In Telling the Future, Op-Talk asks people from a variety of fields to speculate on what we have to look forward to — and what we should watch out for.
Ayanna M. Howard helps robots become more like people. “We’re not that efficient,” she says, “yet somehow we still survive.” In her research, Dr. Howard, the Motorola Foundation professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, asks: “What is it that allows us to still function? Can we grab some of that information and learn about that and provide it to robotics?”
The idea of robots acting like people might be worrying for some. At The Washington Post, David Tuffley recently considered the prospect that robots would one day replace us at work: “Almost any job that can be described as a ‘process’ could be done by a computer, whether that computer is housed in a robot or embedded somewhere out of sight.” (At The Billfold, Nicole Dieker suggests that one way to avoid getting robo-replaced is to “be the most amazing person ever.”) And at The Times, Robin Marantz Henig investigates efforts to teach robots morals, so they can decide whether to use a weapon or how to behave in an impending crash. “Maybe we should be worried about outsourcing morality to robots as easily as we’ve outsourced so many other forms of human labor,” Ms. Henig writes. “Making hard questions easy should give us pause.”
But Dr. Howard says robotics shouldn’t scare us: “At the end of the day, the people who build robotics are people, and most of us actually do care and understand that robots have to live in the same arena as people.” She talked to Op-Talk about how robots could shape the future of health care, sports and disaster response — and even help Americans get jobs.
What do you hope will be different in five years?
I wish that we would have more of the things that we do in the robotics world, more of the research that we’re doing, integrated in society. You’re actually starting to see that, even though people don’t realize it. For example, cars that now do some automated parking — that came from robotics folks working on autonomous vehicles and things like that. I want to see a lot of the cool stuff we’re still doing that people don’t know about being in our little gadgets and our homes — me going into my house and knowing that my son just finished up the milk, and there’s no milk in the refrigerator. Could it come up with a way where all of a sudden, I open up my door and there’s this vehicle that’s like, “Here’s your milk carton”? Maybe not at that level, but something in between that just makes life a lot easier.
What’s an example of the kind of cool stuff from the robotics field that you hope people know more about in the future?
One example would be dealing with haptic expression — in order for robotics to actually manipulate and grab things in the world in a robust fashion, they have to be able to feel things like textures and adapt in terms of their gripping. So that kind of technology, where you’re doing modeling and you’re adapting to the shape and the contour — a really simple example is, it would be really nice if I could get into my car and my car seat actually adapts to my back. We can do that, because it’s the same kind of actuation and molding, and yet people wouldn’t realize this actually came from people in a robotics role having to do this in a different scenario.
What are you afraid will be different in five years?
What I’m afraid of is that society will start thinking that robotics is dangerous. Recently, for example, there’s been this whole initiative on artificial intelligence — you know, “we need to be careful.” I think that those forewarnings are way too early. We see it in science fiction, but we don’t open up the papers and they say, “Robotics: we need to stop it now, because these robots are going to take over,” because we’re just not there. But in five years, as we start seeing these technologies come out, I think we’re going start getting these questions, and so that’s my fear, that those questions are going to come up before we’re at the stage where they really need to, and that might stop the development.
There’s a lot of debate now over whether robots are going to take our jobs in the future. Is that something you think about?
I used to. But really, that question is not, “Are robots going to take our jobs?” It’s, “Is technology going to take our jobs?” It has nothing to do with robotics, it just has to do with the fact that as a society we build technology to make our lives better and more efficient, so from the Industrial Revolution days, you could say the same thing. And so it’s not, “Are robots going to take our jobs?” I think that the inclusion of robots in our society changes the nature of the jobs.
What issue or event that we’re talking about now will be completely forgotten in five years?
I think the issue of jobs will change. Right now there’s this whole thing of we don’t have enough jobs, even though we’re seeing the economy’s a little better, there’s more job creation. I’m hoping that as robotics allows more jobs to come on shore, that we won’t have these discussions five years from now.
The other issue I hope isn’t there is this whole issue of not having enough representation in the major technology companies. If you look at the number of women that are hired, it’s not representative of the United States. Hopefully that won’t be in the news five years from now.
What issue or event will we still remember?
We’ll still be talking about health care, terrorism and war. I think as long as people are here we’re going to have that.
So you don’t think the health care debate we’re having now is going to resolved in five years?
No, I’m pretty sure it’s not. We have to wait for the next presidency, and then if any changes are made it still takes time, and then add five years to whenever a decision is made. I’m very hopeful, though, that there’s been a lot of changes in health care which have been good, which has actually been good for technologists. What happens is because the health care system has to change, you’re starting to see a lot of the hospitals and the clinics starting to adopt technology much more than they were. It’s like, “if we provide a system where they can take it home, and it helps them monitor their diabetes or something, guess what? They don’t come back to us.” Which I think might even change the question again about health care in five years.
What kind of technologies do you see being adopted?
Really it’s about the in-home technologies. When you’re released from a hospital or clinic, typically you’re given instructions on a piece of paper, and you’re really expected to remember what’s on the piece of paper — but instead, giving things like a mini robot coach, or a suite of mobile apps that the clinician or the doctor actually programs for you, and you just basically have to put it on your hip, so it beeps and you look at it and it shows you how you’re supposed to do your exercises, or your therapy, or shows you a little picture of the pill you’re supposed to take. Those kinds of things, in terms of technology, they’re not revolutionary, but them being designed so that they’re useful to the general public, that’s really where the innovation is.
And how do you think those technologies might change the conversation around health care?
I truly believe that what you’re going to start seeing, when it’s shown that these are effective, that if you give someone a very simple ‘x,’ whether it’s a mobile app or a little robot, guess what? It reduces their return to the hospital by 60 percent. Right now these technologies are not reimbursable necessarily, so now it’s like, “Hey, maybe we should make these reimbursable, because it actually increases our bottom line.”
A big thing that we’re working on at a lot of universities is telemedicine. If I have a doctor, say, in Atlanta, and we have a lot of rural areas outside, how do you get care to someone who’s 200 miles from Atlanta? If there was a clinic there that maybe doesn’t have the expertise, but you can go there and get diagnosed, and have a haptic robot feel for palpitations and things like that — right now though, that kind of system is not reimbursable.
Who or what in your field will people be talking about a lot more in five years?
You’re starting to hear the conversation now, and it’s about exoskeletons. In fact, there’s a bunch of start-ups now that are pushing forward exoskeletons and things like that. There’s an Olympics now for people who have robotic parts. I think that’s going to open up a wide world.
Will we see exoskeletons to help people with disabilities, or for other applications, too?
I think what’s going to happen, just like a lot of technologies for individuals with disabilities, it starts out with disabilities, and then it evolves. It could be that it’s an exoskeleton for a doctor who has to go into a Hurricane Katrina kind of thing, where functionally a person with a disability can use it but the benefits of it are so great that it’s adopted by other people.
This interview has been condensed and edited.