Hi, y’all!
Hope you are doing well. Maybe you did follow the democratic convention in the US intensely and became a bit more optimistic about the future? XOXO Fest returned. I have never been there, but it felt from “the socials” in the past that it was something special. Like Reboot Copenhagen was back in the days. I saw some people posting on Mastodon and Bluesky with positive impressions, but it was not all over the place I think. It might be a sign of the state of social media as vibe-tracker. Too many different channels, sharing fatigue?
In case you have returned from vacation, as a lot of people seem to have done these weeks, it’s great to have you back here! I already had some nice meetings to share and coordinate plans for TH/NGS 2024; check it out!
Triggered thought
One thing that happened during the summer was a rise in attention-seeking humanoid robots. It triggers thoughts. The rise of the humanoids… it feels like humanoid summer, as some say. New ones are popping up.
Listening to a podcast on soccer-playing robots, it is interesting that the goal is to create humanlike players who can win in 2050. During the research phase, all kinds of optimizations are done that fit the current state of technology, like using wheels or special forms of dribbling. The rules are adapted to stimulate the research towards the final goal of creating humanlike soccer.
But why not create optimized soccer robots with robot-exclusive features to challenge humans?
The reason is mainly that the research is meant to create multipurpose robots, as the professor in the podcast (René van de Molengraft) explained. To create a multipurpose robot, you want to connect to our human-optimized world. All of the current world contexts we live in are optimized for our human form factor.
So that raises an interesting question: Are we optimizing robots for our world, or will we develop together with robots towards a new balanced society that has an optimized environment for both humans and robots? We are changing, too, as humans, maybe not so fast in physical capabilities but in behavior and attitudes.
What if we have a phase first where we have single-task robots because the business model makes more sense, even if we have a kind of multipurpose robots with narrow AGI that might still be much more complex and expensive than single-task robots? Will the context of the physical world we live in then be adapted first to that robot, making way, smoothing out certain things? From the other angle, will humanoids be out of date (business) before becoming a reality first?
So the question is if it is most efficient to have an AGI and general-purpose robot.
Another aspect as a side path; is sport in the end the right place for robotics. Is this man right that when we move into a highly optimised and enhanced AI and robotised world, sports might that one place where we can feel like real humans.
You can challenge this, of course; sports have so much technology to play in it, and technology plays such an important role in mastering the optimal material in the field, making a difference in finding the best ‘co-performance’ with a ball, a stick, etc. For the research. Choosing soccer as context is more a means than the end goal, I expect. Widen our scope to non-humanoids (or should I say more-than-humanoid) is more interesting and fruitful.
Read the full newsletter here, with
- Notions from last week’s news on Human-AI partnerships, Robotic performances, Immersive connectedness, and Tech societies
- Paper for the week
- Looking forward with events to visit
Thanks for reading. I started blogging ideas and observations back in 2005 via Targetisnew.com. Since 2015, I have started a weekly update with links to the news and reflections. I always capture news on tech and societal impact from my perspective and interest. In the last few years, it has focused on the relationship between humans and tech, particularly AI, IoT, and robotics.
The notions from the news are distributed via the weekly newsletter, archived online here. Every week, I reflect more on one topic, a triggered thought. I share that thought here and redirect it to my newsletter for an overview of news, events, and more.
If you are a new reader and wondering who is writing, I am Iskander Smit. I am educated as an industrial designer and have worked in digital technology all my life. I am particularly interested in digital-physical interactions and a focus on human-tech intelligence co-performance. I like to (critically) explore the near future in the context of cities of things. And organising ThingsCon. I call Target_is_New my practice for making sense of unpredictable futures in human-AI partnerships. That is the lens I use to capture interesting news and share a paper every week.
Feel invited to reach out if you need some reflections; I might be able to help out!
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