Just awesome!

A little while ago I posted a video of the robotic arm that has been created by Dean Kamen and his team. Ryan from hawaiigeek.tv forwarded a segment from a presentation Dean Kamen made in the last couple of days:

Last week was VC week and seeing as most of my meetings were AM PST I needed to crawl out of bed a little earlier than usual. On Friday I slunk home a little early and collapsed on the couch to catch up on my pod cast list. I mused at how wonderful TV was now that I downloaded a lot of the content. I selected Bill Clinton’s TED 2007 talk.

Earlier in the week I had seen a BBC HARDtalk interview with Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire - the UN Force Commander in Rwanda ‘93-’94. Dallaire, justifiably, heaps derision on the leaders in the West and the the role they played in allowing the genocide to occur. He singles Bill Clinton out as someone who could’ve done a lot more.

About 2/3s of the way through Clinton’s TED speech there is a moment that I think I will remember for the rest of my life. Clinton talks about the people who could’ve done a lot more to prevent Rwanda and then says “and most of all me”. It is a very rare moment when you see some one of his stature take some responsibility for such a horrid event. I found it very moving. It was this clear chiming note that rang in my ears. While he didn’t show the same level of leadership when the event occurred he was actively trying to make reparations.

A little while back I linked to a story about the ‘3 Laws’ and the Korean robotics industry. Zef raised an interesting question about military devices. It turns out that there is some thought about the laws governing military robotics:

• Let machines target other machines
• Let men target men

src: /.

MSNBC have a really important article about the insiders who tried to stop the abuses at Gitmo.

Speaking publicly for the first time, senior U.S. law enforcement investigators say they waged a long but futile battle inside the Pentagon to stop coercive and degrading treatment of detainees by intelligence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Kathy Sierra has been receiving death threats… it blows me away. I have a really hard time understanding how people are able to maintain such brutal hatred and then channel it in the way that they have.

The South Koreans are putting together a Robot Ethics Charter:

An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea.

The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007.

…

The new guidelines could reflect the three laws of robotics put forward by author Isaac Asimov in his short story Runaround in 1942, she said.

Asimov’s three laws are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Later stories saw the introduction of the Zeroth Law:

“A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”

For me this is really interesting because it is an example of the sorts of ideas put forward by Bill Joy many years ago. Poo-poo’d at the time I am very confident that these are ideas that will gain a lot more currency - not taking responsibility has been shown to be a failed business strategy (when judged on metrics like longevity and sustainability).

Pinochet has shuffled off his mortal coil… shame he wasn’t around to face his accusers. On the plus side he spent his last years running from them.

Peter Gabriel gives a brief talk about how technology can be used to put a human face on tragedies and stop the erosion of human rights:

Richard Dawkins on why were here.