tofuwatch.com

Robots as journalists: They’re already making noodles and playing with LEGOs

Perhaps, if journalists, content producers or information brokers – or whatever label you use – really want to get a jump on things in 2010, one logical step might be to enter the robot industry.

Why?

Well, robots might have the ability to do what human journalists do these days – at least, according to this blog entry from Singularity Hub which the Knight Foundation also noted.

Life is rich. Isn’t it?

Researchers at Tokyo University apparently have come up with a robot, that as blogger Aaron Saenz writes:

…that can autonomously explore its environment and report what it finds. The robot detects changes in its surroundings, decides if they are relevant, and then takes pictures with its on board camera. It can query nearby people for information, and it uses internet searches to further round out its understanding. If something appears newsworthy, the robot will even write a short article and publish it to the web.

Just to think that people in what is now China once used bamboo as the medium to record words and thoughts.

Now this.

As a former newspaper journalist, who has watched the industry change rapidly in the past few years, I suppose the rise of the robotic content producer is possible.

If you thought the Internet – and its inexpensive entry for people to have their own online platform – opened up the world to citizen journalists, bloggers and commenters, it remains plausible that, well, robots would join the fray.

The information pool, well, just made room for bots.

If bots ever come to actually collecting and distributing news and information, would humans notice the difference?

Would we even care?

I mean, if a photo of a news or sports event was captured and distributed broadly after the event happened and there was little weight on how artistic or composed that image was, it could work (I suppose).

The same could be said for written copy or video or audio.

Since humans could operate an army of journobots, news subjects (meaning humans) would have to contend with a new way to ask for corrections.

And talk about journobots seriously never stopping until they received an answer to a specific question from a reluctant news subject (meaning humans).

I can already see what public relations officials for government agencies and companies would say: “Let’s just put our own bot out there with the journobot, sort of in a head-to-head standoff.”

ASIMO, Honda’s robot, already has led the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

And search bots are helping Google and other companies scour the Internet for key words, topics and images – so they can be categorized in search results.

What I think would be ideal, though, and I’m speaking as a human who still types on a keyboard and presses the button of a digital camera, would be an aerial drone-like robot that also can do the work as a human journalist.

If it can go underwater (and in space), that would be quite impressive.

As you might realize, I find robots to be pretty fascinating.

In this Honda-produced documentary, the topic of robots centered around the fact that humans are the ones that are programming them – and that they are, in a sense, a reflection of ourselves.

Months ago, I wrote a headline about robots and mapo tofu and jokingly referred to whether a machine could really make one of my favorite tofu dishes, which is from Sichuan province.

I think I might have typed that headline too soon.

In Japan, giant robotic arms have made noodles for customers.

I agree with the comment posted on YouTube: The end is a bit creepy.

The Japanese restaurant that dishes up these robot-prepared noodles has more videos of the mechanical masters at work.

An IBM robot also was set to compete against humans on Jeopardy! – the game show in which winning answers are asked in the form of answers.

The question is though: Can robotic arms – which have been used in the automobile industry and the medical world – really dish up a tasty helping of mapo tofu?

Noodles and tofu – they’re both food.

If a bot can make one, it could in theory make the other.

Steve Yamaguma, a family friend in California, told me that he once ate sushi in Tokyo – made by robot machines.

Eating food made by humans, he added, was more fun.

And in the parenting world and joy of playing with LEGOs and kids, a bot could actually take the part of playmate.

I’m going to let the idea of robots as journalists (or mapo tofu cooks or LEGO playmate) sit for a while.

But I do think if robots are going to move under the First Amendment with digital recorders, cameras and software to crank out stories, resembling a human might be more acceptable.

Of course, if you have a robot spokesperson, or spokesbot, at a press briefing, it wouldn’t matter too much if bots made up your media corps.

But when a journobot comes knocking on the door of a human being, at least have it look like a person.

My thanks to Singularity Hub – and all of its great posts about robots and the future.