Categories
Technology

I think these

military exosuits are just awesome!

BUT, they are NOT an unmitigated good. MOST of the work injury/rehab docs I know won’t often use braces of any kind and generally try to quickly wean people off of them. Why?

Because our muscles atrophy very quickly. And if I use such a device all the time, the muscles in my back atrophy, leaving me FAR more vulnerable to injury than I was.

So this may be GREAT if I am unloading a truck full of ammo. But I need to put the suit on to unload, and then immediately take it off again. They probably understand that. But some in the general population don’t immediately understand that, if used unwisely, this could result in an increase in back injuries!

Categories
DUH! Technology

You know,

it does exactly what it was programmed to do. That’s how machines work, my friend. And this, while complex, is just a machine. It doesn’t actually have a conscience or moral agency. It can never know freedom. In fact, it can never “know” anything. It can merely put “data” through a human-inputted algorithm.

Categories
Technology

You understand

that this is the future, right?

And there are both good things and bad things about that. But it doesn’t really matter, because it is rather unavoidable.

For those of us who are disabled, it started with walkers and wheelchairs. Then it progressed to electric scooters and wheelchairs. All of which are wonderful. Even now I can get an electric wheelchair that comes to me when I “call” it with a remote. It is connected to the manufacturer via WiFi, and they can reach in to diagnose problems and do minor software repairs. And I strongly suspect that that is only the beginning.

Just think about what that means for a bit.

The age-old question is this: When is technology assistive and at what point does it become directive?

Maybe you did or said something that “your masters” didn’t approve of. Well, no mobility help for you! Your wheelchair is suddenly “bricked.”

And if you don’t think such “features” don’t often go in a coercive direction, you are simply not paying attention. Just look at Social Media!

Categories
Technology

It really is

a good idea. It appears that we pretty much already have the technology to make this work. We need nuclear backup.

BUT (and you knew that there would be a big “but” here), What would prevent an enemy combatant from knocking out your power source? Just shoot it out of the sky. It could, perhaps, be relatively easily done by all sorts of bad actors! It just seems overly vulnerable to me. I think THAT is the issue that has to be solved in relation to this. Maybe there are thing here that I don’t understand…

Categories
Buffoons Technology

Oh yes,

fight for 15!

Honestly, I like it. I also think Red Robin should also go almost entirely automatic. They have made strides, and you can order dessert and pay you bill right from the table. Really, there is very little further to go.

We are already well down that path. My recommendation? have a few waitstaff there to answer questions, deal with problems, and cater to the rigid crowd who can’t change, but not much else.

A waitress or waiter becomes the mark of a high-end restaurant.

Categories
Moral Agency Technology

We can’t even

make a truly self-driving car. Think about that before you wig out.

Look, compiling is not creating. There is a gap (and I think it is almost for sure rooted in moral agency).  There are things to act, and things to be acted upon. And the leap from computation to moral agency is not just large, they are two fundamentally different tracks! Thus, as they used to say in downtown Boston, “You can’t get there from here…”

The bottom line is that the computer is not a moral agent at all, no matter how fast it is or how big the database. Humans, OTOH, are. 

I think this mistake is rooted the biological reductionism so prevalent in all sorts of Psychology and even now in popular culture. But that reductionism is, even theoretically, wrong.

And the battle is, unsurprisingly, yet again about moral agency itself. Shocker…

Categories
Technology

Turns out, AI

robots become racist and sexist.

I vaguely remember an AI that learned exclusively from facebook posts (IIRC). It quickly became a racist, sexist, vulgar troll, much to the consternation of the researchers.

Categories
Technology War

What an amazing

world we live in!

Killer robots with machine guns appear to be entering the battlefield, and this one seems as if it was “WALL-E” that went to war. 

Categories
Technology

Wow!

REALLY nice!

Categories
Technology

Ah, the perils

of modern technology.