New-Tech Europe Magazine | February 2019

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would like to cross. But this type
of ‘unwritten rules’ in human-to-
human communication is not easy
to transfer to AI systems.
The way humans and cobots work
together on the workfloor can take
the formof the humandemonstrating
how something is done and the
cobot learning from it so that it can
then perform a particular action
perfectly. In a single, repetitive
process it may be that the human
worker will only have to show the
robot how to do something a few
times and the robot will then take
it from there. But in more complex
situations, the cobot may always
need a human workmate on hand
to give it instructions and to instruct
it how to do things. One example of
this would be collecting waste in a
city. It can be a complex business
distinguishing what is waste and
what isn’t. It’s also hard to know
how to react if someone waves to
the waste truck driver and then runs
up behind with a bag of waste to be
picked up. A robot would not know
how to respond, whereas a human
knows that the friendliest thing to
do is wait. This means that in some
situations, humans and robots will
always have to work together, with
the robot taking on the heavier work
and its human workmate having
more time for interaction with other
people and knowing how to respond
to unexpected situations.
AI systems need to be
tested regularly
As we have already said, the human
always needs to understand how a
robot arrives at a certain conclusion
or action – and must always be
able to make adjustments where
necessary. Recent examples of
prob-lems with artificial systems
have demonstrated exactly that.
For example, there is the instance
of the chatbot, Tay, which began
posting racist messages on Twitter
after certain other Twitter users
left politically incorrect posts. The
chatbot had not been given any
instruc-tions to recognize these
types of statements as being
inappropriate.
‘Norman’ also made the news in
2018. Norman is an AI system
that displayed psychopathic
characteristics when doing a well-
known test with Rorschach inkblots.
It happened because Norman had
previously been shown mainly
sensational and violent images from
Reddit and he had built up a picture
of the world based on those images.
MIT re-searchers wanted to use
the experiment to demonstrate the
danger of ‘false data’ being used as
input for AI systems.
And finally, there is also the example
of the COMPAS algorithm that
was used by the judicial system in
America to make predictions about
the recidivism of convicts. What
happened? Based on the historical
data used as input for the algorithm,
it reached the conclusion that blacks
Fig 2: The cobot developed for Audi can be operated using hand gestures
and has a screen in the form of a face to communicate with the worker.
Fig 3: This is Norman, the ‘psychopathic’ AI algorithm that MIT scientists
trained to demonstrate the danger of AI when ‘false’ data is used as input.
(copyright “Thunderbrush on Fiverr”, .
At right is one of the Rorschach inkblot tests that Nor-man was given to look
at. In it, he saw a man knocked down and killed by a speeding car, whereas
standard AI systems see it as a close-up of a wedding cake on a table.
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