Headline September 20, 2017/ ''' *ROBOTS AS STUDENTS* '''

''' *ROBOTS AS STUDENTS* '''

IN ALL FAIRNESS,   -despite my very best efforts and control,  I just couldn't stay silent about the rights of my great Robot Students?!

Just so great an honor to inform you all, and then the entire world, that I plan,  ........  -to very soon run a Students Robots class? What say ya all : 

Merium? Rabo? Haleema? Seher? Armeen? Saima? Dee? Eman? Lakshmi? Dantini? Ambassador Malala [Nobel Prize]? Zainab? Hera? Zara?

Hussain? Shahzaib? Sharayar? Mustafa? Bilal? Jordan? Salar? Ali? Faraz? Ali Hassan,  Umer? Awais? Zaeem? Ehsen? Ghazi? Hazeem? Danyial, Reza/Canada? Ibrahim?  -and Little Angels : ,

*Maynah, Maria, Ibrahim, Harem, Haanyia, Merium*  

*Well, these are just not the robots that I was so promised*. Robots always tell us something about our times and about our very own selves.

FROM THE MOMENT we humans first imagined having mechanical servants at our beck and call, we've assumed they would be constructed in our image.

Outfitted with arms and legs, heads and torsos, they would perform everyday tasks that we'd otherwise have to do ourselves. 

Like the indefatigable maid Rosie on ''The Jetsons,''  the officious droid C-3PO on- ''Star Wars'' and the tortured ''host'' Dolres Abernathy on ''Westworld,'' the robotic helpmates of popular culture  have been humanoid in forms and function.

It's time to rethink our assumptions. 

A robot invasion of our homes is underway, but the machines -so called smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Google Home and the forthcoming Apple HomePod look nothing like what we expected.

Small, squat and stationary, they resemble vases of cat food tins more than they do people.

Echo and its ilk do, however, share a crucial trait with their imaginary forebears : They illuminate the times. Whatever their shape, robots tell us something important about our technologies and ourselves.

Although smart speakers have been around just three years, they already have a hold in us.  The devices, powered by ''chatbots'' like Siri and Alexa, are in the midst of a sales boom.

Some 35 million Americans now use the diminutive, talking computers -more than twice the number of just a year ago, according to estimated by eMarketer-

And analytics predict that three-quarters of United States house hold will own at least one of the gadgets by 2020.   

It's not hard to understand the attraction. 

Smart speakers are oracles of the counter. They may not be able to speak for the gods, but they can deliver reports on news, traffic and-

That their Delphic ancestor couldn't even dream of. They can serve as D.J. They can diagnose ailment and soothe anxieties. They can read bedtime stories.

They can even bark like a watchdog to scare burglars. And they promise to be the major demos of home automation, adjusting lights, controlling appliances and issuing orders to specialized robots like the Roomba vacuum cleaner.

Still, if you were looking forward to having a Rosie scurrying around your abode, feather duster in hand, an Echo feels like a letdown. It just sits there.

There are good reasons that the domestic robot has taken such an uninspiring form. Some are technical.

Visualizing a nimble, sure-footed android is easy, but building one is hard. As the Carnegie Mellon professor III Nourbaksh explains in his book :

''Robot Futures,''   it requires advances not only in-

Artificial Intelligence but also in the complex hardware system required for movement, perception and dexterity. 

The human nervous system is a marvel of physical control, able to sense and respond fluidly to an ever changing environment .

Achieving such agility with silicon and steel lies well beyond the reach of today's engineers.

Even the most advanced of our current automations still get flustered by mundane tasks like loading a dishwasher or dusting a knickknacks.

Meanwhile, thanks to gain in networking, language processing and miniaturization, it has become simple to manufacture small, cheap computers that can understand understand basic questions and simple commands.-

Gather and synthesize information from online databanks and control other electronics.

The technology industry has enormous incentives to promote such gadgets. Now that many of the biggest tech companies operate like media businesses, trafficking in information, they're in a race to   create new products to charm and track consumers.

Smart speakers provide a powerful complement to smartphones in this regard.

Equipped with sensitive microphones, they serve-as- in-home listening devices -benign-seeming bugs-   that greatly extend the companies ability to monitor people's habits.

Whenever you chat with a smart speaker, you're disclosing valuable information about your routines and proclivities.  

The Honor and Serving of the latest Operational Research on Technologies, automation and Robotics continues.............

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter- !E-WOW!    -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Present Triumph '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless