How AI robots can influence our day to day lives

Emerging AI technologies are changing our lives already. They proved to be useful in various industries. Their main purpose is to increase the efficiency of work in companies and decrease the margin of error in human work, which is a big problem many of them have to face daily.

Speech recognition is one of the most popular examples of AI technologies. It significantly improved the way we write articles, papers or simply look things up online and shortened the time of doing research. Nearly every iPhone user knows how to use this virtual assistant or at least what it is. It can be helpful in various aspects of life: navigation, smart home, everyday tasks, research, music, podcasts and so on. Moreover, Apple’s privacy policy states that it “keeps users’ information private and secure — whatever he asks Siri is not associated with his Apple ID. The power of the Apple Neural Engine ensures that the audio of users requests never leaves his iPhone or iPad unless he chooses to share it.”

Another extremely useful solution provided by the AI technologies is face recognition. It is used mainly by phone companies as a another, “fun” way in which customer can unlock their device. Although it proved to be quite essential in social media too. What has face recognition to do with social media, you might ask. The answer is actually quite simple. Millions of Instagram, TikTok and Facebook influencers became famous mainly because of their videos with funny, scary or beautifying filters. That might sound a little bit immature or childish, but that industry generates in fact millions of dollars monthly.

A few years ago, a team from UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University started working on a stumble-proof robot that would adapt to challenging, difficult terrain in real time. “The system was trained entirely in simulation, in a virtual version of the real world where the robot’s small brain (everything runs locally on the on-board limited compute unit) learned to maximize forward motion with minimum energy and avoid falling by immediately observing and responding to data coming in from its (virtual) joints, accelerometers and other physical sensors.”(Devin Coldewey, TechCrunch, July 9, 2021). The possibilities of this technology are endless if we would be able to apply it to our daily work or research. Robots like these would be able to explore hard-to-reach areas and make human work so much easier and more efficient.

But what if one machine could have all these qualities? What if it could speak, understand human speech, recognize faces and move, while constantly readapting to the changing environment? That’s an extremely exciting perspective. Teams from “Boston Dynamics” – robotics and engineering design company from Massachusetts and automotive company owned by Elon Musk- “Tesla” are both currently working on humanoids, which would have all of the above. If the projects are successful, it could change our daily lives forever.

Atlas – because that is the name of the Boston Dynamics robot – “was initially designed for search and rescue tasks and unveiled to the public in 2013. The robot stands about 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall and weighs about 190 pounds (86 kilograms). It is battery-powered and hydraulically actuated with 28 degrees of freedom. […] It can adapt behaviors based on what it sees. That means engineers do not have to pre-program jumping motions for all the platforms and gaps the robot might encounter.” (Leslie Katz, CNET.com, “See Boston Dynamics Atlas robots work a parkour course like it's nothing”). Tesla’s robot – “Optimus”, although not that impressive in terms of athletics, looks much more humanlike.

Robots with all the human abilities would be able to replace people in many industries. Moreover, since their work and actions are repetitive, there would be less mistakes and misunderstandings than in human work.