Techdirt. Stories filed under "automation"

Rice University Professor: SkyNET's Gonna Take Ur Jerbs!

Timothy Geigner — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:39:00 PDT

It's sad to note how collective humanity has done an ostrich on the warnings about the machines. Still the NFL exists, robbing us of our best and brightest, who will no longer be available for the coming war with SkyNET. Conferences on what to do about the surely coming robot horde have produced little in the way of a path forward and have gone relatively unreported in any case. Due to this, we know very little about what form the non-existent threat of terminator-like metal monsters will take. Will they simply wage war against us? Will they syphon our body heat for energy? Will they farm our skin and dance around in it to Goodbye Horses, like some kind of graphite Buffalo Bill?

Not according to Rice University professor Moshe Vardi, who claims that they have a far more terrifying plan in store: displacing the human workforce.

Pictured: A Rice University professor in the near future
Image source: CC BY 2.0

According to Vardi, sometime around the year 2045, you won't have a job any longer because the robots will have taken it away from you.

In recent writings, Vardi traces the evolution of the idea that artificial intelligence may one day surpass human intelligence, from Turing to Kurzweil, and considers the recent rate of progress. Although early predictions proved too aggressive, in the space of 15 years we’ve gone from Deep Blue beating Kasparov at chess to self-driving cars and Watson beating Jeopardy champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Extrapolating into the future, Vardi thinks it’s reasonable to believe intelligent machines may one day replace human workers almost entirely and in the process put millions out of work permanently.

Well, looking back through the history of technological progress, you can certainly see his point. And once you've seen that point, you can laugh at it. And once you've laughed at it, you can call his local police station and request that they remove any science fiction movies from his home by force, because he's clearly seen too many of them.

The problem with thinking that artificial intelligence is going to replace us in the workforce is two-fold. First, it cheaply ignores the impact every other form of technological progress has had thus far. Robots are used on assembly lines, yet there's no drastic net loss of jobs. When the automobile was invented, it isn't as though the buggy whip makers simply died off in unemployed starvation. There are other jobs to be had, most often created as a direct result of the advance in technology. Assembly line workers become machinists. Buggy whip makers go to work for the auto companies. There can be pain in the market in the short term as it is disrupted, but on a long enough timeline everything seems to even back out.

The second problem is the failure to recognize that people value some products and services provided by our fellow meat-sacks. Can auto-attendant systems handle phone duties? Sure, but there are tons of companies that specifically advertise the concept of customers being able to talk to a "real" person. Can machines make rugs? Yup, yet there's a huge market in hand-woven rugs out there. And the service industries rely heavily on personality. A machine might be able to serve me my beer at my local watering hole, but will it listen to me complain about my job if I'm having a crappy day? Will it be able to offer me an opinion on which wine is the best on the menu? And, as the article notes, what if any workforce disruption that does occur is desirable?

Perhaps in the future, while some of us work hard to build and program super-intelligent machines, others will work hard to entertain, theorize, philosophize, and make uniquely human creative works, maybe even pair with machines to accomplish these things. These may seem like niche careers for the few and talented. But at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, jobs of the mind in general were niche careers.

I call dibs on being the new Socrates.

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DailyDirt: Can Computers Grade Written Essays?

Michael Ho — Thu, 9 May 2013 17:00:00 PDT

Technology aimed at education could really benefit an incredible number of students by making classes and learning (potentially) a more pleasant and efficient experience. Computers can't replace a really good human teacher, but they can make it easier for good human teachers to reach a vast audience of students. Massively open online courses (MOOCs) promise to change how education works, but there are some technological tools that might be missing. It's pretty straightforward to test students on math problems in an automated way, but grading essays is a much more daunting problem. There have been some calls for automated grading software from various organizations (like the Hewlett Foundation). But at the same time, the National Council of Teachers of English argues that computers simply can't grade essays. Here are just a few more links on this debate over the use of algorithms over English professors (or grad students).

EdX, the non-profit started by Harvard and MIT, is releasing some software to automagically grade human-written essays. Some see this software as just another tool for educators to use for more immediate feedback to students, while others are worried that these algorithms will be used incorrectly and lead to disastrous educational policies and outcomes. [url]
There are studies that show algorithms are statistically comparable to humans when it comes to ranking essays on a 5 point scale. There are things machines can do better and things humans do better -- just make sure you know the differences and automated essay grading can be done productively in the right context. [url]
Automated essay readers can grade 16,000 essays in 20 seconds. The Educational Testing Service is testing out automation, so students may soon be facing algorithmic grading for their college entrance exams. [url]
Grading a few sentences can be harder than it might look. Professional (human) teachers are obviously better at interpreting the insights and ideas behind the words a student writes, but computers scale much better and never tire of horrible spelling mistakes or misplaced modifiers.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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DailyDirt: Better Robots Keep Coming

Michael Ho — Tue, 9 Apr 2013 17:00:00 PDT

Robot research has made some remarkable advances over the years, but we don't quite have Star Wars servant droids or helpful general-purpose household bots from the Jetsons yet. While we've gained some autonomous vacuum cleaners, there's still plenty of room for improvement. Here are just a few robotic advances to be aware of before droids try to conquer their wetware creators.

DARPA's robotics programs have been developing cool and useful robots for decades, and one of its latest demonstrations is a set of robotic hands (and arms) that can change a tire (almost). This bot won't be replacing F1 pit crews any time soon, since it hasn't quite mastered putting the tire back on (and it's painfully slow), but it shows that robot hands are almost ready to do some everyday tasks without human supervision. [url]
Mechanical computers aren't too common nowadays, but they could make a comeback in artificial muscles. Robot muscles that can respond reflexively to stimuli might lead to better robots that can navigate dynamic environments. [url]
Boston Dynamics' BigDog robot is almost creepy in how it moves like an animal -- hitting that Uncanny Valley of robotic movement. Recently, BigDog has been given a head/neck appendage that can hold and throw heavy things, adding to its Frankenstein-look of a cobbled together collection of robot body parts. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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DailyDirt: Fast Food, Faster!

Michael Ho — Fri, 1 Feb 2013 17:00:00 PST

The fast food industry is always trying to be more efficient about its services. There have been lots of different ways to accomplish quicker fast food, and adding technology to the restaurant recipe sometimes works, but oftentimes doesn't (eg. uWink Bistros). Here are just a few examples for getting your hamburger orders filled faster.

Momentum Machines has a hamburger-making robot that can churn out about 360 burgers in an hour, each custom made to order. This hamburger chef can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever... until you are full. [url]
In 2003, McDonald's tested some automation equipment for grilling its burgers and cooking its french fries. We covered this story about a decade ago, but we don't seem to be living in an all-robot McD's future now. Oh well. [url]
If you're in San Francisco, you can get ~~an In&Out~~ Super Duper burger delivered to you for just $10, fulfilled by TaskRabbit via a simple web-based order form. It's not available any time, so there's no option to get french fries during the Renaissance. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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DailyDirt: Adapting To A TL;DR Future

Michael Ho — Wed, 9 Jan 2013 17:00:00 PST

With the ever growing amount of content to read/watch/hear, humans are going to need to figure out much more efficient ways to consume information. Speed reading will only get us so far, and then we're going to have to rely on ways to filter out irrelevant stuff so we can focus more on just the things that we really need to see. Here are just a few early attempts to get computers to help us out with information overload.

Clipped is a software tool that tries to extract key bits of information from long pieces of text. Tanay Tandon, a 15yo kid, created it and also filed a patent for his algorithm.... [url]
TLDR is a browser plug-in that tries to create short summaries for articles. These algorithms aren't perfect, but then again, neither is human comprehension. [url]
Another teenager wrote news-summarizing software and raised $1 million for it. It was originally called Trimmit, but now it's Summly -- and 16yo Nick D'Alosio is looking for some "serious scientists" to help him improve his algorithms with that VC funding. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?

Mike Masnick — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:04:00 PST

For reasons that I do not fully understand, Paul Krugman is a name that gets people really worked up for often irrational reasons -- mostly having to do with red team / blue team political arguments that have little bearing on actual economics. My personal preference is to ignore the whole somewhat meaningless "left/right" dichotomy (no matter where a particular economist is normally associated) and focus on the actual economics being discussed. And, recently, Krugman has been doing some deep thinking on what he's referred to as the question of robots or robber barons. The issue may be a little deep in the weeds for folks who aren't econgeeks, but it is both really interesting and really important to think through.

The short version -- hopefully translated sufficiently via my "econgeek to normal people" translator -- is that there are economic metrics out there suggesting that things should be much better than they are: in particular, companies are making massive profits. But, at the same time, wages are not showing any sort of increase. Krugman uses this graph to demonstrate the point: As the graphic shows, as a percentage, wages ("labor") have been dropping. If the output is not going to wages, where is it going? Krugman uses the term "capital," which, basically (in this case), just means return on investment for assets: that is, if you own stuff, you're getting a return on it, which is going into your pockets rather than to people doing work. Of course, when you look just at percentages of a single factor, things can quickly get misleading -- and at least some have suggested that looking at just the percentage going to labor may be exaggerated by a hidden third factor, such as land. While using terms like "labor" and "capital" are standard in economics, I find that they actually can distort the conversation (and even Krugman notes that some of the discussion veers into what sounds like "Marxist" discussions on "capital" and "labor").

A simpler and perhaps more useful way of looking at things is: Where is the money going and how is it spent? And, as it stands now, over the past ten years, the amount of money going to wages, as a percentage of money being made, has been going down. So what's it all mean? Krugman has two theories -- both of which may actually be true to varying degrees.

Robots: The idea here is that automation has meant fewer jobs, and thus has held down wages and kept the supply of workers high. This is an old argument, of course, but perhaps one worth thinking about. We'll discuss it more below.
Robber barons: That is, monopolists. The argument here is that when you see an aggregation of wealth to "capital," it suggests that the free market is somehow "stuck," and one possible reason is that the "owners of capital" have effectively created monopolies, allowing them to retain more than a free market might allow, via monopoly rents.

If you think both of those suggestions sound somewhat anachronistic, you're not wrong. Both of those possible arguments sound quite similar to the complaints people made a century or so ago. And, as with that situation, I'd argue that the two explanations that Krugman puts forth may both have some element of truth, but also may not tell the whole story by a long shot.

Let's start with the robots. For years, many have suggested that greater productivity from automation leads to lower demand for human employees, thus creating less demand for workers -- leading to lower salaries, high unemployment and all that jazz. Many people (myself included) have often used the term "luddites" for this, after the original followers of Ned Ludd, who believed that the industrial revolution was destroying jobs, leading to the "Luddites" smashing machines. The term is used pejoratively, because the original Luddites, for the most part, weren't just wrong but were ridiculously wrong. Far from destroying jobs, automation eventually created many new jobs.

And, instinctively, I have the same reaction to the argument when put forth here. We've heard this claim for so long, that greater productivity leads to fewer jobs -- but in practice it has never come true. It has, certainly, meant that there has been job displacement, and potentially a shift in job skills requirements -- which can be very difficult for those whose skills are no longer relevant. But, in the longer term, such automation has always created more jobs.

Does that necessarily mean that this shall always be the case? Not necessarily, but I'd argue that the long history of it being true suggests that you would need very, very strong evidence to back up the claim this time around -- and I'm not convinced we've seen that. Of course, playing devil's advocate to myself, I can see one plausible argument that someone could make (even if I don't think it's true): automation in physical work increased demands for jobs in other sectors -- such as services and information processing (desk jobs). But the information age revolution has now started to automate many of those jobs as well, and it's not clear where we move along the spectrum from there. That is, as the argument goes, that new jobs have always been created further along the spectrum from manual labor to services to information processing, but we've more or less hit the end of the line.

I find this difficult to believe for a few reasons. First, the same argument was made in the past every time some new fears about automation came along. And every time it turned out that there were new job opportunities. I can't see that changing now. At all. If it becomes true that labor is really increasingly available or cheap, that will create all sorts of new opportunities to make use of it. The news that Apple is going to start making some computers in the US is just a small indication of that possibility coming true. And, yes, even if they're using a robot-centric process, they're still creating domestic jobs. But, further on that, there's tremendous opportunity coming out of disruptive innovation to create new jobs where none really existed previously. The number of people making a living by selling goods on things like eBay, Etsy or Amazon is astounding. Even newer tools like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are creating additional possibilities, and we write about all sorts of interesting business models all the time -- creating new opportunities. Similarly, we've seen things like distributed call center services, such that people can work from home and be productive. In fact, this could help explain some aspects of wage decline, as some people, who might have formerly not been in the workforce at all, can now work part time from home.

But, of course, job displacement is messy, and figuring out where the new job opportunities are, and how they apply on a wider scale, is not a smooth process at all. It takes time to work out the kinks -- and that could explain the lag in wages. It could simply be the dip in efficiency as we enter that chaotic period of experimentation and attempts at new things before it becomes more clear where the new job opportunities will be.

The "robber baron" argument makes a lot more sense to me -- and it even appears that Krugman may be leaning bit more that way, after hearing from some other economists:

Barry Lynn and Philip Longman have argued that we're seeing a rapid rise in market concentration and market power. The thing about market power is that it could simultaneously raise the average rents to capital and reduce the return on investment as perceived by corporations, which would now take into account the negative effects of capacity growth on their markups. So a rising-monopoly-power story would be one way to resolve the seeming paradox of rapidly rising profits and low real interest rates.

Of course, I think that the use of the term "robber barons" is potentially misleading as well. This isn't necessarily a case of the Andrew Carnegies, JD Rockefellers, JP Morgans and Cornelius Vanderbilts of old. Instead, it often seems that what we're dealing with are less super greedy "robber barons" (and yes, I know some people will point to examples that suggest otherwise -- especially on Wall Street) and more of a fight against innovation. This goes back to my recent discussion on corruption laundering, in which companies are able to secure favorable regulations that actually help them against disruptive upstarts by arguing that allowing the upstarts will harm "jobs" or will upset the economic apple cart.

In the end, that leads me to wonder if what we're really seeing is a third thing, which can account for both the "robots" and "robber barons" story lines and tie back to that corruption laundering situation: the rise of what Andy Kessler has referred to as political entrepreneurs vs. market entrepreneurs. In that scenario, you have companies who aren't quite robber barons, but are adept at using the political system to engage in a form of "corruption laundering" to put in place regulations that limit true competition and the kind of innovation that helps to speed up the creation of new jobs.

In some sense, we've discussed this before, in noting that politicians often fear disruptive innovation because it "destroys jobs" even as it's creating new ones. So they pass regulations that hinder disruptive innovation, in an attempt to "protect jobs." But the end result is that the few larger players in the industry tend to suck up control of that industry and, as such, limit job growth (and begin to profit by being able to capture the monopoly rents). They can employ greater automation to suck more profits out of their own business, but also can hold back the disruptive innovation that creates new jobs.

So, in that scenario, you get higher profits and fewer jobs -- with increasing automation. But you're missing out on the important disruptive innovations that help create the new jobs. Part of the problem with the "robots" storyline from Krugman is that it assumes all technological advancement is equal: that big companies automating is the same thing as disruptive innovation that enables new jobs. I don't think that's true. Either way, these are certainly big and important questions worth thinking about and exploring.

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DailyDirt: Robots Are Stealing Our Jobs

Michael Ho — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:00:00 PDT

Robots are moving towards taking over more tasks that are boring and/or unpleasant for people to do. Some folks are concerned that robots will replace too many human jobs, but it'll take some time before robots are cheap enough to really replace a lot of people. Still, it really is just a matter of time before robot costs come down, so we'd better start preparing for the inevitable. Here are just a few robot projects that are trying to play nice with us.

Baxter is a 6-foot tall, 300-lb robot that is easy to program, costs about $22,000, is designed to work safely next to humans by moving slowly and gently, and could help bring back manufacturing to countries with high standards of living. Unlike other manufacturing robots, Baxter doesn't have to be put in a protective cage and can self-adapt to small changes in its work environment. [url]
The Last Moment Robot is designed to comfort dying hospital patients -- but it's just an art project for now and not an actual prototype for practical use. Other therapeutic robots have been used in nursing homes, but these comforting robots sound a bit more creepy than calming. At least they're trying, though. [url]
Would you trust a three-armed robotic barber to shave your head? One guy had his head shaved for charity by a remote-controlled mechanical barber, and he lived to tell the tale. He also looked very nervous during the procedure. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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DailyDirt: To Serve Man... Sushi

Michael Ho — Fri, 4 May 2012 17:00:00 PDT

More than anywhere else, Japanese researchers seem a bit obsessed with creating robots to do some wacky things. So why not create some sushi robots to eliminate some of the boring, repetitive work in sushi restaurants? Here are just a few examples that point towards a future of fully-automated sushi production.

The SushiBot can serve up to 3,600 portions of nigiri sushi in an hour. Its manufacturer, Suzumo, also has bots for maki rolls, but disappointingly, these robots still need a human operator to handle the raw fish and some of the other ingredients. [url]
Yoshiaki Shiraishi was the inventor of the sushi boat conveyor belt -- an idea he borrowed from seeing beer bottles on a conveyor belt. His kaiten-zushi system helped to spread the global consumption of sushi, and it first appeared in 1958 in Japan. [url]
Sushi-related robots aren't just replacing some human workers; some are carving out completely new jobs for themselves... such as laser-cutting intricate patterns into seaweed. No human would want to do this job by hand in a busy restaurant. [url]
To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Luddite Redux: Don't Kill The Robots Just Because They Replace Some Jobs

Andrew Fong — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:02:00 PST

Here are a couple points to ponder:

Fun fact #1: California prison guards are expensive.

Fun fact #2: South Korea's getting robot prison guards.

I'm sure the prisoners welcome their new robot overlords, but I bet the prison guards union doesn't. Or any other union for that matter. And they're not alone. Over the past few weeks, tech industry commentators spent slightly more time than usual wringing their hands over whether technology was killing jobs. I think this video captures the debate pretty well. It might sound paradoxical, but this replacement of humans by machines is actually a good reason to limit secondary liability for the robotics industry. And I'm not just referring to secondary liability in the copyright sense, but to any liability incurred by robot manufacturers because of how others use their robots.

This isn't a theoretical issue. Automation and efficiency have always threatened certain jobs and industries -- and one of the standard reactions is to somehow blame the technology itself and seek to hinder it, quite frequently by over-regulation. Of course, the extreme version of this is where the term "luddite" came from -- an organized effort to attack more efficient technology. Of course, that resulted in violence against the machines. More typical were overly burdensome regulations, such as "red flag laws," that said automobiles could only be driven if someone walked in front of them waving a red flag to "warn people" of the coming automobile. Supporters of this law, like supporters of secondary liability laws for robots, can and will claim that there are "legitimate safety reasons" for such laws and that the impact on holding back the innovation and extending the lifetime of obsolete jobs is just a mere side benefit. But like those red flag laws, applying secondary liability to robotics would significantly hinder a key area of economic growth.

Techdirt has covered the question of a secondary liablity safe harbor for robots before, and Ryan Calo's written a great paper about the legal issues coming out of the robotics arena, but an even more important (and specific) point is exactly why these safe harbors matter for job creation -- even as some continue to argue the other way (that such safe harbors will destroy jobs).

Technology has been replacing human labor since humans invented, well, technology. But while technology may get rid of inefficient jobs, it eventually creates replacements. To cite one commonly-used example, the switched telephone network put operators out of a job, but it created plentiful new jobs for telemarketers (and other businesses that relied upon the packet-switched phone network... including everything built on and around the internet today). The problem is that while it was obvious how many operators would be out of a job, it wasn't immediately clear how lucrative (or annoying) telemarketing could be, let alone the eventual transformation of the phone lines into a vast global information sharing network, and the hundreds of millions of new jobs created because of it.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee examine this problem in detail in their book, which I recommend. But much of it boils down to this. Technology creates jobs, yet it's not obvious where the new jobs are, so we need bold, persistent experimentation to find them:

Parallel experimentation by millions of entrepreneurs is the best and fastest way to do that. As Thomas Edison once said when trying to find the right combination of materials for a working lightbulb: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Multiply that by 10 million entrepreneurs and you can begin to see the scale of the economy's innovation potential.

This is especially important for robotics. It's obvious how robots make certain jobs obsolete -- e.g. driverless cars don't need drivers -- but it's less clear what new job opportunities they open up. We need to try different things.

Unfortunately, secondary liability creates problems for robot manufacturers who open up their products for experimentation. Ryan Calo explains this in more detail, but the basic problem is that, unlike computers, robots can easily cause physical harm. And under product liability law in most states, when there's physical harm to person or property, everyone involved in the manufacturing and distribution of that product is legally liable.

Ideally, we'd want something like a robot app store. But robot manufacturers would be unwilling to embrace commercial distribution of third-party apps if it increased their chances of being sued. There's evidence that Section 230's safe harbors (and, to some extent, the DMCA's safe harbors) play a key role in facilitating third-party content on the web. Absent a similar provision for robots, manufacturers are more likely to limit their liability by sticking to single-purpose robots or simply locking down key systems. That's fine, if we know exactly what we want our robots to do -- e.g. replace workers. But if we want robots to create jobs, it'd help to limit secondary liability for the robotics industry, open things up, and let widespread experiments happen freely.

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Let Them Sing... About Copyright?

Mike Masnick — Fri, 4 Dec 2009 18:50:46 PST

Shocklee points us to an awesome little app that lets you type in whatever lyrics (or, well, words) you want, hit play, and whatever you type will be sung for you, using clips from various famous songs. It's a really fun little app (though, I was amused that they have no clip for the word "lyrics" despite the service being all about lyrics) and can get pretty addictive. In fact, if you want to hear this entire post sung outloud via this system, just click here (please note, this will take a really long time to load, but it's totally worth it). However, like with many other cool music projects, I'm left wondering whether or not some would consider this to be copyright infringement. All of the clips are tiny -- one word, or in many cases, less than a full word, but they do seem to come from various popular and well-known songs. It's not hard to identify some of them. I have no idea if the company behind this service cleared all the licenses (it's possible), but if that's the case, you'd have to imagine that this service would get ridiculously expensive very quickly. If a simple lyric of, say, 8 words, involves a dozen clips, with royalties needing to be paid for each, such a service would quickly become impossible. Doesn't it say something when copyright law would effectively outlaw an awesome and fun app like this one?

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The Value Of Twitter As Compared To Google

Mike Masnick — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:33:00 PDT

I recognize that it's becoming fashionable among many to bash Twitter, but for those who have learned how to use Twitter well (as opposed to many who use it poorly), the value of it is quite impressive. I now spend a lot more time using Twitter to find news than I do my feed reader -- and that's amazing to me. However, I think Mark Cuban actually has made the strongest point, noting that in many ways, Twitter is becoming more useful than Google. This isn't to say that Twitter is "killing" Google (x killing y stories are lame), but that many people are finding information via Twitter now, where they used to find it via Google.

Cuban gives an example of trying to buy a car, where there may be a lot of value in being able to message a guru on the type of car he wants to buy via Twitter (or, better yet, finding a few of them). I know I've found Twitter to be useful in this manner. A few months ago, I was looking for a new backpack for my computer -- and I had very specific requirements (such as the ability to carry both a laptop and a netbook at times comfortably). It was quite difficult to come up with a Google query that made sense for such a thing, but I could ask it easily in 140 characters and plenty of people could easily understand it, and then provide thoughts and recommendations. It comes back to two points:

Having real humans respond to a query works well for more specific queries that simply aren't well automated.
Perhaps much more importantly, real people can better offer recommendations or explanations than an automated query on Google, which simply seeks to find data or answers.

Basically, what Twitter is enabling is an entirely different form of information gathering online: via conversation, rather than via data dump. Each has it's place, but the reason many of us find Twitter so compelling is that it's opening up tremendous new possibilities to enable useful information flow that simply wasn't possible before.

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Can You Automate Patent Processing?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:31:14 PDT

One of the big complaints with the current patent system is the amount of time it takes for an application to actually go through the process of approval. Supporters of the patent system often insist that the "solution" is to fund the Patent Office with more money so it can hire a lot more examiners. Of course, this suggests that the problem is a linear one, and it can be fixed by just throwing money and bodies at the problem -- when there's little evidence that's the case. Some of us have always believed that the real way to fix the problem is to bring the patent system much closer to its original purpose, where patents were the exception, only to be used in exceptional cases where other incentives wouldn't do the job. However, over in Europe they seem to think there's a third way: better automating the patent process. A European consortium has been working on something called "PATExpert," which they describe as using "semantic web" technologies. Unfortunately, details aren't particularly forthcoming, and for all the talk of the "semantic web" over the years, it's been little more than buzzwords and hype from what we've seen. Throw in the word paradigm, and you have to wonder if what's been built does anything even remotely useful:

"The greatest success of PATExpert has been to initiate the change of the paradigm currently followed in patent processing services from textual to semantic."

It would be great if someone could explain that in plain English, because it sounds like gibberish trying to sound intelligent. But, back on point, it's hard to see how any "automated" system would actually help in the process of approving patents. Considering how many mistakes are made and bad patents allowed through, I'd worry that automating the process is only likely to create significantly more problems.

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First Thing We Do Is Automate Away All The Lawyers...

Mike Masnick — Mon, 8 Dec 2008 10:18:33 PST

Since we write about an awful lot of lawsuits and public policy issues around here, we often can be pretty harsh on lawyers (admittedly, we often fall short of appreciating the good lawyers who protect everyone from the worst abuses). But, one thing that has seemed pretty clear is that, by opening up more legal issues, the pace of technology innovation has increased the demand for more lawyers. But will that always be the case? Apparently, some believe that a business ripe for disintermediation, thanks to the internet, will be the legal profession. The idea is that a lot of basic (high margin) legal work can now be automated. Part of this is probably true. The amount that businesses have to pay for fairly routine processes can be quite ridiculous at times. However, I doubt that the legal profession is really facing a shift as major as those facing, say, the entertainment industry. It may cut out some margins on the low end of stuff usually handled by paralegals or new associates, but it seems likely that there will be plenty of room for lawyers. Sometimes, in fact, it seems like our elected representatives are really mostly focused on a program of "full employment for lawyers," by passing laws that only require more lawyers.

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Why Not Just Computerize Sports Refs And Umps?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 3 Sep 2008 21:59:00 PDT

Last week, Major League Baseball introduced instant replay for the first time (oddly, MLB rushed the introduction mid-season, with no real testing), which has many wondering if the rather "human" element of umpires making bad calls will be a lost element of the game. While it can suck when such wrong calls go against your team, the umpires' ability to screw up has always been a part of the appeal to many fans of the game. However, Farhad Manjoo over at Slate is wondering about the inevitable next step: moving to completely automated umpires and referees in various sports. He compares the Hawk Eye system that is used in tennis to determine whether a ball is in or out to the efforts in MLB, but points out that computerized systems are far from perfect. In fact, they can lead to some highly questionable results, such as a situation in which every single human observer believed a ball was out, and even television replays showed the ball appeared out -- but Hawk Eye claimed it was in, and that the problem was that human eyes weren't good enough to see if the ball was really in or out. At that point, it makes you wonder whether or not such a machine ruling really makes sense.

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Stop Hating Foreigners, Start Hating AJAX

Mike Masnick — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:36:35 PDT

Whenever we talk about offshoring around here it seems to generate a lot of controversy, as a group of folks show up insisting that offshoring "costs" the US jobs -- despite tons of evidence that that's not true at all. It does change the nature of jobs and may emphasize different skills, but more efficient production tends to create more new jobs. In fact, we've tried to point out in the past that offshoring is really no different than automation, though it's less efficient. So we wonder if people who are against offshoring are also against automation (or, well, any kind of productivity enhancement). Perhaps they should be. Slashdot points us to a recent article saying that more modern "web 2.0" technologies are allowing firms to cut IT staff more significantly than offshoring. Yet, don't be fooled. This is unlikely to mean fewer jobs in the long run -- but it will change the types of skills that companies are looking for. But, in the meantime, pure unadulterated luddism is a lot more socially acceptable (if equally as pointless) than the garden-variety racism that comes out of people when talking about offshoring. It's just equally as pointless.

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German Restaurant Ditches Waiters, Sends Food To Diners On Metal Slide Rails

Mike Masnick — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:44:00 PDT

We've definitely seen restaurants embrace technology and automation to bizarre ends before, but apparently a new restaurant in Germany is taking that to extremes. The Nuremberg-based 's Blaggers has completely replaced waiters with an automated system (via The Raw Feed). While there have certainly been fast food restaurants that have let patrons order themselves, in this case, it's a sit-down restaurant. Diners order their meals via a touchscreen, which is relayed to the kitchen which (and this turns out to be important) is upstairs from the dining area. Then, using a special hotpot that connects to a bunch of spiral steel rails your food is delivered by gravity power. The touchscreen actually keeps you up to date, as well, telling you how long it'll be until your food is delivered. The terminals also accept payment. Of course, the article doesn't explain how the cleanup process works... Perhaps diners can send the finished dishes down to a dishwasher in the basement? The guy behind it is hoping to license the offering to other restaurants (including McDonald's), but from the early reviews of his own restaurant, it sounds like people have been coming for the novelty, but some are a bit turned off by the mechanical nature of everything (and one person even compared it to the machinery used to feed pigs on large farms).

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