Well well well, finally for the weekly competitions, we have been handed a topic in which I am very much informed. Robotics and AI. This is something I have talked about in the past many times on different occasions and in different contexts. Those of you who know me may remember that I am studying in computer science, so I am also involved in the academic side of these things as well as the practical implementations which are currently being tested out throughout the world. The competition anchor usually provides a short description of what the topic is usually about. And when I was reading the description of robotics and AI today, I found a very disturbing relation.
The description said to discuss about whether AI and robotics can replace people in warfare as well as common chores. Now about the common chores part, we are making progress. Towards the end of last year I saw a startup which announced a robot that could do all your household work, but it is not pre-trained on every single task. Rather you guide it for the first time and then it will remember how to do it and then it can do it on its own. It's basically showing your helping hand how things are done for the first time and then they can take it over from there. Pretty reasonable actually. What's more fascinating is that that company is now going into production and they're taking orders and they are actually starting to ship. It's a great progress there. And robots are actually taking a lot of jobs on the assembly line in factories which is already common knowledge by now. Now comes the AI part. Those factory jobs which I just mentioned didn't really require some highly intelligent brain for the machines. Because those machines used to do only one task over and over again. So if you place everything neatly and everything is in correct positions, the robot doesn't need any extra instructions, though it can't take any. It can just go about its task such as installing windshields on cars on the assembly line. But now AI is being used and it is basically giving robots a fully functional brain. And the mixture of traditional robots and AI will be very groundbreaking and it is actually showing promise already. Nvidia Boston Dynamics and other prominent robotics companies are actually announcing and showing off different robots that are vastly superior then just a few years before. Now about the warfare from the description, it shook me. Realizing that those descriptions are actually real and are taking place currently and even in the past paint's a pretty grim picture. I won't name any names here, but there are companies which work on making AI powered software systems that enable armies to better access field data and to coordinate troop movement and artillery movement. If you try looking up online you will find what I'm talking about and you might even find some of the most prominent names in doing so. And their current trajectory isn't very pleasant.
Ask for war itself, war will always be there. It was there at the beginning of time and it will be there at the end of time. Methods will change. And now the inevitability is that yes AI will be used almost everywhere supercharging almost everything and not just warfare.