Rescue of soccer team in Thailand Cave

<p>In July 2018, the world held its breath as an international team of cave divers endeavored to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach stranded deep in a flooded cave in Thailand. Follow the harrowing operation and discover the scientific ingenuity that made the rescue possible. Hear how rescuers explored every option—from pumping water, to drilling a new exit, to ultimately cave diving with the children through the treacherous, flooded passages. (Premiered November 14, 2018)</p>

<p>Follow the harrowing operation to rescue 12 boys stranded in a flooded cave in Thailand.</p>

Thai Cave Rescue

NOVA Wonders Can We Build a Brain? Hero

<p></p><p>Artificially intelligent machines are taking over. They’re influencing our everyday lives in profound and often invisible ways. They can read handwriting, interpret emotions, play games, and even act as personal assistants. They are in our phones, our cars, our doctors’ offices, our banks, our web searches…the list goes on and is rapidly growing ever longer. But how does today’s A.I. actually work—and is it truly intelligent? And for that matter, what is intelligence? The world’s brightest computer programmers are trying to build brighter machines by reverse-engineering the brain and by inventing completely new kinds of computers, with exponentially greater speed and processing power. <i>NOVA Wonders</i> looks at how far we’ve come and where machines are headed as their software becomes ever more…cerebral. How close are we from a world in which computers take over—from diagnosing cancer to driving our cars to targeting weapons? If we place more and more of our lives under the control of these artificial brains, what are we putting at risk?</p><p></p><p></p>

<p>How does today’s artificial intelligence actually work—and is it truly intelligent?</p>

Can We Build a Brain?

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<p>A two-year analysis of nearly a quarter of a million Twitter users reveals how Americans’ social lives are taking a toll on their sleep schedules.</p>

Scientists Track “Social Jet Lag” Sleeping Habits With Twitter Data

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Tech & Engineering

Koch Foundation

Draper





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>A new molecule can now officially join the ranks of Club Carbon.</p><p>The chemical debutante is cyclo[18]carbon, a ring of 18 carbon atoms that’s finally been created, imaged, and analyzed in a <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/08/14/science.aay1914">report</a> published today in the journal <i>Science. </i>The findings help settle decades of debate on the structure and properties of the molecule, which some researchers doubted could even be stably made in the lab.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Carbon is well-known for its versatility. Even without input from other elements, atoms of carbon can link up to create a diverse set of compounds, ranging from hard, clear diamonds to malleable black graphite. Without much prompting, carbon can come together in thin, flat sheets, or intricate, three-dimensional crystals; it can arrange itself into meticulously structured lattices, or slouch into amorphous blobs.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="kaiser4HR 1.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="424" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/kaiser4HR_1.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>A model of cyclo[18]carbon&#x27;s molecular structure. Image Credit: IBM Research.</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>But one structure eluded scientists for decades: an elegant ring of carbons, unsupported by any other stabilizing element. Previous attempts to generate so-called cyclocarbons in the lab had resulted in volatile gas, too ephemeral to study in any rigorous way.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>The recent breakthrough, however, shows that a cyclocarbon can be generated by pruning carbon and oxygen atoms off a more complex molecule at extremely cold temperatures with a technique called atomic force microscopy. Starting with a molecule made up of 24 carbons linked to six oxygens, researchers at IBM Research and Oxford University were able to generate a final structure of 18 carbons—the smallest possible ring of carbons predicted to be stable by theoretical models. Imaging and further analysis also revealed that the atoms in the cyclocarbon were joined together by alternating single and triple bonds, rather than a uniform chain of double bonds.</p><p>It was a harrowing process—the culmination of many months of trial and error, study author Lorel Scriven of Oxford University <a href="https://gizmodo.com/50-year-chemistry-mystery-solved-by-wild-new-carbon-rin-1837277104">told Ryan F. Mandelbaum at <i>Gizmodo</i></a>. The actual synthesis of cyclo[18]carbon was only part of the battle: To keep the unstable molecule from reacting into other forms of carbon, or creating a hybrid element with something in its surroundings, the team had to conduct their experiment on a bed of inert table salt. </p><p>But cyclo[18]carbon’s fickle nature is part of what makes it potentially powerful, too. “At some point we might be able to controllably trigger such reactions and create more complex molecular structures at will,” study author Katharina Kaiser, a physicist at IBM Research, <a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a28705498/super-material-ai-chips/">told John Wenz at <i>Popular Mechanics</i></a>. This could give chemists an unprecedented amount of control over the synthesis of carbon-based molecules.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="kaiser1HR.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="409" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/kaiser1HR.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>The process by which cyclo[18]carbon was synthesized in a new study. C24O6, a molecule with 24 carbon atoms and 6 oxygen atoms, was pared down into a ring of 18 carbon atoms. Image Credit: IBM Research</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>It’s not totally clear what’s next for cyclo[18]carbon. But if it’s anything like graphene—another form of carbon that’s extremely good at conducting electricity—the new molecule could someday play a role in efficiently powering devices that require a lot of processing power, like those relying on artificial intelligence, Wenz reports.</p><p>Regardless of what the future holds, simply locking down cyclo[18]carbon is a big win for the chemistry community. </p><p>As chemist Rik Tykwinski of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who was not involved with the research, <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chemists-have-created-and-imaged-new-form-carbon?tgt=nr">told Emily Conover at <i>Science News</i></a>, “It’s not every day that you make a new form of carbon.”</p></div>
  

  
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<p>The long-sought molecule could one day power high-energy electronics.</p>

A new form of carbon is born—on a bed of salt





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>Researchers have just created a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=16&amp;v=VjSs6KCLTC0">very self-sufficient bicycle</a>.</p><p>Thanks to an artificial intelligence chip modeled after the human brain, a new self-driving bike can heed vocal instructions, avoid obstacles in its path, and, perhaps a bit unnervingly, track and follow a person jogging up ahead of it.</p><p>The contraption won’t be wheeling itself into your garage anytime soon, though. For the scientists behind the invention, reported <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1424-8">Wednesday</a> in the journal <i>Nature</i>, the bicycle’s hat tricks are really more proof of concept than evidence of a new method of transportation.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>What’s most exciting, the authors argue, is the AI chip itself, called Tianjic—the product of a team of computer scientists at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and the bike’s functional “brain.” Other groups are hard at work on similar chips, and if the research progresses, these tiny processing units will find their way into most machines of the future. The goal, the researchers say, is to help artificial intelligence learn more efficiently and adaptively. In other words, more like we humans do.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Machine learning technology has advanced quickly in recent years, but most devices share a common pitfall: the amount of time, energy, and human input required to get the skills of these systems up to snuff. When artificial intelligence learns, it often does so through brute force, cycling through countless rounds of trial and error until it converges on the best set of tactics.</p><p>People, on the other hand, are much better at thinking on their feet, and require much less brainpower to do so. To bridge this processing gap, many independent groups of computer scientists are trying to build computer chips with an internal architecture that mimics that of the human brain.</p><p>So-called neuromorphic chips are hybrids. Half of their makeup is standard AI fare, relying on standard computer algorithms. The rest, however, is biologically inspired, incorporating hundreds of thousands of faux neurons that attempt to approximate how human brain cells communicate: through electrical impulses, sent only when an input signal reaches a critical threshold. The two parts of the chip then relay information to each other in a way that’s meant to combine their strengths in the learning process and consume less energy in doing so.</p><p>“This is about trying to bridge and unify computer science and neuroscience,” Gordon Wilson, chief executive of Rain Neuromorphics, a start-up company that is developing its own human-brain-inspired chip, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/science/bikes-robot-autonomous.html">told Cade Metz at <i>The New York Times</i></a>.</p><p>Of course, such a system remains a gross oversimplification of an actual human brain—especially considering how little we understand even the version in our own heads. But these chips are at least a small step closer to computationally mimicking the brain’s processing power.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Screen Shot 2019-07-31 at 3.12.41 PM.png" class="richtext-image full-width" height="500" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Screen_Shot_2019-07-31_at_3.12.41_PM.width-800.png"/><figcaption><p>A Chinese team&#x27;s self-driving bicycle can detect and avoid obstacles in its path. Image Credit: Pei et al., Nature, 2019</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>For now, the aforementioned bicycle’s neuromorphic chip remains imperfect. Its abilities, like obstacle detection and voice recognition, are all executed with pre-trained software, which means the bicycle still can’t learn from its experiences in real time. But the chip was able to establish the necessary connection between its computer science and neuroscience halves, and requires less energy than a more typical processor would, <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/one-chip-to-rule-them-all-it-natively-runs-all-types-of-ai-software/">John Timmer at <i>Ars Technica</i> reports</a>.</p><p>These qualities could make similar chips suitable for other applications, as long as it proves itself capable of other complex tasks, like manipulating objects, Alessandro Oltramari of Bosch, who was not involved in the study, <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332414-000-this-self-riding-bicycle-follows-you-around-while-you-walk/">told Donna Lu at <i>New Scientist</i></a>.</p><p>As for the self-driving bike? It’s unclear what the future holds for this wheeled wonder. Don’t feel bad for it, though. Fake brain or no, the bike’s still not sentient; it’s just along for the ride.</p></div>
  

  
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<p>An AI chip designed to mimic certain aspects of the human brain has given a bicycle an unprecedented level of autonomy.</p>

The little bicycle that could, thanks to artificial intelligence





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>Prostheses have been around <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/the-perfect-3-000-year-old-toe-a-brief-history-of-prosthetic-limbs/281653/">for millennia</a>, restoring structure, range of motion, and even dexterity to those who have lost limbs. But one crucial function has always eluded researchers looking to mimic the subtle architecture of the body: a sense of touch to rival that of a human hand.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Now, that might be on the cusp of changing. According to a <a href="http://robotics.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.aax2352">study</a> published Wednesday in the journal <i>Science Robotics</i>, a team of researchers at the University of Utah has engineered a prosthetic system that’s given a man whose hand was amputated the ability to feel the sensation of touch. Though the prosthetic hand remains imperfect, the findings suggest the new device is the most sensitive of its kind to date.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="george6HR 3.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="348" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/george6HR_3.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Keven Walgamott uses a new prosthesis to text on his phone (left) and shake hands with his wife (right). Image Credit: George <i>et al., Science Robotics</i> 4, eaax2352 (2019)</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>As a result, the patient, Keven Walgamott, can now text on his cell phone, pluck a grape from its stem, and even put on his wedding ring—everyday acts he hasn’t been able to perform with both hands since 2002.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>In an attempt to capture the capabilities of a human hand, the prosthesis itself came equipped with a series of advanced sensors capable of detecting pressure, movement, and several other types of perception. But the crux of the breakthrough was an innovation called the Utah Slanted Electrode Array (USEA)—a series of electrodes implanted into Walgamott’s arm that provided an electrical link between his limb’s remaining nerves and the prosthesis. Traversing this wireway, signals passed from the prosthesis to a nearby computer, which converted the message into something interpretable by the brain.</p><p>This, in effect, translated the device’s output into “the body’s natural language,” study author Jacob George <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/24/at-last-feel-again-robotic-hand-user-sense-touch-grapes-eggs">told Anna Ploszajski at <i>The Guardian</i></a>, giving human and machine an easy way to communicate.</p><p>With the device, Walgamott was able to distinguish between hard and soft objects, pick up and handle eggs, and even <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/11/15/new-robotic-hand-named-after-luke-skywalker-helps-amputee-touch-and-feel-again/?utm_term=.ab569508bf64">stuff a pillow into its case</a>. The prosthesis didn’t feel quite like a natural hand, producing sensations that instead felt like “electrical impulses or little electric shocks,” he <a href="https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900081107/touch-sense-prosthetics-users-university-of-utah-bioengineering.html">told Art Raymond at <i>Deseret News</i></a>.</p><p>All the same, Walgamott was overcome when he was able to use the prosthesis to take his wife’s hand—something he hadn’t done with his left hand in over a decade, Raymond reports.</p><p>Because the team’s prosthesis can’t sense things like pain and temperature, it’s still a long ways off from completely simulating human touch. It also isn’t yet commercially available, and each unit—consisting of the hand itself and the accompanying electrode array—costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 to 200,000, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-robot-hand-helps-amputees-feel-again/"><i>Scientific American</i>’s Jeff DelViscio reports</a>.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="george4HR.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="520" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/george4HR.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>An example of the electrode array that researchers implant into patient&#x27;s arms to establish an electrical connection between a prosthetic hand and the brain. Image Credit: George <i>et al., Science Robotics</i> 4, eaax2352 (2019)</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>What’s more, the setup isn’t portable, as it still needs to be tethered to a computer to relay signals from prosthesis to brain. And there’s not yet data to show how users would react, physically and emotionally, to wearing the device long term, Sarah Wilkes, a researcher at the University of College London who was not involved in the study, told Ploszajski.</p><p>But the researchers think the future still looks bright. Already, the team has conducted successful trials in several other patients. “We can’t yet fully replicate nature’s rich repertoire of sensation and perception,” study author Gregory Clark <a href="https://gizmodo.com/scientists-have-created-a-prosthetic-arm-that-lets-pati-1836669048">told <i>Gizmodo</i>’s Ed Cara</a>. “But we can do far, far better than occurs when there’s no sensation at all.”</p></div>
  

  
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<p>Researchers have built a prosthesis that enabled a man who lost his hand to text, pluck grapes from their stems, and stuff a pillow into its case.</p>

This robotic hand can partially restore a sense of touch





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>Scientists have nearly wiped out the local populations of one of the world’s most invasive mosquito species on two islands in Guangzhou, China.</p><p>In a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1407-9">study published</a> Wednesday in the journal <i>Nature,</i> an international research team combined two insect-control techniques to prevent Asian tiger mosquitoes (<i>Aedes Albopictus</i>) from reproducing. It’s the first time the techniques have been deployed in combination to control wild mosquito populations.</p><p>The first approach, called the sterile insect technique (SIT), involves releasing huge numbers of insects that have been sterilized using radiation. The objective is for them to mate with their wild counterparts but produce no offspring. The technique hasn’t worked well in mosquitoes, though, because irradiating males enough to sterilize them makes them less competitive as mates. And as a result, females give preference to wild males.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Using SIT on female mosquitoes isn’t a good option either. Although females require a lower dose of radiation than males to be sterilized, releasing sterilized females doesn’t affect the overall population because males will continue mating with wild females.</p><p>Enter the incompatible insect technique (IIT). Asian tiger mosquitoes are naturally infected with some strains of a bacterium called <i>Wolbachia</i>, and their offspring are only viable if both parents carry the same strain or strains. Scientists can interfere with reproduction by infecting lab-grown male mosquitoes with strains of <i>Wolbachia</i> not present in the wild populations. Unlike irradiated males, the males carrying new <i>Wolbachia</i> strains maintain their competitiveness as mates. And when one of these lab-grown males mates with a wild female, their eggs won’t be viable and the pair will fail to reproduce.</p><p>While IIT is generally effective at reducing mosquito reproduction, it quickly becomes ineffective if even a few females are unintentionally infected with a compatible <i>Wolbachia</i> strain in the lab and released. Females lay hundreds of eggs in their lifetime, and a mother can pass on her strains ofthe bacteria<i>,</i> quickly producing a new generation of fertile offspring that are reproductively compatible with those grown in the lab.</p><p>Combining SIT and IIT, the researchers hoped, could take advantage of each method’s benefits: Batches of lab-grown male mosquitoes could be infected with a new strain of the bacterium, keeping them competitive as mates but incapable of successfully reproducing with wild females. And then exposing the whole group to low-dose radiation could sterilize any females that were accidentally infected along with the males, without compromising the male population.</p><p>So, a team led by Zhidong Xi from Sun Yat-sen University–Michigan State University Joint Centre of Vector Control for Tropical Diseases in China, mechanically sorted Asian tiger mosquito pupae into male and female groups. They infected the male group with a strain of <i>Wolbachia</i> that doesn’t exist in Guangzhou’s wild population, then exposed them to low levels of radiation to sterilize any stray females that may have ended up in the mix. Then the researchers released the mosquitoes weekly during peak breeding season for two consecutive years on both islands.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>This combined approach reduced the number of the local population’s hatched mosquito eggs by more than 94 percent and reduced human bite rates by over 88 percent at the two locations studied.</p><p>“That’s very impressive,” Stephen Dobson, a medical entomologist at the University of Kentucky, Lexington and the founder of MosquitoMate, a company that commercializes <i>Wolbachia</i> as a mosquito-control tool <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02160-z">told Giorgia Guglielmi at <i>Nature</i></a><i>.</i></p><p>Asian tiger mosquitoes carry harmful viruses such as dengue and chikungunya, and can pose a significant public health concern. Current methods for controlling them<i>,</i> which include pesticides and removing standing water, are ineffective, Dobson told Guglielmi. And female mosquitoes can live as long as a month, biting humans and continuing to transmit disease throughout their life.</p><p>Though the technique has potential as a public health strategy in regions where the Asian tiger mosquito is found, it’s only a preventive measure, Zhiyong Xi, a medical entomologist at Michigan State University and lead researcher on the study <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/china-scientists-released-millions-infected-sterilized-mosquitoes-wild-wipe-out-1449709">told Kashmira Gander at <i>Newsweek</i></a>. &quot;In terms of disease control, this approach may not be suitable in emergency situations during disease outbreak,&quot; Xi told Gander.</p><p>But, the potential to eliminate these pests before they spread could help stop public health crises before they start. “A new tool like what’s being described in this paper is very much needed,” Dobson told Guglielmi.</p></div>
  

  
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<p>Combining two insect-control techniques, researchers largely prevented reproduction in a mosquito species known to carry Zika, dengue, and yellow fever.</p>

Scientists use radiation and bacteria to slash mosquito populations on two Chinese islands





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>Scientists have always loved fiddling with the laws of attraction—often with alluring results. The latest breakthrough? A malleable, free-flowing fluid with all the essential properties of your solid, garden-variety magnet.</p><p>“We’ve made a new material that has all the characteristics of an ordinary magnet, but we can change its shape, and conform it to different applications because it is a liquid,” study author Thomas Russell, a polymer scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/science/liquid-magnet.html">told Knvul Sheikh at <i>The New York Times</i></a>. “It’s very unique.”</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>The magnetic marvel, reported in a <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6450/264">study</a> published today in the journal <i>Science, </i>marks the first time researchers have devised a stable liquid magnet that retains its properties even after it’s been sloshed and squished. </p><p>Russell’s team isn’t the first to attempt this fluid feat. Half a century ago, NASA scientists realized they could magnetize slurries of solid magnetic nanoparticles suspended in liquid by exposing them to a strong magnetic field. The effect, however, disappeared once the magnetic field was taken away.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>In their experiment, Russell and his colleagues also mixed nanoparticles into water—but first, they injected the nanoparticles into tiny droplets containing toluene, a liquid that doesn’t dissolve in water, and a soap-like additive. The soap-like material caused nanoparticles to crowd together on the surface of each toluene droplet, forming a shell that encased more nanoparticles bopping around a free-flowing liquid interior. Suspended in water, the oil-like droplets yielded what basically amounted to a nanoparticle vinaigrette.</p><p>And when the researchers temporarily exposed the liquid to a solid magnet, the droplets magnetized—and stayed that way.</p><p>Russell and his colleagues aren’t totally sure why the effect is so permanent, <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2210405-weird-new-type-of-magnetic-liquid-could-be-used-to-control-soft-robots/">reports <i>New Scientist</i>’s Leah Crane</a>. There’s likely some contribution from the fact that nanoparticles are constantly jostling for space at the surface of each toluene droplet, making it easier to hold onto a magnetic field. </p><p>“But the part I don’t fully understand,” Russell <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/how-to-make-a-magnet-out-of-liquid">told Phil Dooley at <i>Cosmos</i></a>, “[is why] if you measure its [magnetic] field, it’s as if every particle inside the droplet is participating, even the ones in the liquid.”</p><p>What’s more clear, though, is that the new material is easily manipulated: It can be pushed and poured into a variety of vessels, or massaged and morphed into different configurations. And, because it’s magnetic, researchers can remotely control the movements of the liquid—and, perhaps, the device it’s held in—by simply applying an external magnetic field. Materials like these could someday power the motions of soft robots, or even precisely deliver drugs into the human body, Sheikh reports.</p><p>Those applications are a long way off, and there’s still <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/uoma-ulm071519.php">a lot to learn about the mysterious liquid itself</a>. But that’s no cause for stress: Magnets, too, can go with the flow.</p></div>
  

  
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<p>The new material could have applications in robotics and medicine.</p>

In a first, researchers have permanently magnetized a liquid





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>&quot;The robots are coming!&quot; Most of the time, this phrase is a warning, a reference to the machines coming to take our jobs. But robots are also coming simply to help out, thanks to infusions of artificial intelligence (AI) making them smart, social, and capable of interacting with people in a variety of settings.</p><p>Robotics and AI came up together in the 1950s, but limitations in AI software and data prevented much crossover between them for most of the last 60 years. For decades, robots were fairly dumb, stationary machines mainly used in industrial settings, created to do simple physical tasks over and over again. Now that faster processors, new algorithms, and big data are powering an AI renaissance, however, researchers are starting to upgrade robots with intelligence—and liberating them from the factory floor.</p><p>Today, many robots are being designed to live among us, to be social and adept caretakers, tutors, and companions. And unlike the robots that hollowed out factory jobs in the first wave of automation, the majority of these social robots are being designed to solve worker shortages and assist, rather than replace, human workers. It remains to be seen whether things will play out this way, of course. In the meantime, fears that robots will take jobs that involve human interaction away from people who need them—and can do them better—will likely persist.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>One of the labor shortages social robot research is trying to fill is in elder care. By 2050, <a href="https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/worlds-older-population-grows-dramatically">there will be 1.6 billion people</a> worldwide who are 65 and older, more than double the current population in that age group. The number of people aged 80 and older is expected to more than triple between 2015 and 2050. In the U.S. alone, senior citizens will need an estimated <a href="https://eldercareworkforce.org/workforce-shortage/">3.5 million additional health care professionals</a> and workers by 2030.</p><p>Given the scale of demand, developers believe that rather than robots being an alternative to human caregivers, the choice may sometimes be between robots and no care at all. But even if that’s the case, the question remains: Can they do the job?</p><p>ENRICHME, short for ENabling Robot and assisted living environment for Independent Care and Health Monitoring of the Elderly, is a mobile robot designed to help older people with a range of tasks, from exercising to remembering where they have put things. The robot was tested in retirement homes in three European countries to see if it could help combat cognitive decline and improve quality of life. Early results show that the users accepted the robot, that it helped them be both more cognitively and physically active, as well as solving some difficulties they meet in everyday life, like finding missing items.</p><p>This type of robot is part of a new field known as “ambient assisted living,” which uses technology to create environments in which elderly patients can be safer and more independent. ENRICHME’s creator, Nicola Bellotto, a computer scientist at the University of Lincoln in the UK, designed the robot to be both useful when needed and a discrete presence that doesn’t intrude unnecessarily into the elderly users’ lives.</p><p>&quot;They were quite happy about the experience with this new technology assisting them,” he said of the test users.</p><p>Even stationary robots are finding ways to engage. Take Mabu, a smiling yellow robot holding a touchscreen, that is small enough to live on a side table. The “smart home companion” does things like remind users at risk of heart failure to take their medicine. This helps extend the points of contact that people have with their doctors—a real need given that most patients visit a doctor’s office only every six months and must try to control their medical issues on their own most of the time.</p><p>“There is definitely trouble with engaging patients over long periods of time,” says physician Pat Basu, a board member at Catalia Health, the company behind Mabu.</p><p>Mabu users check in with the robot every day. As it gets to know them, Mabu can suggest things like low-sodium diet options, recommend calling a doctor, or even make small talk. Cory Kidd, the creator of Mabu and the founder and CEO of Catalia Health, says an iPad loaded with a similar program might work well for a week or two, but the more anthropomorphic interface of Mabu creates a sustainable relationship that improves patient care.</p><p>“We are getting information we didn’t have before,” Kidd says.</p><p>With advances in medicine, people are living longer—in many cases because they survive events like strokes and heart attacks, which then require long-term physical rehabilitation. For these more complicated interactions, a mechanical doctor or assistant would have to closely follow the lead of human clinicians, for both careful physical interactions and nonphysical ones, like explaining a treatment.</p><p>“That’s the kind of interactions we want for our robots,” says Ayanna Howard, a roboticist at Georgia Tech. “We want to mimic the human-human interaction.”</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Ayanna Howard_3.jpeg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="449" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Ayanna_Howard_3.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Dr. Ayanna Howard,  a roboticist at Georgia Tech, focuses on the development of &quot;intelligent agents that must interact with and in a human-centered world.&quot; Image credit: Georgia Tech College of Computing</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>With Social Robots Come Social Problems</h3><p>Not everyone is excited for robots. In fact, no sooner had engineers started building them than people started attacking them. Examples of such violent behavior include kicking six-foot-tall robots that <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/please-do-not-assault-the-towering-robot-that-roams-walmart/">roam Walmarts</a> or the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/people-are-kicking-starship-technologies-food-delivery-robots-2018-6">smaller delivery bots</a> on some American streets, to an experimental <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/03/us/hitchbot-robot-beheaded-philadelphia-feat/index.html">hitchhiking robot getting beheaded in Philadelphia</a>.</p><p>The reasons people abuse robots are varied, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/style/why-do-people-hurt-robots.html">with experts pointing</a> to anxieties over job security, and fear of robots taking over. One robotics company executive suggested people may even be using them as an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/people-are-kicking-starship-technologies-food-delivery-robots-2018-6">“anger management” tool</a>. There may be ways to mitigate this type of behavior, like teaching children how to interact with robots at an early age or giving the machine a name. And while the angry responses to videos of robot abuse show that many people have empathy for the machines and find that type of behavior abhorrent, such abuse may become more common as they become a bigger part of our daily lives.</p><p>“It’s the same response that we would see with animals,” Dr. Howard says. “We think it’s wrong.”</p><p>Another very human problem that having robots among us has triggered is racism. If a robot is anthropomorphized, with features like eyes, nose, and a mouth, users sometimes assign the robot a race based on the color of the machine. So far, the majority of these anthropomorphic robots are white, and at <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90212508/even-black-robots-are-impacted-by-racism">least one study</a> has shown that people are biased against darker versions.</p><p>Not having a variety of differently-hued robots could have far-reaching, and negative, implications—particularly as they become more human-like. If robots become essential in our lives as caregivers, teachers, and companions, and they are all white, this could reinforce cultural stereotypes that associate positive qualities like helping and competence with whiteness. To prevent racism from spreading to our mechanical counterparts, it will be essential for social robots to reflect the communities using them.</p><h3>Robotos working with kiddos</h3><p>Social robots are also being developed to work with people on the other end of the age spectrum from seniors: children. Some of the most promising work is being done with kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which is estimated to <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0327-autism-spectrum-disorder.html">affect 1 in 68 children</a> in the United States.</p><p>Robotic company RoboKind makes Milo, an expressive classroom robot that the company says &quot;never gets tired, never gets frustrated, and is always consistent.&quot;</p><p>Milo demonstrates various facial expressions and delivers lessons verbally, while a screen on the robot’s chest shows symbols meant to help the student understand what is being said. The robotic ability to repeat something again and again in the same tone without tiring is particularly suited to helping children with ASD learn. Milo is also being used in special education classrooms and showing benefits for children with Down syndrome, ADHD, trauma, and other social or emotional diagnoses.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Unknown.jpeg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="534" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Unknown_u0A46U5.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>RoboKind designers say Milo, their classroom robot, ‘never gets tired, never gets frustrated, and is always consistent,’ qualities that educators who work with ASD learners value. Image credit: RoboKind</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>“The robots can do some things people can’t do,” says Richard Margolin, the CEO of RoboKind.</p><p>Beyond helping children with special challenges, robots are being designed to help tutor and encourage learning more generally. RoboKind, for example, has created a curriculum for the Milo robot to teach coding skills. Another project named <a href="https://www.popsci.com/reading-robot">Minnie</a> out of the University of Wisconsin, Madison is designed to encourage reading with middle-schoolers through a back and forth interaction.</p><p>In each case, the approach is centered on providing a social component similar to a study buddy or tutor—not a substitute teacher—but with extra patience built in.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><h3>Artificial emotional intelligence</h3><p>Despite the promise of helpful robots taking shape in labs today, their real-world impact has been minimal thus far. Their skillsets tend to be quite narrow, which means they may be good at doing one thing, but fail at being useful in holistic ways. The more generalized home robot companies—producing bots like Jibo and Anki—<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/rip-anki-yet-another-home-robotics-company-powers-down/">have failed</a>. It’s not clear the market is ready for social robots to take off in a big way.</p><p>What’s missing that might help bring social robots closer to what sci-fi stories have dreamed up? More feeling. Even AI-enhanced robots that can learn about and interact with their primary users may still lack an understanding of human emotion. If we want tech that is more like us, however, it needs to know about feelings and learn how to make meaningful connections with humans. To solve this problem, some researchers are teaching robots to recognize emotions through nonverbal cues such as facial expressions, and then react appropriately.</p><p>Emotional intelligence hasn’t been a priority in previous work in robotics and is just now starting to catch up, says Gabi Zijderveld, the chief marketing officer at Affectiva, an emotional AI company.</p><p>“It was never part of the fundamental design thinking,” Zijderveld says. “Design was very much focused on the IQ element.”</p><p>Affectiva was the first business to market “artificial emotional intelligence.” The company has algorithms trained on nearly six million faces pulled from 87 countries and can detect seven emotions: anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. Most customers are using the technology for webcam analysis, but Affectiva’s technology is also starting to make its way into personal robots.</p><p>Could this ability help make new relationships between humans and machines possible? And is that something we should <i>want?</i> Many people bemoan the internet age and smartphones for making us less social, and at least <a href="http://bit.ly/2xHi09F">one study</a> has found that “digital addiction” can lead to increased anxiety, depression, and loneliness. But social AI developers like Cynthia Breazeal argue that it doesn’t have to be that way.</p><p>“That’s an issue of design,” says Breazeal, head of the Personal Robots group at the MIT Media Lab “It’s not a technology that should just be about information.”</p><p>Just like emotional intelligence is no longer being overlooked, encouraging socialness can be made a priority in robots. Depending on the needs or desires of users, interactions with robots might end up combining aspects of those we have with teachers, companion animals, and friends. While the end result might not be quite the same as human friendships or partnerships, it could still be fulfilling.</p><p>“It’s a different type of relationship that opens people up to interacting in a different way,” Breazeal says.</p><p>To make this type of companionship work, robots would need some kind of understanding of what makes humans tick. With anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of human interactions based on nonverbal communication, robots would have to learn to pick up on cues like facial expressions and body language that come naturally to people.</p><p>“Being smart also means having emotional intelligence,” Zijderveld says.</p><p>It’s a lesson AI developers struggling to endow machines with social and emotional skills most humans take for granted are learning all too well.</p></div>
  

  
      

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<p>Researchers are developing robots that use AI to read emotions and social cues, making them better at interacting with humans. Are they a solution to labor shortages in fields like health care and education, a threat to human workers, or both?</p>

This time, with feeling: Robots with emotional intelligence are on the way. Are we ready for them?





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>The list of games in which humans still hold dominion is ever-dwindling. The latest casualty? Six-player Texas hold ’em poker, which the artificial intelligence (AI) Pluribus has mastered, according to a <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/07/10/science.aay2400">paper</a> published this week in the journal <i>Science.</i></p><p>Over the course of 20,000 games of online poker, Pluribus repeatedly trounced its human opponents, including fifteen of the world’s top professionals.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Pluribus, the brainchild of Facebook’s Noam Brown and Carnegie Mellon University’s Tuomas Sandholm, certainly isn’t the first game-playing AI to best a human—but its breakthrough achievement is a standout for a couple reasons. Most of the games in which AIs and people have been pitted against one another <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/google-alphazero-artificial-intelligence/">involve two players</a>, both of whom have complete knowledge of what’s happening in the game (such as when all the playing pieces are clearly displayed on a board in front of them, as in chess). Texas hold ’em, on the other hand, is multi-player, and hinges on <i>withholding</i> information about which cards each player holds, versus which ones remain in the deck.</p><p>Games like poker are also tricky because of the sheer number of possible moves that can be made during gameplay, Tristan Cazenave of Paris Dauphine University, who was not involved in the study, <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2209631-ai-beats-professionals-at-six-player-texas-hold-em-poker/">told Donna Lu at <i>New Scientist</i></a>. Such complexity gives these games a level of unpredictability that, in a way, is more representative of the ambiguities of real-world decision making—something that AIs have yet to navigate with human-like dexterity.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>To whip Pluribus into shape, Brown and Sandholm subjected the program to rigorous rounds of training in which the AI repeatedly played against itself, honing its technique through trial and error. The pair also carefully designed Pluribus to predict its opponents next couple moves—a strategy that gave the AI an edge without forcing it to calculate every possibility through the end of the game, which would have quickly gotten computationally expensive. With these parameters in place, Pluribus’ bootcamp took only eight days, in a process that could be replicated at a cost of just $150, Brown and Sandholm report.</p><p>The researchers then sent Pluribus off to the races—in the form of an online poker room where it played 10,000 games against five human opponents, and 10,000 more where a single human opponent faced five copies of the AI. Though Pluribus didn’t emerge victorious every time, it played well enough that, had real money been at stake, the program would have raked in about $1,000 an hour.</p><p>Brown and Sandholm attribute part of this winning streak to Pluribus’ unpredictable gameplay. The AI was able to bluff and switch up its strategy; it also bet boldly where human players might have shirked from the stress, <a href="https://gizmodo.com/superhuman-ai-crushes-poker-pros-at-six-player-texas-1836257695"><i>Gizmodo’s</i> George Dvorsky reports</a>. The winning combo paid off.</p><p>“Whenever playing the bot, I feel like I pick up something new to incorporate into my game,” poker pro Jimmy Chou said in a statement released to the press. “As humans, I think we tend to oversimplify the game for ourselves, making strategies easier to adopt and remember. The bot doesn’t take any of these shortcuts.”</p><p>Clearly, Pluribus is impressive—but it remains to be seen how transferrable its skillset really is. Brown and Sandholm call the AI’s accomplishments “superhuman,” and hope to adapt their methodology to applications in cybersecurity, fraud detection, self-driving cars, and other domains that require complex problem-solving.</p><p>But artificial intelligence has yet to match—let alone beat—humans in countless other behavioral arenas. Games don’t capture a lot of what’s difficult about living in the real world. To get by, humans have to break rules, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/deepmind-quake-iii-arena/">collaborate</a>, innovate, and take unexpected developments in stride. Pluribus may now be a poker pro, but that doesn’t guarantee that true intelligence is in the cards.</p></div>
  

  
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<p>The breakthrough suggests that bots can navigate complex games involving multiple stakeholders and hidden information—situations that better approximate the real world than two-player board games.</p>

Topic: Tech & Engineering

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