The Chinese edition of SMARTS is available now

The new Chinese edition of SMARTS is now available, just in time for those long voyages home to celebrate the New Year.

Learn more about SMARTS here.

Read my new serial novel That Woman (free) part VIII

And now for That Woman, part 8...

Synopsis:
  
In That Woman, Part 8, Marta suddenly hears from Andy, of all people. Partly to make Dr. Blume have a hairy fit, partly to satisfy her own curiosity, and possibly for other reasons she does not comprehend, she goes out with him. At Fourth House, her life changes forever. Meanwhile, Drew is hot on the trail of the those who sicced Baby to spy on her, and Jason is in full pursuit of Drew. Together, they discover there are many more strange beasts (plant, animal, mineral, all of the above?) where Baby came from. 

Learn all about That Woman here and read all the parts.

Smart Machines, Machined Humans: Quandries and Conundrums

My inbox presented an article about new generations of robots appearing in all kinds of public places, not just in industrial settings. The story was published by an online magazine put out by a major university and research center that is leading the development of our new smart world. This organization is working very hard to make sure that 'intelligence in every machine' replaces 'a chicken in every pot' as the mantra for economic well being.

I'm talking about the MIT Technology Review site called The Daily. Its story was about new lines of robots now working in hotels and shopping malls and on the street. On the street, some robots help with security, and package delivery. In the malls, some do inventory and restock shelves-- allegedly much better than humans can do it. In certain hotels-- the upscale kind that offer robes in the closets -- little robots will bring you whatever you want that is not found in the in-room fridge. These robots are allegedly smart enough to navigate across crowded lobbies, to tell the elevator system which floor they want, and to zip down the right hall to the right door. They return to the main lobby and plug themselves in on their own.

These machines are specifically designed to appear non-threatening to the humans who encounter them. They do not look like the Terminator. They are more along the lines of R2D2. The hotel robot has a little locked door hiding an internal shelf where a belly would be, if it had a belly, a place to carry whatever the guest has asked for.  So cute!

Somehow, scrolling here and there, I found myself linked to a YouTube video of Google's self driving car, described as a typical representative of this harmless look in smart machines. The video shows  a diverse range of non-engineer type people going for test rides. The car has no steering wheel, which would terrify me: how would you take over and drive that car if something goes wrong? It looks like a really comfortable version of a golf cart with a curved roof. Who could fear a golf cart? A child can drive a golf cart! In the video, a boy gets into the car to take a ride with his mother. Where's the danger if a mother willingly lets her young son take a ride? Everyone exudes pleasure at the fun of it all, especially the man who cannot drive because he's infirm, and the older woman who no longer fears driving because the car does it for her. These people are identified only by first name so we can't look them up on Facebook and ask for more information.

The story and the video convey an unstated message: who could possibly be afraid of smart machines, machines that are much better than humans at doing certain tasks?

The answer is: jobless bellboys,  taxi drivers with no future, not even with Uber, delivery persons with no income, sales clerks filing their unemployment claims. Such folks are not featured in these stories or videos.

Can machines do these jobs better than humans?

I had an aunt and uncle and a cousin who were in the ladies clothing business. They are gone now, but that doesn't mean I can't hear them hooting their derision at the very idea that a machine could replace one of their very well trained sales clerks, women who knew their customers, provided good taste for those who lacked it, knew exactly what was in stock or out of stock at all times, and more to the point, boosted their customers' confidence whenever they made a purchase ( "It's you dear, simply you!" my Aunt would purr.) Can you picture a cutie-pie of a machine providing the same kind of service?

There is a single woman I know who supports her boys by cleaning house. She also works as an assistant to a person too ill with MS to care for herself. She hopes to build a business dispatching other people to provide similar services to those in need. I cannot bring myself to tell her that such a business has at best a twenty year time horizon, because machines will do many of these tasks much more cheaply than people. Not better, just cheaper. Her company might have a future if she rents out robots, but how would a single mother raise the capital for that?

These stories start in PR departments, then appear online, then find their way into newspapers as if they are real journalism. They are aimed at dampening fear instead of raising questions about what happens when jobs disappear due to the arrival of smart machines that can do them for less. Replacing humans with cheaper machines is what economists call improving productivity. Improving productivity is considered a Good Thing in all capitalist economies.

When measured against the people who will lose their jobs, it all sounds bad.

But is it?

Among the stories circulating this week (ending up in the UK's Daily Mail) was one about a new company called Superflex, a spin-off from SRI, formerly called Stanford Research Institute. Many years ago I interviewed researchers working at SRI who were studying what they called Remote Viewing -- telepathy.  SRI has always been an open-minded research house. It resides in Menlo Park, the center of Silicon Valley. It was there long before Apple, Google, etc. began to make the world smart. SRI is a non profit that does contract research and development for companies and for governments. Specifically it has done a lot of work for DARPA, who, as I have written before, has been challenging companies to develop an exoskeleton that a soldier can strap on his body to help him carry his burdens over rough terrain. Superflex has apparently developed a soft and smart exoskeleton that a person can wear over their clothing. It will learn quickly how a person walks naturally and provide a jolt of power to help out at appropriate times. This suit -- this smart machine -- can aide people who are elderly, infirm, unable to walk because of injury or disability, or unable to climb stairs because their leg muscles just won't do the job any more. Their target market is not a soldier, but people who suffer the indignity of having to use a walker or even a wheelchair.

Right now, it takes five minutes for a trained person to get into this suit.

They are aiming for two minutes.

Right now, less flexible exoskeletons cost about $40,000 and aren't pretty. Superflex want its suit to be cheap enough that anyone can buy it.

My mother is in a wheelchair.

My husband is having gait issues.

Mother mother's infirmity provides employment to several people who come to her suite every day to help her shower, dress, get to her meals, get to bed.

If a soft, inexpensive, lightweight, comfortable exoskeleton becomes available, one that is smart enough to carry her where she needs to go, some of those people will be out of work. 

And that's the quandary for all of us trying to negotiate this unfolding smart world.  Do we owe loyalty to the people who currently make their livings from helping others? Do we keep them employed and not buy a suit that will give independence back to those we love?

Is anyone smart enough to juggle the ethical conundrums that these smart machines are putting in front of us?

Maybe you are.

I'm not.

When Smart Machines Channel Rembrandt: Is It Art?

I recently opened up my Globe and Mail to find a two page spread explaining how smart technologies created the picture displayed there of a man who never existed executed in the style of Rembrandt. The Globe and Mail called it a "frame worthy portrait." I don't know what to call it. An art fraudster's dream? Artish techno-crap? Abomination comes to mind, but maybe that's me channeling my Uncle Harry (see more on Uncle Harry below). Tu Thanh Ha, better known as a political reporter, gives us the story behind the image. The Dutch bank ING has apparently funded and supported public art for years. ING teamed up with the advertising moguls, J. Walter Thompson, to further advance its brand through the invocation of the greatest of all Dutch painters, Rembrandt. They asked leading technologists to whomp up something Rembrandtish for the public's enjoyment. So several leading experts brought to bear the smart technologies of the moment.  All of Rembrandt's known portraits were subjected to facial recognition software and other clever tricks to arrive at a statistically representative Rembrandtish array of pixels.This data was used to direct a 3-D printer. The result approximates the cracked, bumpy, brush-stroked surface of a painting made four hundred years ago, though it presents the image of a man who never existed and so was never painted by Rembrandt. It is not painted at all.

Please look at it and tell me what you think. I see a clumsy, sad sack sort-of person with a floppy hat, sort-of hair, a sort-of potato nose, lifeless eyes, a ruff of the period, illuminated by light said to mimic Rembrandt's use of same. To my eye it looks like paint-by-number.

As my Uncle Harry would say, I am appalled. Only technologists would consider this a project worthy of the name public art, technologists utterly disconnected from what art is, and why we make it.

So what is public art anyway?

Long ago when I was small, my Uncle Harry had strong opinions on same. He was a famous man in our town, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a city of nicknames including the Hub City, the City of Churches, the City of Bridges, but not the City of Art, though that should have been one of them.He was known as "Doc" because he fixed the broken bodies of cars.  He was the second eldest and best known among his accomplished and equally opinionated siblings, because he had a knack for calling public attention to his points of view on everything -- pioneers, business, the need for another community swimming pool, the weather. "How hot is it? It's hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk!"  the newspaper cutline would shout under a picture of my Uncle Harry frying an egg on the sidewalk on a sizzling day in July. Saskatoon had phone-in radio shows, and Uncle Harry often called in. He was an activist in things having to do with city governance, recreation, the pioneer experience, the rights of First Nations, anti-racism, and he also had strong views on civic art. Everybody in town knew his gravelly voice.

Now even then, when I was young, there were a lot of people in Saskatoon who knew from art. One of the leading businessmen in town, who had made a pile of dough in meat packing, was a major collector of the Group of Seven. In 1964, a beautiful, eponymous museum arose on the river bank to which Fred Mendel donated his works as a permanent collection. The Mendel was better attended in its prime than the Art Gallery of Ontario though the whole population of Saskatchewan was then (and is still) much less than half of Toronto's. There was -- is -- something about Saskatchewan that inspires visual artists and the love of same. The Emma Lake Artists' Workshop, which started as a summer school in the Thirties, took on the world in the Fifties when artists affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan (who were also part of an informal group known as the Regina Five), invited big name artists to come and do art on the shore of Emma Lake. Emma Lake is north of Prince Albert. That's north. The workshops were led by major majors (Newman, Stella, Noland, Judd, Olitski) and even by Clement Greenberg, then a leading critic in New York City. No surprise, then, that Saskatoon decided to commission a major work of public art in 1960 to grace its brand new City Hall.

My Uncle's opinion was not sought on this subject, and he was not pleased with the project selected. Why? It was not a sculpture of a guy on a horse or a gal with a man draped over her lap, it was not a human figure at all. It was a work in sheet metal cut into shapes reminiscent of farm equipment piled to suggest an ancient Mayan god of rain. Its title is Rainmaker. My Uncle Harry's view was that this was not art at all, or at least not something that the ordinary, every-day people of Saskatoon could possibly enjoy. It was something that could only appeal to the high-falutin' fools up at the University. Yet the public had to pay for it. Uncle Harry's egalitarian view was that public money should be spent on something that reflects public tastes. Starting with his.

So he made a big fuss.  He called up a radio talk show to make his views known. This involved comparisons that were invidious. This was not art, this was....

Apparently this tradition of protest over public art continues in Saskatoon. In 2014, two shrink wrapped bales of garbage were purchased from an artist by the City for the sum of $4,300 and set out on the sidewalk. A local man covered it over with a tarp and affixed a note saying that public money should be spent on taking away the garbage, not adding to it.

But listen, these works were at least made by people with ideas that they wanted to get across, they were not just statistically enabled theft. Love it, hate it, advocate for it, or militate against it, a work of art surely should be, must be something that erupts first in the mind of a person determined to reach out to others by means of an image. It can never be the shallow reproduction of a style apprehended by a piece of software. Now I'm willing to believe that in the future, as intelligent robots wend their way through the world, they may one day make works of art that encapsulate or celebrate their particular experience and world view. But this is not that.

So listen up, ING. You will never get any of my spare change in your bank by re-branding yourself this way. This project of yours can never be ennobled by the word art. Even the paintings made by bored chimpanzees have greater value. Why? Because chimpanzees, unlike software and 3-D printers, have hearts and minds. They have feelings. They have ideas. They belong to communities and they want to share.

Right Uncle Harry?