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Science & Tech ahahah aloha - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Robot hands that mimic the texture felt by a human hand:
        Firstly, it can keep humans safer. We could one day send highly dexterous robots into sticky situations by remotely piloting them as physical avatars of ourselves instead of trusting them to find their own way. (Removing danger —> safety and security)
        Medical uses: These hands could be ameliorated prostheses that help amputees experience touch through “fingers”. (Medical progress —> helping medical patients recover a lost part of themselves)
      - Using Tech for Good: When he was just seven years old, Mr Joseph Oh suffered a viral infection that caused inflammation in his brain. He recovered after a few months, but developed a motor speech disorder that makes him slur his words.
        After he enrolled in Republic Polytechnic in 2018 to study marine science and aquaculture, he was referred by a school counsellor to the Specialised Assistive Technology Centre. Mr Oh learnt how to use a specialised text-to-speech app, including how to customise its speaking voice by changing its speed or pitch.
        Through using it during presentations in class, he became better able to express himself and his confidence grew, he said. Opportunities opened up as well. His polytechnic lecturers allowed him to do his final-year project at Nanyang Technological University. And now he is employed as a laboratory technologist at Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory. (CU1 - Tech and Disabilities/Healthcare/Society, improving social mobility through tech)
    - - Shift from offline to online
        
        E.g. Jingdong Century Trading Co. tried putting its products online after being heavily affected by the SARS crisis. (RISE of e-commerce amidst changing circumstances - CU2) Today, JD.com is one of China’s biggest e-commerce giants with a 20% spike in sales with the help of a new, automated (automation brings us greater efficiency, which increases economic profits and improves our MSOL) warehouse that can process more than 1.5million orders a day.
      - Which jobs are affected? - CU1 (trend) Blue collar jobs in healthcare, food, delivery, manufacturing, logistics, transport and education. Back office white-collar jobs in finance, customer service, sales, Human Resources, law and accounting.
        
        Why are these jobs more likely to get affected and stay that way? Robots don’t need employee welfare unlike humans, and they can remain at optimum productivity 24/7. (reduce costs, improve efficiency - thus larger profit margins) They are also ideal at dangerous jobs, which in a pandemic means any job that requires interaction with people. (effect of pandemic/worldwide events - worldwide trends)
      - Automation is IN, you are out lol - CU1
        
        Keenon, a Shanghai robotics company, developed an autonomous vehicle to disinfect areas, using a combination of LIDAR, machine vision and sensors. This is in response to the global demand for robots that far outstrips supply (new industries where DD>SS) in a time of social distancing.
      - CU1 - 21st vs 20th century: “Intelligent automation that can replace white-collar labour is very differnt from the rudimentary physical automation of the 20th century, since today’s robots require drawing together mechanical engineering, AI for perception and fine-motor manipulation. Yet as everything happens online and all tasks are translated into data in the pandemic. It is a much smaller step to take to have machines take over completely.
        
        Example: During the pandemic, the credit-card department of a large Chinese bank used the system to call its customers, managing 350,000 calls a day, or the equivalent of 1,200 human customer-service representatives. (MASSIVE cost savings) These conversational bots not only reduce cost, but also improve customer satisfaction and boost revenue. (HIGHER QUALITY - it even trumps the effect of human call-takers)
      - What if our current level structures aren’t prepared for these new advances?
        
        Example of AI-operated ships: “A lot of existing laws involve a set of human eyes sailing into port,” says IBM’s Stanford-Clark. “We are going to be pioneering, but when we sail into Dublin or Rotterdam, we will have to modify certain rules to do that. Who is liable if there is an accident caused by an autonomous ship?” (CU2 past vs present, CU1 link to law)
- - - - AI with better 'reasoning' akin to human reasoning can then take on white collar work: Researchers are essentially transforming chatbots into a new kind of autonomous system called an A.I. agent. That means the chatbots can use software apps, websites and other online tools, including spreadsheets, online calendars and travel sites. People could then offload tedious office work to chatbots. But these agents could also take away jobs entirely.
    - - A year later after ChatGPT's release, Naver runs an A.I. model built for Korean language speakers from the ground up using public data from the South Korean government and from its search engine, which has scraped the country’s internet since 1999. Clova X recognizes Korean idioms and the latest slang (localisation)— language that American-made chatbots like Bard, ChatGPT and Claude often struggle to understand. Naver’s chatbot is also integrated into the search engine, letting people use the tool to shop and travel. (greater versatility, expanding its range of use)
    - - A Tesla owned by a man with the surname Goeulla, with Autopilot engaged, slammed into the back of an unoccupied fire truck parked on a California interstate highway.
        Over time, Mr Geoulla's initial doubts about Autopilot softened, and he found it reliable when tracking a vehicle in front of him. But he noticed the system sometimes seemed confused when faced with direct sunlight or a vehicle in front of him changing lanes, according to a transcript of his interview. He was driving into the sun before he rear-ended the fire truck, he told the investigator.
        In the first known fatal US crash involving Tesla's semi-autonomous driving technology, which occurred in 2016 west of Williston, Florida, the company said both the driver and Autopilot failed to see the white side of a tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky. Instead of braking, the Tesla collided with the 18-wheel truck.
        
        This raises the question: Would the human's biological instinct and sixth sense for danger be a better substitute for the AI camera which bases the use of caution on their inaccurate and imprecise camera captures?
- - - - Simulations x Driving: One system to train autonomous cars is Carla, built by researchers at the Computer Vision Centre in Barcelona, Spain, with support from Intel, a chipmaker, and the research arm of Toyota, a Japanese car giant. To create test scenarios for their autonomous-vehicle algorithms, carmakers can customise several aspects of Carla’s world, from vehicle and pedestrian density to weather conditions, time of day and illumination. It is now the leading open-source simulator for autonomous driving.
  - - - Also, what is greatness? Isn’t greatness a phrase to define how humanity stretches the limits of our mental capacity to create unique, beautiful œuvres ?
- - - - Kinda related to agriculture - Food: From just four firms in 2016 to over 55 startups globally by 2020, the cultured meat sector is rapidly expanding, with ventures aiming to replicate various types of animal flesh, including pork, shrimp, and foie gras. Memphis Meat, a key player, received a whopping $161 million, signaling investor confidence in the sector's potential.
        
        Blended Meat: Blended meat, combining cultured meat with plant-based proteins, emerges as a promising strategy to address cost and flavor concerns. Startups like Artemys Foods and Higher Steaks are experimenting with hybrid products, aiming to offer consumers a more affordable and palatable alternative to traditional meat. Fast-food chains like KFC are venturing into blended meat products, indicating a shifting landscape in consumer preferences and market demands. Blended chicken nuggets, featuring a combination of cultured chicken cells and plant-based ingredients, are slated for release, showcasing the industry's adaptability to changing trends.
    - - What could go wrong?: Modern gene editing is quite precise but it is not perfect. The procedure can be a bit hit and miss, reaching some cells but not others. Even when Crispr gets where it is needed, the edits can differ from cell to cell, for example mending two copies of a mutated gene in one cell, but only one copy in another. For some genetic diseases this may not matter, but it may if a single mutated gene causes the disorder. Another common problem happens when edits are made at the wrong place in the genome. There can be hundreds of these “off-target” edits that can be dangerous if they disrupt healthy genes or crucial regulatory DNA.
      - In 2019, a court in China sentenced He Jiankui to three years in prison for violating medical regulations after he claimed the previous year that he had used a gene-editing procedure known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite the DNA in the sisters’ embryos – modifications he claimed would make a pair of twins immune to HIV.. His experiments sent shockwaves through the medical and scientific world. He was widely condemned for having gone ahead with the risky, ethically contentious and medically unjustified procedure with inadequate consent from the families involved. The court found that He had forged documents from an ethics review panel that were used to recruit couples for his research.
        
        He said the three genome-edited children were “perfectly healthy and have no problems with their growth”, according to the newspaper, adding that the twins, now aged 5, were attending kindergarten.In his interview with the Mainichi, he said society would “eventually accept” human embryo gene editing in the quest to find treatments for genetic diseases.