Hod Lipson

You are currently browsing articles tagged Hod Lipson.

“He Has Begun Worrying About Something That Would Have Been Unimaginable To Him A Few Years Ago”

June 16, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Hod Lipson loves robots, but love is complicated. 

The robotics engineer is among the growing chorus of those concerned about technological unemployment leading to social unrest, something Norbert Wiener warned of more than 60 years ago. Is it, at long last, in this Digital Age, happening?

In a long-form MIT Technology Review article, David Rotman wonders if the new technologies may be contributing to wealth inequality and could ultimately lead to an even a greater divide, while considering the work of analysts on both sides of automation issue, including Sir Tony Atkinson, Martin Ford, Andrew McAfee and David Autor. The opening:

The way Hod Lipson describes his Creative Machines Lab captures his ambitions: “We are interested in robots that create and are creative.” Lipson, an engineering professor at Cornell University (this July he’s moving his lab to Columbia University), is one of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence and robotics. His research projects provide a peek into the intriguing possibilities of machines and automation, from robots that “evolve” to ones that assemble themselves out of basic building blocks. (His Cornell colleagues are building robots that can serve as baristas and kitchen help.) A few years ago, Lipson demonstrated an algorithm that explained experimental data by formulating new scientific laws, which were consistent with ones known to be true. He had automated scientific discovery.

Lipson’s vision of the future is one in which machines and software possess abilities that were unthinkable until recently. But he has begun worrying about something else that would have been unimaginable to him a few years ago. Could the rapid advances in automation and digital technology provoke social upheaval by eliminating the livelihoods of many people, even as they produce great wealth for others?

“More and more computer-guided automation is creeping into everything from manufacturing to decision making,” says Lipson. In the last two years alone, he says, the development of so-called deep learning has triggered a revolution in artificial intelligence, and 3-D printing has begun to change industrial production processes. “For a long time the common understanding was that technology was destroying jobs but also creating new and better ones,” says Lipson. “Now the evidence is that technology is destroying jobs and indeed creating new and better ones but also fewer ones. It is something we as technologists need to start thinking about.”•

Tags: , , , , ,

“With This Technology Today, That Transformation Might Happen Much Faster”

February 1, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I agree with two very smart people working in Artificial Intelligence, Andrew Ng and Hod Lipson, when I say that I’m not worried about any near-term scenario in which Strong AI extincts Homo Sapiens the way we did Neanderthals. It’s not that it’s theoretically impossible in the long run, but we would likely first need to know precisely how the human brain operates, to understand the very nature of consciousness, to give “life” to our eliminators. While lesser AI than that could certainly be dangerous on a large scale, I don’t think it’s moving us back down the food chain today or tomorrow.

But like Ng and Lipson, the explosion of Weak AI throughout society in the form of autonomous machines is very concerning to me. It’s an incredible victory of ingenuity that can become a huge loss if we aren’t able to politically reconcile free-market societies with highly autonomous ones. An excerpt from Robert Hof at Forbes’ horribly designed site:

“Historically technology has created challenges for labor,” [Ng] noted. But while previous technological revolutions also eliminating many types of jobs and created some displacement, the shift happened slowly enough to provide new opportunities to successive generations of workers. “The U.S. took 200 years to get from 98% to 2% farming employment,” he said. “Over that span of 200 years we could retrain the descendants of farmers.”

But he says the rapid pace of technological change today has changed everything. “With this technology today, that transformation might happen much faster,” he said. Self-driving cars, he suggested could quickly put 5 million truck drivers out of work.

Retraining is a solution often suggested by the technology optimists. But Ng, who knows a little about education thanks to his cofounding of Coursera, doesn’t believe retraining can be done quickly enough. “What our educational system has never done is train many people who are alive today. Things like Coursera are our best shot, but I don’t think they’re sufficient. People in the government and academia should have serious discussions about this.”

His concerns were echoed by Hod Lipson, director of Cornell University’s Creative Machines Lab. “If AI is going to threaten humanity, it’s going to be through the fact that it does almost everything better than almost anyone,” he said.•

Tags: , ,

“His Focus Is On A Self-Aware Species, Robot Sapiens”

September 28, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Weak AI is going to continue to proliferate throughout the world, its laser focus on narrow tasks improving production and having major economic ramifications good and bad. But what of Strong AI? When will these rough beasts be “born,” their hour come round at last? From Diane Ackerman’s Salon profile of Cornell University roboticist Hod Lipson:

“What’s the next hack for a rambunctious species full of whiz kids with digital dreams? Lipson is fascinated by a different branch of the robotic evolutionary tree than the tireless servant, army of skilled hands, or savant of finicky incisions with which we have become familiar. Over ten million Roomba vacuum cleaners have already sold to homeowners (who sometimes find them being ridden as child or cat chariots). We watch with fascination as robotic sea scouts explore the deep abysses (or sunken ships), and NOAA’s robots glide underwater to monitor the strength of hurricanes. Google’s robotics division owns a medley of firms, including some minting life-size humanoids—because, in public spaces, we’re more likely to ask a cherub-faced robot for info than a touchscreen. Both Apple and Amazon are diving into advanced robotics as well. The military has invested heavily in robots as spies, bionic gear, drones, pack animals, and bomb disposers. Robots already work for us with dedicated precision in factory assembly lines and operating rooms. In cross-cultural studies, the elderly will happily adopt robotic pets and even babies, though they aren’t keen on robot caregivers at the moment.

All of that, to Lipson, is child’s play. His focus is on a self-aware species, Robot sapiens. Our own lineage branched off many times from our apelike ancestors, and so will the flowering, subdividing lineage of robots, which perhaps needs its own Linnaean classification system. The first branch in robot evolution could split between AI and AL—artificial intelligence and artificial life. Lipson stands right at that fork in that road, whose path he’s famous for helping to divine and explore in one of the great digital adventures of our age. It’s the ultimate challenge, in terms of engineering, in terms of creation.

‘At the end of the day,’ he says with a nearly illegible smile, ‘I’m trying to recreate life in a synthetic environment—not necessarily something that will look human. I’m not trying to create a person who will walk out the door and say ‘Hello!’ with all sorts of anthropomorphic features, but rather features that are truly alive given the principles of life—traits and behaviors they have evolved on their own. I don’t want to build something, turn it on, and suddenly it will be alive. I don’t want to program it.'”

Tags: ,

“The More We Automate, The More We Don’t Know What’s Going To Come Out Of It”

June 11, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Robot Evolution,” Emily Monosson’s Aeon essay, which concerns the shock of the new and the unpredictable emergent behaviors that can accompany such a thing:

“In a laboratory tucked away in a corner of the Cornell University campus, Hod Lipson’s robots are evolving. He has already produced a self-aware robot that is able to gather information about itself as it learns to walk. Like a Toy Story character, it sits in a cubby surrounded by other former laboratory stars. There’s a set of modular cubes, looking like a cross between children’s blocks and the model cartilage one might see at the orthopaedist’s – this particular contraption enjoyed the spotlight in 2005 as one of the world’s first self-replicating robots. And there are cubbies full of odd-shaped plastic sculptures, including some chess pieces that are products of the lab’s 3D printer.

In 2006, Lipson’s Creative Machines Lab pioneered the Fab@home, a low-cost build-your-own 3D printer, available to anyone with internet access. For around $2,500 and some tech know-how, you could make a desktop machine and begin printing three-dimensional objects: an iPod case made of silicon, flowers from icing, a dolls’ house out of spray-cheese. Within a year, the Fab@home site had received 17 million hits and won a 2007 Breakthrough of the Year award fromPopular Mechanics. But really, the printer was just a side project: it was a way to fabricate all the bits necessary for robotic self-replication. The robots and the 3D printer-pieces populating the cubbies are like fossils tracing the evolutionary history of a new kind of organism. ‘I want to evolve something that is life,’ Lipson told me, ‘out of plastic and wires and inanimate materials.’

Upon first meeting, Lipson comes off like a cross between Seth Rogen and Gene Wilder’s Young Frankenstein (minus the wild blond hair). He exudes a youthful kind of curiosity. You can’t miss his passionate desire to understand what makes life tick. And yet, as he seeks to create a self-assembling, self-aware machine that can walk right out of his laboratory, Lipson is aware of the risks. In the corner of his office is a box of new copies of Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. First published in 1994 when Kelly was executive editor of Wired magazine, the book contemplates the seemingly imminent merging of the biological and technological realms — ‘the born and the made’ — and the inevitable unpredictability of such an event. ‘When someone wants to do a PhD in this lab, I give them this book before they commit,’ Lipson told me. ‘As much as we are control freaks when it comes to engineering, where this is going toward is loss of control. The more we automate, the more we don’t know what’s going to come out of it.’”

Tags: ,

“The CCML Food Printers Require Edible Inks”

September 13, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Cornell Creative Machines Lab is trying to popularize 3D food printers. From a Lakshmi Sandhana article in Fast Company:

“The newest 3-D food printer, now being honed at CCML, can produce: tiny space shuttle-shaped scallop nuggets (image above); and cakes or cookies that, when you slice into them, reveal a special message buried within, like a wedding date, initials (image below) or a corporate logo. They can also make a solid hamburger patty, with liquid layers of ketchup and mustard, or a hamburger substitute that’s made from vegan or raw foods.

The CCML food printers require edible inks and electronic blueprints called FabApps. This machine prints food using multiple cartridges, going line by line until the desired shape is extruded. ‘The electronic blueprint specifies exactly which materials go where–it is essentially a blueprint of the food item,’ says Hod Lipson, the head of the lab.”

Tags: ,

Silicone Ear Created By 3D Bio-Printer

February 22, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“In 20 years, this technology will be mainstream…absolutely,” says Hod Lipson, roboticist at Cornell University. (Thanks Endgadget.)

Tags: