCo announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it is expected to incur $2.5 billion in pretax restructuring costs through 2023, with 70% of charges linked to severance and other employee costs. The company is also planning to close factories, with an additional 15% tied to plant closures and "related actions." Roughly $800 million of the $2.5 billion is expected to impact 2019 results, in addition to the $138 million that was included in 2018 results, the company said in the SEC filing.

Nine private spaceflight companies are bidding on contracts to deliver robotic NASA payloads to the moon -- and Thursday NASA said they'd like them to start flying "this calendar year."

Discover magazine reports NASA envisions this "as the first step toward returning to the moon, this time for good." The first tasks will be to practice launching and landing on the moon, as well as answering questions about its surface... They will test habitation for future crewed missions. They'll prove that they can collect materials from the lunar surface and return them to space or Earth. And they'll establish communication networks between robots on the moon's surface, way stations in lunar orbit, and mission control on Earth.
But NASA also wants to deploy demo technology that can mine the moon's resources "to pave the way for human settlement," Space.com reports: The main lunar resource to be exploited, at least initially, is water. The lunar surface has lots of this stuff, locked up as ice on the permanently shadowed floors of polar craters. This water will aid lunar settlement and further exploration, and not just by slaking astronauts' thirst, NASA officials say. Water can also be split into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel.

The Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is just part of NASA's broad moon-exploration plan, which prioritizes an open architecture that encourages cooperation with many commercial and international partners. (Indeed, NASA wants to be the commercial landers' first, but not only, customer.) One of the most critical pieces of this plan is a small space station, called the Gateway, which NASA aims to start building in lunar orbit in 2022. Gateway will be a hub for many kinds of lunar exploration, including sorties to the surface by landers both crewed and uncrewed.

If everything goes according to plan, NASA astronauts will take their first such sortie in 2028 -- 56 years after Apollo 17 crewmembers left the last boot prints on the lunar surface

A robot outfitted with remotely controlled pinchers poked at debris that's suspected to contain molten nuclear fuel at the bottom of one of Fukushima's nuclear reactors, World Nuclear News reports. From a report: The poking and prodding is part of the ongoing cleanup effort at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the site of a major nuclear accident in 2011. The dextrous robot was dangled into the Unit 2 reactor on February 13th, according to a news release from the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Unit 2 is one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant that overheated after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, which caused the reactor core to melt. TEPCO suspects that radioactive fuel may have melted through the bottom of the reactor vessel to fall into the containment structure surrounding it. The company has to find the radioactive debris and figure out how to remove them, so TEPCO has been sending in a series of robots to scout out the reactors. It's a dangerous journey that some of the robots haven't survived.

From a report: A new robot can navigate without GPS, using the same light-sensing abilities as desert ants. Desert ants survive in searingly hot conditions in the Sahara. They sometimes have just a few minutes to forage for food before they risk burning to death. As a result, they are very efficient navigators, using bands of polarized light, invisible to humans, to get around. They also carefully count their steps. These two tactics help to keep them alive. AntBot: The bot, described this week in Science Robotics, is fitted with UV light sensors that can detect polarized light from the sun. This is known as a "celestial compass" and is designed to mimic the way desert ants see the sun's light. This helps it work out the direction it's going in. The robot also counts its steps, much like its desert muse. In tests, it successfully managed to complete an outdoor homing task, where it was required to go to several checkpoints and then return to a fixed location within a range of 14 meters.

Reader schwit1 shares a report: When you're browsing online, who sets the prices? An algorithm, most likely. A study from 2015 showed that a third of all items on Amazon [PDF] had prices set by an algorithm, and chances are that percentage has only risen. A new study shows how easy it would be for price-setting algorithms to learn to collude with each other and keep prices at a disadvantage for customers.

This sort of collusion would stem from a certain type of algorithm, the researchers say. Reinforcement algorithms learn through trial and error. In the simplest terms, a walking robot would take a step, fall, and try again. These algorithms have often been used to teach algorithms to win games like Go.

"From the antitrust standpoint," say professors Emilio Calvano, Giacomo Calzolari, and others from the University of Bologna in Italy, "the concern is that these autonomous pricing algorithms may independently discover that if they are to make the highest possible profit, they should avoid price wars. That is, they may learn to collude even if they have not been specifically instructed to do so, and even if they do not communicate with one another."

For more than 14 years, the Opportunity rover crawled up and down craters, snapped pictures of a strange landscape and revealed surprising glimpses into the distant past of Mars. On Wednesday, NASA announced that Opportunity, the longest-lived robot ever sent from Earth to the surface of another planet, is dead. The New York Times: "It is therefore that I am standing here with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission is complete," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science. That ends a mission of unexpected endurance: it was designed to last only three months. Opportunity provided scientists a close-up view of Mars that they had never seen: finely layered rocks that preserved ripples of flowing water several billion years ago, a prerequisite for life.

The steady stream of photographs and data from Opportunity -- as well as its twin, Spirit, which survived until 2010 -- also brought Mars closer to people on Earth. Because the rovers continued so much longer than expected, NASA has now had a continuous robotic presence on Mars for more than 15 years. That streak seems likely to continue for many more years. A larger, more capable rover, Curiosity, arrived in 2012, and NASA is planning to launch another in 2020. Live telecast here.