I, Human

Accessibility Scotland, Edinburgh October 2019

Léonie Watson, TetraLogical

3rd Century BCE: Argonautica

Talos towering over figures on a beach — Apollonius Rhodius' Talos

8 CE: Metamorphoses

Oil painting representing Pygmalion reaching for his statue — Ovid's Pygmalion

1818: Frankenstein

Boris Karloff as Frankenstein — Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

1872: Erewhon

Erewhon first edition cover — Samuel Butler's Erewhon

1950: I, Robot

Isaac Asimov

2058: Handbook of Robotics (56th Edition)

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

Asimov on the Three Laws

The Three Laws are the only way in which rational human beings can deal with robots - or anything else. But when I say that, I always remember (sadly) that human beings are not always rational!

About 300,000 years ago: Homo Sapiens

Homo Sapien Evolution from ape to man with iPad — Homo-sapiens

About 50,000 years ago: Behavioural Modernity

Lascaux Cave Painting — Lascaux cave painting

Human intelligence

Seeing

Uses about 30% of our brain
Optic nerves contain 1 million fibres

Seeing

Seeing

Being blind
Having low vision
Being colour blind

Hearing

Uses about 3% of our brain
Auditory nerves contain 30,000 fibres

Hearing

Hey Jude, don't make it bad; Take a sad song, and make it better.

Hearing

Being Deaf
Being hard of hearing

Speaking

Uses about 50% of our brain

Speaking

Hello! How are you? G'day! Hey! What's the crack? Hola! Olà! Como esta? Xin chào! merhaba! Marhaba! salamaleikum! bonsoir! Bonjour! Hallo! Ciao! konnichi wa! namaskara! namaste! Sawasdee! Sawasdee khaa! Oi! Salaam!...

Speaking

Being unable to speak
Being unable to communicate using speech

1950: Computing Machinery and Intelligence

1956: Dartmouth workshop on AI

every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it

First Law

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

Seeing: Image Recognition

The process of analysing and understanding images

1976: Simulating sight in real-time

Estimated 1,000 MIPs
Cray 1 (fastest computer) capable of 80 - 130 MIPs

2011: Computer vision applications

Averaged between 10,000 and 1 million MIPs

1980s: Moravec's paradox

High-level reasoning requires little computation, but low-level sensory processing requires enormous computational resources

A chair

And another

And one more

2006: Cloud computing

2016: Facebook image recognition

One person in a room close up

2017: Microsoft SeeingAI

2018: Apple's face ID

Second Law:

A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law

Hearing: Speech Recognition

The process of identifying speech and translating it into text

1993: Apple voice recognition

1997: Dragon speech recognition

2013: Kinetic Sign Language translation

Speaking: Text To Speech

The process of translating text into synthetic speech

1769: Speaking machine

Reconstruction of the speaking machine — Wolfgang von Kempelen's speaking machine

1931: Voder speaking machine

1961: Daisy Bell

Formant synthesis

For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened that unleashed the power of our imagination: we learned to talk.

Concatenative synthesis

For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened that unleashed the power of our imagination: we learned to talk.

Parametric synthesis

Never had much faith in love or miracles
Never wanna put my heart on the line!

2014: Amazon Echo

Alexa default

const speechOutput =
  "The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years – if it ever
  did end – began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet
  of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.";

Changing voice and emphasis

const speechOutput = 
  "<voice name='Matthew'><lang xml:lang='en-US'>
    The <emphasis level='moderate'>terror</emphasis>, which would
    not end for another twenty-eight years – if it ever 
    <emphasis level='moderate'>did</emphasis> end – began, 
    <emphasis level='reduced'>so far as I know or can tell</emphasis>, 
    with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter 
    <emphasis level='moderate'>swollen</emphasis> with 
    <emphasis level='moderate'>rain</emphasis>.
  </lang></voice>";

Alexa default

const speechOutput =
  "<p>Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.</p>";

Changing voice and timing

const speechOutput =
  "<voice name='Enrique'><lang xml:lang='es-ES'>
  <p>Hello, <break time='500ms'/> my name is Inigo Montoya.
  You killed my father. <break strength='x-strong'/>Prepare to die.</p>
  </lang></voice>";

Alexa default

const speechOutput = 
  "Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
  'Pooh!' he whispered.
  'Yes, Piglet?'
  'Nothing', said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw.
  I just wanted to be sure of you.";

Changing pitch, speed, and volume

const speechOutput = 
  "<voice name='Brian'>
  Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
  <prosody pitch='x-high' rate='medium' volume='soft'>'Pooh!'</prosody> he whispered.
  'Yes, Piglet?'
  <prosody pitch='x-high' rate='x-fast'>'Nothing',</prosody> said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw.
  <prosody pitch='x-high' rate='x-fast'>I just wanted to be sure of you.</prosody>
  </voice>";