B1: Week 2 Blog Post

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The conflict between Robots vs Humans arises every time artificial intelligence comes up. Not only are these machines able to do factory and clerical work, they can now also mimic the human mind. That is, robots can now do knowledge and service jobs including administering sedatives to treat patients, delivering items to patients' rooms, and ben writing news articles. These are exciting technological breakthroughs of recent years.

However, there is a sociological aspect to this. The increase in machine productivity destroyed many jobs. The blue-collar workers are mostly affected by this. Some people believe that artificial intelligence would help the workforce to be more productive to improve lives. This only accounts for engineers and scientists whose jobs are to create robots and improve their artificial intelligence. A machine could also never replace the common sense and creativity of doctors during surgeries. On the other hand, this does not take into consideration the uneducated factory workers that are being replaced by machines.

My personal opinion as an aspiring engineer is that artificial intelligence, if balanced with human touch, is a great thing. But then again, I might be a little biased...


COMPUTERS & SOFTWARE
The article's title, "Software equal to or better than humans at cataloging published science data", intrigued me. How could a man-made machine be better than its creator? But let's be honest, computers have taken over our lives, and as stated above, our jobs. However, what surprises me most is that this specific computer system called PaleoDeepDive has been proven to be better than trained professionals, even scientists! This is in contradiction to what was stated earlier on that artificial intelligence mostly affects the blue-collar workers. PaleoDeepDive can extract data from scientific publications and can place it in a database that catalogs the results of tens of thousands of individual studies.

FUTURE
Intel shares futuristic vision by creating autonomous drones, intelligent doorways, sight-assisting jackets and a button-sized chip for wearable devices. What interests me most are the drones that use RealSense cameras to detect obstacles and avoid them. As a drone owner myself, this technology fascinates me because I know how hard it is to control a drone. I would often say that they have a life of their own, they hit everything (although this may be because of my lack of skills)! This technology would ensure the safety of humans and pets alike. This could also help pilots focus more on doing their jobs instead of focusing on not hitting whatever they're using a drone to examine - the beams supporting a bridge or a tall building under construction.


REFERENCES:

Miller, Claire Cain. New York Times, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/upshot/as-robots-grow-smarter-american-workers-struggle-to-keep-up.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0

Shanan E. Peters et al. A Machine Reading System for Assembling Synthetic Paleontological Databases. PLOS ONE, December 01, 2014; DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0113523

Curtis, Sophie. 2015
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/ces/11329790/Intel-shares-futuristic-vision-of-the-connected-world.html

http://feeds.wired.com/c/35185/f/661370/s/422883f2/sc/4/l/0L0Swired0N0C20A150C0A10Cautopilot0Etech0Etotal0Egame0Echanger0Edrones0C/story01.htm

http://deepdive.stanford.edu

COMMENTS:

I find it interesting that Taylor Castonguay talked about how our resources will eventually run out if we keep using them at this rate. She mentioned that there are easy ways on how we could save our resources. One way we could do this is by simply using steel. Not only does it give maximum strength to weight ratios, it is also more environmentally-friendly than using wood. The only downside to doing this is that steel is more expensive than wood. This is true with everything. The more environmentally conscious a product is, it tends to be more expensive. 

Ilana Ritvalsky brought up a very interesting article regarding the new application for contact lenses. It will be used as an alternative to drawing blood to test the body's fluid levels. I think this is a great invention because a lot of people, kids and adults alike, are scared of needles. This is one kind of application of technology that I definitely agree with. 

J Schwakoff's blog regarding the solar panels being experimented to be used in roadways is a promising use of technology. However, I don't see this happening in the near future. There are a lot of safety issues that can be associated to this kind of technology considering the fact that there are a million things that can go wrong with machines. Regarding your question about PaleoDeepDive as mentioned above, it is a new type of system that enables developers to analyze data on a deeper level. It uses machine learning techniques to leverage on domain-specific knowledge and incorporates user feedback to improve the quality of its analysis.