MIT's Sherry Turkle on the Impact of Technology on Society

From the January 14, 2011 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Programmed for Love
By Jeffrey R. Young

In a skeptical turn, the MIT ethnographer Sherry Turkle warns of the dangers of social technology "...She has spent some 15 years since that day studying this emerging breed of "sociable robots"—including toys like Furbies and new robotic pets for the elderly—and what she considers their seductive and potentially dangerous powers.

She argues that robotics' growing trend toward creating machines that act as if they were alive could lead people to place machines in roles she thinks only humans should occupy.

Her prediction: Companies will soon sell robots designed to baby-sit children, replace workers in nursing homes, and serve as companions for people with disabilities. All of which to Turkle is demeaning, "transgressive," and "damaging to our collective sense of humanity..."

There's an App for That?!?!

The growing proliferation of robots (corresponding to the ubiquity of technology and/or drop(s) in prices) continues.

The latest example: as mentioned earlier, a lab at MIT has developed a application for the iPhone that allows a user to connect to a relatively cheap ($5,000 or so) quad-rotor helicopter available from Ascending Technologies GmbH.

What is key to the application is that the robot is finding 'its own way.' As demonstrated in the video, the user simply identifies an end point, and the mini-UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) plots its path to the target. (Presumably avoiding obstacles, like the vertical column seen in the video, in the process.)

The UAV is equipped with a camera, making the military applications obvious: seeing around corners, looking at the top of roofs for snipers, examining possible IEDs. But the availability of the components (and lost cost thereof) will mean that 'bad guys' will also have the technology. In addition, one could imagine civilian users who might also use the device for less-than-admirable ends.

In her talk on Tuesday, Dr. Cummings alluded to the Federal Aviation Administration's concern about these micro UAVs. Indeed, the FAA has started to issue regulations and related certificates for such UAVs: Honeywell received one of the first certificates in 2005 to test an untethered UAV on the Laguna Indian Reservation (about 45 miles from Albuquerque); interestingly, the FAA, in issuing such a certificate, evaluates the airworthiness of the entire system, not just the drone. Among the FAA's current requirements, there must be a ground observer or an accompanying “chase” aircraft must maintain visual contact with the drone, to insure that there is no interference with other aircraft. In February 2007, the FAA published medical certification requirements for pilots who are 'operating' UAVs.

This field will clearly continue to grow, and the FAAs ability to safely manage US airspace will be an ongoing challenge. Introduction of such mini UAVs in a battlefield situation (over Afghanistan or Pakistan, for example) will require coordination between various service.

(As an aside, radio-controlled (RC) model aircraft are subject to other rules, and are not supposed to be flown more than 400 feet off the ground.)

Wired for War Comes to Cambridge

PW Singer, author of Wired for War, spoke yesterday at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Picking up on his book, Singer spoke to a full lecture hall that seemed evenly split between undergrad, grad, and faculty. He emphasized the fact that development of military robotics -- whether designed for defensive or offensive capabilities -- was outstripping (by far) legal, ethical, and scientific analysis of the impact that such new devices have on human's capacity to make war. Instead, he spoke of scientists and robotic developers who believed that such "non-scientific" concerns were not their concern, or that the developers would be able to maintain control over the robots (rather than policy-makers.)

Singer also spoke of the speed of this change, and the impact it has been having on both young soldiers (who can fly a drone over Pakistan from North Dakota, for instance, without even having a pilot's license) to senior policy-makers (whose understanding of the rate of deployment of such weapons is, at times, woefully behind the curve.)

There was some discussion of a recent New Yorker article about the Predator and Reaper (a more-heavily armed Predator) programs. The article expressed special concern about the drones operated by the CIA, which author Jane Mayer maintains, does not have the same experience or procedural limits on indiscriminate targetting as does the military. Indeed, the UN (through its Committee on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions) recently demanded that the US make showing that such CIA-operated drones are within the bounds of international law.

Singer was joined on stage by MIT Professor Missy Cummings, a former Navy fighter pilot. Her work is in the field of unmanned flight, and she discussed a few of her ongoing projects(*).

(*) - More to come on this.

Finally, it is clear that in the post-9/11 era, funding for robotics and related projects will be dominated by the Defense Department. From the Navy (like Japan) studying baseball-playing robots to self-driven cars, it clear that military uses (and plain old military research) will drive this field. And as Singer noted, such research funding comes with costs.

A recording of the Forum is expected to posted online shortly at the MIT Technology and Culture site.