The Rapid Rise and Fall of Robot Babysitters

During the winter of 2017, an 18-year old college student named Canon Reeves spent much of his time trailing a knee-high robot around Fayetteville, Arkansas, as it delivered Amazon packages to students. The robot, created by a start-up called Starship Technologies in 2014, is basically a cooler on wheels; it uses radars, sensors, and nine cameras to make deliveries. Reeves’s job was to monitor how it handled various grounds, field comments from the public, and press the off switch if necessary. He said, “People would also ask if it could deliver beer.” It couldn’t.

Broadly speaking, jobs of caring for robots fall under the umbrella of careers in automation, which include maintenance, engineering and programming. The demand for people with this skill set is considerable, with 20 million to 50 million new jobs to be expected in this category by 2030, according to the Mckinsey Global Institute. In the year that ended in June 2018, Indeed.com had almost three times the number of positions on the recruitment committee that ended in June 2016.

Over the last year, a 34-year-old businessman named David Rodriguez spent hundreds of hours following a machine called the KiwiBot around UC Berkeley’s campus while it delivered Red bull and other drinks to students. To retrieve (检索) orders, the app encourages students to give the robot a wave; the robot’s digital eyes will roll depending on its mood. Rodriguez, who heads business development for the start-up, was tasked, early on, with monitoring the KiwiBot for problems – even carrying it, should the motors fail. Since April 2018, though, the KiwiBot has largely been left unattended, and the majority of human interactions involve technical checks and loading food into the robot. To eliminate the boring work, the team is developing a restaurant robot to collect and load orders – which could happen in 2020. However, Rodriguez assured me that his staff won’t be out of work. Everyone holds double roles in the company. Greater robot self-governing just means employees will shift their focus to accounting, engineering, and design.

Mckinsey estimates that millions of jobs globally could be lost to automation by 2030. “A huge number of jobs will be produced as autonomous vehicles are released into the environment,” Ramsey said. In 2016, Bosch started training students from Schoolcraft College, a community college in Michigan, in autonomous-vehicle repair; Toyota has trained students in maintenance as well. “We might even see a return to low-level jobs where people come and fuel the car for you,” Ramsey said. “Until we can wirelessly charge, someone needs to refuel them.” The hardest-to-automate industries, as it happens, are the ones that require looking after humans, such as childcare, education and health care. Robot babysitters might feel like they have scored the job of the future, but in fact, they might be better positioned.

We Are Cyborgs

RoboCop, the Bionic Woman, Darth Vader—what do these characters have in common? They are all cyborgs—humans who are made more powerful by advanced technology. You might think that cyborgs exist only in fiction, or are a possibility only in the distant future. But cyborg technology already exists.

The word “cyborg” was first used in 1960 and defined as an organism(有机体) “to which external parts have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments”. According to this definition, an astronaut in a spacesuit is an example of cyborg, as the spacesuit helps the astronaut adapt to a new environment—space. More recently, the word has evolved(进化)to refer to human beings who have mechanical body parts that make them more than human.

Although super-humans like RoboCop are not yet a reality, advances in real-life cyborg technology allow some people to compensate(弥补)for abilities they have lost, and give other people new and unusual abilities. An example is filmmaker Rob Spence and his bionic eye. Spence injured one of his eyes in an accident. A camera was implanted(移植)in his prosthetic eye. The eye is not connected to his brain or optic nerve(视神经), but it can record what he sees. Spence has used his camera eye to record interviews for a documentary about people with bionic body parts.

Some types of cyborg technology replace a lost ability by connecting directly to a person’s nerves. Michael Chorost completely and suddenly lost his ability to hear in July of 2001. Two months later, doctors placed a cochlear(耳蜗)implant, a kind of computer, inside his skull. This type of implant connects to auditory nerves and allows a deaf person to hear again. Around the world, over 300,000 people have now been fitted with cochlear implants.

These examples of cyborg technology have enabled people to enhance or change their abilities and improve their lives. But does everyone want to use cyborg technology? It might be too late to decide. Cyborg scientist Amber Case argues that most of us are already cyborgs. Anyone who uses a computer or a smartphone, Case claims, is a cyborg. Consider the data that you have in your smartphone. It keeps information for you so you don’t have to remember it: notes, phone numbers, email addresses, messages. It also allows you to communicate with friends and family via telephone, text messages, email, and social networks.

The potential benefits of cyborg technology are evident, but can this new technology be harmful, too? Could we become too dependent on cyborg technology—and become less than human? These still remain questions.

Are Coral Reefs(珊瑚礁) Adapting to Climate Change?

Scientists reported that climate change might actually be helping ancient trees thrive(长得健壮). Now there seems to be more positive news—this time about the coral in our oceans whose population has been severely affected in last few decades by rising temperatures, disease and human carelessness.

Coral reefs as you probably know are not just colorful calcium carbonate(钙碳酸盐)structures that provide shelter to a wonderful number of fish, but also a close relationship or partnership between coral polyps(珊瑚虫) and single celled living things called zooxanthellae(虫黄藻). The coral polyps give the zooxanthellae a home and in return the later provide the coral polyps with their vivid color and food. They support each other in a fantastic balance, one that is getting severely damaged by the rising temperatures which are causing the coral polyps to reject their zooxanthellae friends, removing their color and food source.

Scientists estimate the phenomenon of rising temperatures combined with disease has destroyed the coral reef population by more than 80%. It is therefore no wonder that scientists all over the world are looking for solutions to try to restore this all important link to sea life. However, while human efforts like planting the coral again have been somewhat successful, they are not   enough to replace all the coral that has been dying due to climate change. That is probably why reports by various researchers about certain types of coral being able to not only survive the changing ocean conditions, but also thrive in it, are being met with such enthusiasm. The most recent findings show that despite higher temperatures the coral reefs seem to be thriving.

These findings are consistent with the lab research conducted by the scientists who tried growing different varieties of coral in waters with higher temperature to see how they would react. They were surprised to discover that most of them survived and some seemed to adapt and grow normally. Encouraged by these and other similar findings, more energetic species have been introduced to see if coral reefs can be restored to their former glory. A program is busy analyzing the world's oceans to find more varieties that can be used for this same purpose．

However, we are not out of the woods yet! Scientists are still not sure how they would introduce these varieties to areas where they are not abundant and more importantly what the consequences would be on the surrounding sea life. Hopefully, the combination of new scientific research and fewer human mistakes will allow our beautiful coral to thrive again!