Beep Beep Boop Tweep Dweep .... Happy Valentine's Day from a Robot?

I recently read an interesting article from BBC about the future of Robots in our lives: Could your robot go to work instead of you?

What struck me the most, is how different the Robot of today looks, compared to how we envisioned it as kids! I remember watching the futuristic cartoon series “The Jetsons”, and being really impressed by their wacky servant robot Rosie, the flying saucer cars, and an array of extraordinary automated technologies that helped them get groomed and dressed!

As a kid with an overactive imagination, I often wondered if I would one day enjoy the luxury of having everything done by a robot for me, and the reality today is that Robots already do a lot of our work for us behind the scenes. They carry out many tasks that people don't want to do because they are boring, dirty or dangerous. They can also be programmed to use Artificial Intelligence to carry out some tasks that are too laborious for humans. 

But for a robot to truly take over our work, freeing us up to be mentally disengaged, or sleep as the picture used in the article, the robot would need to be able to make decisions, and Artificial Intelligence is the answer, and is here now, we are told.

Let’s break it down.

A machine does something.  A robot is really an automated machine, with no need for a human operator. 

AI suggests the ability to reach a decision, though technically it might not be a robot. 

I recall a very early iteration of a bot-psychologist back when I was 13.  It would start with a line of text (speech on machines wasn't invented yet) which asked "What is your problem?"

And you would answer "I can't get dates with girls" or "Girls won't agree to go on dates with me"

And the next question would invariably be "Why do dates trouble you?" or "Why do girls trouble you?" depending on how you phrased your original question.

The intelligence then wasn't very high, merely mining the first subject you mentioned.  Needless to say that programme never went very far, but it was intended to lead you on a journey of self-discovery, not do anything physical or real.

But "AI" back then, and largely so even now, is really a rule engine, a series of IF/ELSE statements, which lead to an outcome.  Sure it can trawl through a battery of these statements faster than a human, and can regimentally consider every listed possibility without getting sloppy and overlooking some variant branch of consideration, or bored and start taking short cuts and ignoring the low probability outcomes or falling prey to Confirmatory Bias.

33 years on, AI has improved but my problem remains.

These days, the buzz words are "deep learning" and "machine learning".  These claim that the machines can evolve and learn on their own, without human input of new logic or variables.
But this essentially involves the machine studying current and evolving trends, and factoring these back into its original core logic. 

It's like an automatic options market making bot that collects tick data in real-time, and derives changes in volatility from that, and then calibrating the Implied Volatility input it uses to make the next quote.  It is more an auto-calibrating model than any real evolution of design.  It cannot grow to start doing a delta hedge on its option positions unless it is coded to do so.

(If a bot is defined as a machine that does something, like riveting metal panels together to for the fuselage of a plane, then the market making "bot" doesn't do anything tangible.  But it does put bids and asks into the matching engine; so should it be considered a "bot"?)

AI and Deep Learning are the buzzwords today.  VC's and Entrepreneurs invent buzzwords to hype up their fledgling idea, and the parrots pick it up, and humans, most of whom do not want to admit their ignorance (there's really nothing to wrong with not knowing something; we all started in this world that way, and will always have things we don't know or will never know), nod along trying to look wise where they don't actually know what's going on, and society is led to believe bots will soon run the world, like in the movies "i-robot" or "Terminator".

But in reality, AI is a long way from running the word.  AI cannot answer questions of abstract logic, or be inspired by a sunrise, or do something it is not pre-programmed to, such as surprising you on Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentine's Day, by the way.