
Nicholas Carr’s 'Glass Cage': Automation Will Hurt Society in Long Run - razorburn
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2014/11/nicholas-carr-glass-cage-automation-will-hurt-society-in-long-run/
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pi-rat
A friend's Roomba committed suicide. He got home one day, and the apartment
was filled with steam. Walked into the bathroom, shower was on, with the
Roomba just sitting there getting soaked. It had managed to pull the hose
while hoovering, and the hose yanked the valve handle.

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fit2rule
My friends' Roomba often seemed like it was trying to kill itself. I've had to
untangle it from its perils far too often to think its an accident. Nothing
says "maybe we should move to the country" more than a robot trying to
persistently kill itself with whatever macbook cables it can find, ingest and
use to flip itself over, grinding over and over on the insulation until it
finally gets that .. one .. last spark .. it needs to end it all. Seriously,
happens often.

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JasonFruit
The moral decision is made by the person who released on their floor a semi-
autonomous machine that cannot make moral choices. Calling this "robot
morality" is idiotic, akin to saying that because an ax will indifferently cut
a log or a human neck, it decides that cutting one is morally equivalent to
the other.

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JoeAltmaier
That was actually the article's point - by releasing this robot of death, you
cede moral authority to it. Or by your reckoning, you make the decision to
kill; the robot just disguises that fact.

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JasonFruit
But it's sensationally worded. That's true any time we take an action that may
have unintended consequences, and what that action is — whether it's releasing
a robot vacuum cleaner, striking a log with an axe, or writing a book with
potentially dangerous ideas — is irrelevant. My point is that smart people say
dumb things when recent technology is involved.

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JoeAltmaier
The idea is, we've not had robots to do our killing for us in the past. This
is something new. You can kill (bugs in this case) without being present or
even knowing its happening. Worth an article I think.

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michaelt

      The idea is, we've not had robots to do our
      killing for us in the past.
    

A bit of trivia I picked up in a robotics class: Most of the common
definitions of 'robot' include cruise missiles, which we've had since the
1970s at least.

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bqe
The source interview is much more interesting than this blog's summary:
[http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2014/11/nicholas-carr-glass-
ca...](http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2014/11/nicholas-carr-glass-cage-
automation-will-hurt-society-in-long-run/)

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troebr
Cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zLvbJ9R...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zLvbJ9R0RgoJ:www.roughtype.com/%3Fp%3D5306+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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sologoub
The article seems overly sensational, but the point is fairly interesting -
people do not think about unintended consequences of delegating decision
making to machines.

While the crickets' fate is unfortunate, this article made me think about
self-driving cars and all the wildlife that gets run over every day. For the
larger animals, say a deer, the autonomous cars seems to promise the same
safety as to a pedestrian, but what about smaller animals?

When people swerve to avoid a squirrel or a bunny, they can (and do) cause
accidents that result in greater damage. It would be very interesting to know
how the autonomous system is programmed to act in such a scenario?

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waterlesscloud
That was one of my early thoughts about automated cars: Will we see wildlife
return to some areas in greater numbers? Even a small decrease in say mountain
lions in LA killed by cars might cause a large increase in breeding over a few
years.

What about areas with a lot of deer? Might they become even more
overpopulated? Will more starve? Will they be driven even further into settled
areas?

Even small changes in the number of deaths might have notable effects.

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sologoub
So your thoughts are that roadkill is an effective population control for
deer? Not really seeing this.

For the mountain lions, that would be overall positive from my view, but of
course carries the risk of attacks on pets and humans. These can be mitigated
with education, such as don't let your toy dog out unsupervised at night.
Lived next to a nature preserve for a couple years and had a mountain lion
visit the property on a few occasions. Never had a problem. Rattlesnakes...
that's a completely different story...

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maxerickson
I looked at some numbers for Michigan. Hunters take ~400,000 deer each year,
while there are ~50,000 vehicle-deer accidents (I guess the majority of the
collisions kill the deer).

I haven't found a convenient source for predators. There are wolves, and
coyotes, bobcats and bears. I guess bobcats, coyotes and bears mostly don't go
after adults, but they can have a big impact on the number of fawns.

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cesarb
Let's try a car analogy.

Suppose you're driving a car. If a cricket crosses its path, the cricket gets
flattened to its death. But it's not because people place no value on a bug’s
life; it's because the cricket is hard to see, and even if it can be seen,
there's no time to react.

The same with a Roomba: the person setting up the Roomba doesn't see the
insect, and even if it can be seen, there might be no time to react.

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TimGremalm
How about those poor Roombas out there forced to suffer a life as a Doomba?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSOkNr0X4ZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSOkNr0X4ZU)

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rasz_pl
Socrates: This writing business 'Will Hurt Society in Long Run'

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elwell
Roombas don't kill insects, people do.

