Innovation is challenging just how far we trust technology – and tech providers – to play an increasingly central role in daily life: can the law keep up?

By Dan Tozer, Partner at Harbottle & Lewis

It is difficult to find surety in our current legal frameworks as we head into the AI age – particularly when it comes to ownership of ideas and actions
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The march of the robots into daily life is now seemingly inevitable.

Almost a third of London jobs are expected to be in the hands of machines within the next twenty years, according to Think Tank the Centre for London, while the Royal Society of Arts predicts 4 million UK private sector jobs could be taken by robots within the decade. From data use (see the Cambridge Analytica scandal) to robot liability, innovations are bringing the issue of trust and responsibility in technology to the fore.

Amazon Alexa placed an order of cat food on its own, after being ‘triggered’ by an advert for a cat food brand on a nearby TV
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The recent and much anticipated House of Lords report on AI highlighted this issue. While rightly underlining the UK’s leading role in AI advancement, peers also noted the urgent need for legal clarity over AI, particularly with regards to liability. Law and regulation, based to such a large extent on precedent, traditionally struggles to keep up with technological advancements at the best of times, and we are now at a significant turning point.

The march of the robots into daily life is now seemingly inevitable
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With machines playing an increasingly central role in daily life, a degree of surety over where responsibility for AI lies, and where public trust resides, is required. As it stands, it is difficult to find this surety in our current legal frameworks as we head into the ‘AI age’ – particularly when it comes to ‘ownership’, in its broadest sense, of ideas and actions.

Law and regulation, based to such a large extent on precedent, traditionally struggles to keep up with technological advancements at the best of times, and we are now at a significant turning point
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Can a robot own its own creations?

With machines now being used to create content largely independently, recent years have seen the emergence of a debate, particularly in the creative and arts industries, over the extent to which robots can own the intellectual property inherent in their creations.

In 2016, Gaetan Hadjeres and Francois Pachet at the Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Paris developed a machine learning neural network that has learned to produce choral cantatas of its own in the style of Bach. More recently, Shun Matsuzaka, creative planner for Japanese ad agency McCann, created the world’s first AI creative director, capable of directing a TV commercial. We are now left wondering how far these artistic creations belong to the machine, or belong to the human behind the machine.

In this context, it is worth considering to what extent a ‘non-human’ can own IP at all…

For example, in 2016, after a protracted legal battle revolving around a “selfie” taken by Naruto, a macaque money from the jungle of Indonesia, using a camera owned by photographer David Slater, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that a monkey could not be declared a copyright owner. While of course not a robot issue, this highlighted the difficulty of ascribing ownership to a non-human ‘being’.

With machines playing an increasingly central role, a degree of surety over where responsibility for AI lies, and where public trust resides, is required
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Crucially, to what extent and where ownership is attributed is central to the question of who retains responsibility, and where public trust ultimately needs to lie – particularly when machines expand in their ‘intelligence’, ‘learn’ and begin to take independent actions…

With machines now being used to create content largely independently, we have seen the emergence of a debate over the extent to which robots can own the intellectual property in their creations.
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Assigning responsibility

Earlier in 2018, an Amazon Alexa personal assistant placed an order of cat food on its own, after being ‘triggered’ by an advert for a cat food brand on a nearby TV. The case was dealt with by the Advertising Standards Authority, who ruled that the mistake was not the advertiser’s fault. This was an isolated case but, as robot assistants increase in sophistication, questions remain around who takes the blame and who takes the ownership, when a robot’s actions go wrong.

The recent tragedies involving driverless cars, including in Arizona during an Uber autonomous vehicle test, places clear focus on the issue of liability for AI decisions. Many questions remain in the autonomous vehicles space. For instance, if a vehicle’s algorithm is programmed to ‘preserve itself’ – i.e. to limit any physical damage to the vehicle and its inhabitants – are other road-users, or indeed occupants, potentially more at risk? Further, how far liability can be assigned to the manufacturer, the software developer, and the machine itself, will continue to be debated.

If a vehicle’s algorithm is programmed to ‘preserve itself’ – i.e. to limit any physical damage to the vehicle and its inhabitants – are other road-users, or indeed occupants, potentially more at risk?
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How far would you trust a robot?

Of course, there may be situations where we are more likely to be more trusting of machines to perform tasks and services. One of the arguments for driverless vehicles is they are not susceptible to issues such as drink-driving, while opinions are still divided as to how far, for instance, patients would trust a robot surgeon.

The recent tragedies involving driverless cars place clear focus on the issue of liability for AI decisions
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Nils Bohr said, “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” However, we can safely predict that the robots are coming – indeed, to a large extent they are already here, driving many of the systems and processes we often take for granted. As AI becomes ever more embedded within our daily lives, clarity over issues including ownership and responsibility will need to be sought, and solutions developed, so we can venture into the brave new world of AI with trust in the innovation.

The post Expert View: Trusting Technology appeared first on Tech Trends.

Technologies like driverless cars, lunch delivery drones, and Augmented Reality Billboards will transform our cities

At London Tech Week which concluded last Friday we saw some of the people and start-ups at the bleeding edge of making that reality come true in our cities. This is Europe’s largest festival of technology hosting thousands of delegates and hundreds of events showcasing the latest innovation. And a survey commissioned for the event shows just how keen people in the UK are to embrace the technology-led transformation that is coming to our cities over the next 20 years.

A London Tech Week survey shows how keen on innovation Brits are
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The survey, which was commissioned by the founders of London Tech Week and inspired by a series of predictions put forward by Imperial College London’s Tech Foresight group, reveals the technologies consumers think could change our global cities, disrupt traditional industries and drive forward the growth of London’s tech sector.

Gavin Poole, CEO of Here East innovation Centre which provides a platform for entrepreneurs to develop and scale their businesses says that these innovators are already disrupting entire sectors: “London is brimming with a huge range of exciting tech start-ups who are leading the way in developing some of the world’s most innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data. In years to come we will no longer silo technology into a separate category – it will integrate into our everyday lives and permeate all aspects of the industry,” he believes.

More than a third of those surveyed (over 2000 people were interviewed) said they would have no qualms about making a journey in an unmanned drone taxi, and most believed that advances in driverless car technology would see dedicated road lanes for autonomous vehicles popping up over the next few years. Eventually – over a quarter of respondents believed – this will lead to cities banning human drivers altogether.

British Commuters would welcome Elon Musk bringing ultra-fast trains into UK cities
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If (or perhaps knowing Elon, we should say when) Elon Musk’s Hyperloop project is rolled out, he’d find willing guinea pigs in Britons, over half of which expressed their willingness to travel in high-speed trains going at over 600mph. And I have to say, as a commuter plagued by regular delays, I can certainly sympathise for this speed craving. Over a third of respondents were also enthusiastic at taking a commercial space flight or commuting to work in a driverless car.

There was less appetite for things such as Food Printing, however, with few people saying they’d fancy a 3D printed meal. Dating robots, however, is something that some women – and more men, around 12% of those asked- would be willing to try.

“From transport and healthcare to fashion and financial services, technology is changing our cities, the way we work and our everyday lives,” says Professor David Gann CBE, Vice President (Innovation) at Imperial College London. “Through our Tech Foresight team, Imperial Business Partners is bringing together world-leading business experts, academics and innovators to envision the impact technology will have across a variety of industries, and London Tech Week shines a spotlight on the range of innovative companies and tech talent in London, as well as demonstrating the future technologies which could shape global cities.”

There are mixed feelings amongst Brits about the AI revolution
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Almost half of people (47 per cent) think that human productivity will be boosted by robotics, two fifths (39 per cent) say robots will have a positive impact on society and more than a quarter of people say they would trust a robot to do a job better than a human. However, 19% feared their job would be at risk of being taken by a robot, although 17% said their job was so dull they would rather a robot did it.

The research also shows that:

• 77 per cent believe we will see eye tracking used to navigate mobile phone applications
• 64 per cent believe there will be solar-powered park benches to charge electronic devices
• 53 per cent believe that tourists will be accompanied by robotic tour guides
• 49 per cent think smart advertising billboards will feature augmented reality
• 47 per cent think DNA dating agencies will be commonplace
• 42 per cent think we will see hangover free alcohol substitutes
• 30 per cent believe high-speed pedestrian walkways will link skyscrapers
• 14 per cent believe there will be underwater housing
• 12 per cent believe flying cars will be commonplace

For companies looking to gain a competitive edge through technology, Tech Trends offers strategic Virtual Reality and Digital Transformation Consultancy services tailored to your brand.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post London Tech Week Shows How Brits Embrace Innovation appeared first on Tech Trends.

Artificial Intelligence is literally embedded everywhere these days, and as automation advances at breakneck speed, the goalposts have already shifted further than most of us realise.

This has implications for every industry, because while creative jobs are likely to prove more resilient to the threat of automation than task-based repetitive work, there is plentiful evidence that the rise of the machines will leave no stone undisrupted.

Artificial Intelligence will leave no stone undisrupted
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In this article for the Huffington Post I look at some of the ways in which AI and Machine Learning have already transformed PR, and how creatives can best leverage the power of automation.

In the Age of Post-Truth and Artificial Intelligence, what is the Future of PR? https://t.co/gfIl0NJlH0

— Alice Bonasio (@alicebonasio) January 27, 2017

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Is Artificial Intelligence the Future of PR? appeared first on Tech Trends.

Automation has already made many jobs redundant, and as Artificial Intelligence becomes increasingly sophisticated, many more will inevitably follow. But it’s not all doom and gloom.

In this Quartz article I talk about how human creative skills will always be in demand, and how restructuring our value system – from education to the workplace – around creativity will help us prepare for the wave of technological disruption to come.

Human creative skills will always be in demand
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If we don’t want machines to take over our jobs, we’re going to have to get creative. Literally.

Cheap computing power and rapidly advancing AI mean that machines already outperform us on tasks that involve retaining, processing, and repeating rule-based information. Traditional schooling, however, still centers on a child’s ability to perform such tasks. As a result, the growing emphasis on STEM-based learning may not adequately prepare children to eventually battle robots for their jobs. As Charlotte Blease, a philosophy fellow at University College Dublin, points out, the workplace of the future will require people prepared to ask—and answer—the questions that aren’t Googleable.

We need a sense of wonder in order for creativity to flourish
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What society therefore urgently needs is an entirely new value system for both education and work; one centered around the singular thing robots can’t quite catch up with us on: creativity.

A recent report by Nesta, a UK-based innovation and research foundation, found that creative jobs will be much more resistant to automation, and 21% of US employment requires people to be highly creative. But this doesn’t mean we will need more musicians, graphic designers, actors, and other traditionally creative professions in the future. Rather, we should be taking the aspects that make these professions so unique and teaching them to employers in traditionally non-creative industries. We need to enable creative thinking in all aspects of business management.

The workplace of the future will require people prepared to ask—and answer—the questions that aren’t Googleable
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“How are you going to deal with your job not being relevant any more? You’ve got to tap into the creative spirit to repurpose your skillset,” says Ryan Peterson, a Vancouver-based technology entrepreneur. When it comes to imagining new realities, Peterson is something of an expert. His company Finger Food Studios invents and sells state-of-the art Mixed Reality (MR) technology to Fortune 500 companies, so he views the disruption that automation brings as an opportunity rather than a threat.

“We have the chance to basically re-architect the human experience and move all this [creative] talent into higher performing jobs, but that will take incredible imagination,” Peterson says. “You’re going to have to infuse some of that creative firepower to be able to deal with these [automation] changes in your business.”

Fostering those creative-thinking principles will prove essential if we’re to outsmart the oncoming automation wave. Here are three key ingredients for future-proofing your workplace:

Curiosity

We need a sense of wonder in order for creativity to flourish. Curiosity is a cornerstone of creative thinking, and we need to actively harness it in order to tackle the challenges of this brave new world.

“Having a culture of curiosity—where you feel empowered to really have an imagination and feel curious and explore—is our strength as a company. We excel at curiosity, and in the execution of it,” Peterson says.

Richard Hytner, an adjunct professor of Marketing at London Business School, agrees, saying that any leader looking to ensure the future of their enterprise should encourage their teams’ “contagious curiosity” by inviting them to bring their child-like self to work every day. Creativity, he says, works much like a bulletproof vest for businesses, allowing them to adapt to fast-changing environments that might destroy those that are slow to evolve.

When curiosity and diversity converge, they create an environment where ingenuity can flourish, and there are places where this out-of-the-box thinking has become a prevalent cultural trait
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Conflict

Building a creative workplace also requires a healthy amount of friction. In the 1950s, psychologist J.P. Guilford first put forward the theory that creativity was dependent on what he called “divergent thinking.”

Finger Food’s creative director, Chris Waind, uses this theory in the workplace. The key is fostering a very safe work environment in which people can freely disagree with each other.

One example of how to do this is by seating people next to each other who see the world differently, such as developers sitting next to designers. The idea is being confronted by different opinions creates that slightly uncomfortable sweet spot where innovation actually happens. “Too many people agreeing with each other makes for a wonderful poetic workplace, but great things are often born of people disagreeing, different perspectives,” Waind says.

Ingenuity

When curiosity and diversity converge, they create an environment where ingenuity can flourish, and there are places where this out-of-the-box thinking has become a prevalent cultural trait.

When living in New Zealand, for example, Waind encountered a term called the “#8 gauge wire” mentality, which is Kiwi slang for “we used our ingenuity to fix it.” It stems from the MacGyver-style creative thinking adopted by resourceful rural farmers who live and work on small islands. Typically, #8 gauge wire is used for sheep fencing—a common sight in New Zealand—but farmers are often forced to solve a wide range of different problems using this plentiful material, and little else.

Peterson believes that to survive the future of work, companies need to actively invest in their own demise. This is something that industry experts like Luke Williams have long advocated; Companies content to focus on incremental changes will almost inevitably become casualties of technological disruption. Even traditional institutions such as banks recognize the advantage of “thinking like the enemy.” This is why the industry has begun actively recruiting hackers to help them build more robust systems. “If you’re a global Fortune 500 company and you do not have a team that you are paying to disrupt your business, than someone else will,” Peterson says.

What is urgently needed in order to enable that climate of proactive—and ultimately positive—disruption is for us to start focusing on what sets man apart from machine: creativity.

Don’t want a robot to steal your job? Be creative https://t.co/3rW3WijaEw

— Quartz (@qz) January 13, 2017

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Will Artificial Intelligence Take Over Your Job? appeared first on Tech Trends.

Tracing the genealogy of sexbots from Greek mythology to today.

After being canceled amongst much controversy in Malaysia last year, the Second International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots finally took place in London this week, hosted at Goldsmiths, University of London.

As you might expect, there were some interesting gadgets such as haptic lollypops and kissing phones on show. But the bulk of the discussions revolved around philosophical—and increasingly topical—issues around both the morality and practicality of human-robot interactions in a not-so-distant future.

We will probably see the first robot-human marriages by 2050, but it could be a lot sooner
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“What strikes me about the last few years is that advances in technology, and particularly in AI, have been happening much faster than we thought,” said David Levy, author of the book that lent its name to the conference (Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships).

When he first wrote the book, he predicted we would see the first human-robot marriages by 2050. But—much like the exponential AI advances we’ve experienced with Google DeepMind—things are moving at a much more accelerated pace than initially predicted:

“So although this might appear to be a long way off, you can never tell about the future, and if you think it won’t happen in your lifetime, you’re probably wrong. I still think it will happen by 2050, if not sooner.”

How a History of Storytelling Can Help Us Make Sense of Sex with Robots https://t.co/94i9rYRSvQ #LSR16 #robots

— FutureofSex (@FutureofSex) December 23, 2016

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post How Storytelling Makes Sense of Robot Sex appeared first on Tech Trends.

From orgasmic frequencies to teledildonics hacks, technology uncovers the truth about ourselves.

“Everybody has a different orgasmic frequency,” explains Dr Trudy Barber as our conversation gets going. Apparently, these frequencies are so unique that they could be used to identify us, much in the same way as fingerprints.

The implications of that are quite significant. If we can learn to identify such frequencies, she says, the next step would be to start tweaking them, and orgasmic training could definitely become a thing in the future: “If you could technologise your responses in terms of Hertz and waves and frequencies, you could code it in and manipulate it like a synthesizer, accentuating sounds and bases and all the rest of it.”

Everybody has a different orgasmic frequency, and we could learn to manipulate it in future
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With a Doctorate in Computer Fetishism and Sexual Futurology, Trudy is certainly qualified to talk about such things. For the past 20 years she’s been investigating how people become intimate with technology, and is credited with creating one of the first immersive VR sex environments while still an undergraduate at Central Saint Martins in 1992.

For her PhD research, she embedded herself in a community of people who were using technology to explore their sexual identities, including several transgender and transvestite individuals from different countries. At the dawn of the modern Internet age, this community started buying medical equipment online, modifying it to suit their purposes, and attaching them to private servers which they built from scratch.

A MOHOO is a Massive Open Haptic Online Orgy
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“There was this one individual, a man, who would come into this room and attach/insert all these different customized devices to his body, everything from dildos to nipple rings. The others in the group would then log onto this private server from wherever they were, and remotely stimulate those different devices. It’s what I called a MOHOO – Massive Open Haptic Online Orgy.”

The most interesting aspect, Trudy found, was how this interaction directly affected the man’s identity. When he was in the MOHOO he perceived himself as a woman – Stephanie. It posed all sorts of questions around the relationship between sexuality, technologies, and the concept of the multi-mediated body. What they created was, in many ways, a precursor to the hybrid virtual-physical environments emerging now as Virtual Reality experiences.

Trudy Barber created one of the first immersive VR sex environments back in 1992
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“Back when I started people thought I was crazy, talking about how we were going to get intimate with each other and lose ourselves within those virtual worlds. Now it’s becoming mainstream. When we used to put the big VR headsets on we looked like aliens from some weird science fiction movie, but now it’s trendy to have your Cardboard or Oculus Rift. All these social experiences are now big business of course.”

Sex Toys are also big business. The industry is worth an estimated $15 Billion, and teledildonics is a burgeoning field. There are now even University-level courses on Industrial Design focusing specifically on the sector. Owning that type of object is no longer a “dirty little secret” for most people.

The Sex Toy industry is worth an estimated $15 Billion
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But fetishisation is not necessarily something you experience in a seedy Soho shop. Trudy is actually more interested in how we can have feelings of attachment and intimacy for our everyday technology gadgets. As an example she tells me how, after buying her new smartphone, she couldn’t “put the damn thing down”.

“Which phone is it?” I asked

 

“The Galaxy S7 Edge,” she replied

 

“Same as mine!”

My excitement instantly proved her theory: Not only do we connect with technology in this way, but we also make connections with others through our shared love of those objects.

How about taking our love of machines to the next level though, is sex with Robots on the cards? Trudy thinks so, but it’s a problematic field:

“You end up with this fear of the Frankenstein monster. ‘what if the technology goes wrong?’ Even now, people can get jealous of the voice on their partner’s TomTom. There are so many layers of engagement with what is artificial in comparison with what is real. And as the physicality of the teledildonics side of it cements that connection with Artificial Intelligence and Avatars, it makes it more believable. You’re well and truly into that uncanny valley”

People can get jealous of the voice on their partner's TomTom
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“Technology can enhance your sexuality, your perception of self, and your relationships, but at the same time as it enhances those things so brilliantly it can destroy other things too, there are equally valid arguments on both sides and it’s really interesting how one person’s pleasure turns out to be another’s element of disgust. It’s fascinating from a research perspective because it really leaves the human condition open to so much scrutiny and revelation. That’s why it scares people, because in a way it reveals too much of ourselves, to ourselves. They’re afraid they might actually like it.”

Sex reveals a lot of ourselves, to ourselves. That's why it's scary
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Technology can enhance your sexuality, your perception of self, and your relationships
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Trudy Barber is speaking at FutureFest this weekend a festival of ideas which will explore – among other things – the Future of Love with curator Ghislaine Boddington and trailblazers in the SexTech arena such as Cindy Gallop from Make Love Not Porn. Watch this space for further updates as Tech Trends will be there! #FutureFest16

The post The Techno-Sex Researcher Laying Bare the Human Condition appeared first on Tech Trends.

This drone is capable of catching a fish, albeit a rather small one…

Watching a man using a drone to catch a small live fish, I had one of those moments where you go: “WTF will they think up next?” I’ll admit it looks like fun though, if not exactly for the poor tiny fish who’s having an X-Files kind of day. At least the man gives the bewildered creature a kiss for his troubles before tossing it back in the water.

You can now use a drone to catch a (small) live fish
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And while I’m not sure whether that’s £15,000 worth of fun (that’s how much the DJI Phatom 4 Fishing Edition package retails for at Drones Direct) it does showcase an interesting use of the technology. You certainly won’t be catching big fish (the maximum weight of a catch the drone can bring back is 200 grams) but the drone can be operated up to 100m above water and controlled from a distance of 2km.

The inbuilt live camera feature means the drone can be used to locate and observe schools of fish without disturbing them, and it’s easy to see how that could prove really useful in wildlife conservation and photography.

You can use the live camera feature to observe schools of fish without disturbing them
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Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water…

The fishing drone kit retails at £15,000
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Drones – the type you can buy, at least – are still largely cumbersome, fragile and expensive, but they are getting a lot better and cheaper, and the technology will continue to develop quickly over the next few years.

Drone technology is set to develop quickly over the next few years
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The key question is when we’ll reach the tipping point that will allow for mass-market adoption and sustainable commercial use cases. In places like Africa, where road infrastructure can often be poor or nonexistent and vast distances make it challenging to get supplies to isolated communities, drones could prove a real lifeline.

In places like Africa, drone delivery could prove a vital lifeline
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It’s easy to dismiss some of the hobbyist and early adopter uses of drones as a gimmick, but we should treat them more like prototypes. They are costly, small-scale proof-of-concept that give us a glimpse of what is to come and pave the way for widespread consumer usage. A world where your Amazon deliveries will literally fall from above, and ‘eyes in the sky’ will be a standard part of the toolkit in every area from law enforcement to agriculture and disaster management.

Your future Amazon deliveries could literally be dropping from the sky
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The drone market is set to hit 127 billion USD by 2020
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The UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) market will be worth an estimated 6 Billion USD by 2020, but the overall drone market is set to hit a staggering 127 billion according to PWC . This includes the anti-drone market, which is expected to grow to over a Billion USD in the same period.

The map below shows how varied and vast the drone technology ecosystem already is, and it’s worth bearing in mind that – like VR and 3D Printing, we’ve only just started scratching the surface of what this tech will enable. In future, you really could be sending your robot out to catch a fresh fish for supper, but unless you’ve got a really small appetite don’t go ditching your fishing rod quite yet…

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Fishes With Robots: Drones Put New Spin on Fly-Fishing appeared first on Tech Trends.