Algorithm Optimally Divvies up Tasks for Human-Robot Teams

Good look at the cooperative issue. 

 ACM NEWS

Algorithm Optimally Divvies up Tasks for Human-Robot Teams  By SciTechDaily, May 26, 2022

As robots increasingly join people working on the factory floor, in warehouses, and elsewhere on the job, determining who will do which tasks increases in complexity and importance. People are better suited for some jobs, robots for others. And in some cases, it is advantageous to spend time teaching a robot to do a task now and reap the rewards later.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute (RI) have developed an algorithmic planner that helps delegate tasks to humans and robots. The planner, "Act, Delegate or Learn" (ADL), considers a list of duties and decides how best to assign them. The researchers asked three questions: When should a robot act to complete a task? When should a task be delegated to a human? And when should a robot learn a new task?

“There are costs associated with the decisions made, such as the time it takes a human to complete a task or teach a robot to complete a task and the cost of a robot failing at a task,” said Shivam Vats, the lead researcher and a Ph.D. student in the RI. “Given all those costs, our system will give you the optimal division of labor.”

From SciTechDaily

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NATO Releases first ever Strategy for AI

Was a bit surprised at this, will review.   Mentioned are related ethics.   Cooperative approaches.   Indicates a level of seriousness.  Have worked with some NATO connects. 

Last week, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Defense Ministers agreed to NATO's first-ever strategy for artificial intelligence (AI).

A summary of the strategy is available here.

The strategy outlines how AI can be applied to defence and security in a protected and ethical way. As such, it sets standards of responsible use of AI technologies, in accordance with international law and NATO's values. It also addresses the threats posed by the use of AI by adversaries and how to establish trusted cooperation with the innovation community on AI.

From NATO  full article.

Human Robot Cooperation

 More good thoughts on the complexity of human-robot cooperation.

How many robot helpers are too many?

Khari Johnson  @kharijohnson   March 20, 2021 6:21 AM TechCrunch via VentureBeat

AI that can follow a person seems like a simple enough task. It’s certainly a simple thing to ask a human to do, but what if people or objects get in the way of the robot following behind a person? How do you navigate an environment that’s in a constant state of change?

About a year ago at a robotics conference TechCrunch held at UC Berkeley, AI startup founders explored solutions for common problems encountered when trying to automate construction projects. Tessa Lau, CEO of Dusty Robotics, called attention to the challenge of moving machines in an unstructured environment filled with people.  ... " 

When Bots Negotiate, Will Humans Deceive?

Interesting piece that approaches the meaning of 'cooperation'.   

When bots do the negotiating, humans more likely to engage in deceptive techniques  by University of Southern California

 Recently computer scientists at USC Institute of Technologies (ICT) set out to assess under what conditions humans would employ deceptive negotiating tactics. Through a series of studies, they found that whether humans would embrace a range of deceptive and sneaky techniques was dependent both on the humans' prior negotiating experience in negotiating as well as whether virtual agents where employed to negotiate on their behalf. The findings stand in contrast to prior studies and show that when humans use intermediaries in the form of virtual agents, they feel more comfortable employing more deceptive techniques than they would normally use when negotiating for themselves

Lead author of the paper on these studies, Johnathan Mell, says, "We want to understand the conditions under which people act deceptively, in some cases purely by giving them an artificial intelligence agent that can do their dirty work for them."

Nowadays, virtual agents are employed nearly everywhere, from automated bidders on sites like eBay to virtual assistants on smart phones. One day, these agents could work on our behalf to negotiate the sale of a car, argue for a raise, or even resolve a legal dispute.

Mell, who conducted the research during his doctoral studies in computer science at USC, says, "Knowing how to design experiences and artificial agents which can act like some of the most devious among us is useful in learning how to combat those techniques in real life."

The researchers are eager to understand how these virtual agents or bots might do our bidding and to understand how humans behave when deploying these agents on their behalf.  ... '

Paper is here:  https://www.jair.org/index.php/jair/article/view/11924

A Talk on Communal Intelligence

We have not even gotten modeling individual intelligence right yet.  And it is that intelligence that has provided so much striking value.  So do we want to be 'communal' quite yet?   Cooperative and effective yes, but communal?   Squelching the individual spirit?

Communal Intelligence    A Talk By Seth Lloyd 

We haven't talked about the socialization of intelligence very much. We talked a lot about intelligence as being individual human things, yet the thing that distinguishes humans from other animals is our possession of human language, which allows us both to think and communicate in ways that other animals don’t appear to be able to. This gives us a cooperative power as a global organism, which is causing lots of trouble. If I were another species, I’d be pretty damn pissed off right now. What makes human beings effective is not their individual intelligences, though there are many very intelligent people in this room, but their communal intelligence.

SETH LLOYD is a theoretical physicist at MIT; Nam P. Suh Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; external professor at the Santa Fe Institute; and author of Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos. Seth Lloyd's Edge Bio Page .... 

Cooperation is Central Issue of Our Time

It really has been the central issue of all time. Its just now we have to cooperate with so many people/things.   Or at least have the opportunity to.   And we now have have to cooperate with some some new things, that threaten to take attention from us, even our jobs.   AI enabled, still not nearly intelligent, but cleverly attention seeking.  This started with smartphones, but is leading to many new kinds of things.  Be amazed and cautious.   ....

COOPERATION IS THE CENTRAL ISSUE OF OUR TIME by Steve Omohundro

Cooperation is the most important issue of our time. It is the key to understanding biology, the success of humans, effective business models, social media, and future society based on beneficial AI.

The challenge is that many interactions have the character of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” or “Tragedy of the Commons” where selfish actors do better for themselves while arming the group benefit and cooperative actors help the group but can lose out in individual competition.

A variety of mechanisms that lead to cooperation have been invented and studied in biology, economics, political science, business, analysis of social technologies, and increasingly in analyzing AI.

All of these subjects are grounded in biology and today’s biology exhibits cooperation at every level of the “Major Transitions in Evolution”:  .... '

Robots Predict Human Movement

Relatively simple but useful idea.   Imagine too its premise being used to predict the interaction of people and drones in a swarm performing tasks?  Or determining nearby resources?

Algorithm tells robots where nearby humans are headed
A new tool for predicting a person’s movement trajectory may help humans and robots work together in close proximity.

Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office 

In 2018, researchers at MIT and the auto manufacturer BMW were testing ways in which humans and robots might work in close proximity to assemble car parts. In a replica of a factory floor setting, the team rigged up a robot on rails, designed to deliver parts between work stations. Meanwhile, human workers crossed its path every so often to work at nearby stations. 

The robot was programmed to stop momentarily if a person passed by. But the researchers noticed that the robot would often freeze in place, overly cautious, long before a person had crossed its path. If this took place in a real manufacturing setting, such unnecessary pauses could accumulate into significant inefficiencies.

The team traced the problem to a limitation in the robot’s trajectory alignment algorithms used by the robot’s motion predicting software. While they could reasonably predict where a person was headed, due to the poor time alignment the algorithms couldn’t anticipate how long that person spent at any point along their predicted path — and in this case, how long it would take for a person to stop, then double back and cross the robot’s path again. .... " 

Game Theory and Human/Robot Goals

Good way to systematically think about the problem, but we never found it to be a way to solve the problem.  I like the approach outlined here:

How Game Theory Can Bring Humans, Robots Closer Together 
University of Sussex (U.K.)
By Neil Vowles

Researchers at the University of Sussex and Imperial College London in the U.K., and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, have used game theory to enable robots to assist humans in a safe and versatile manner. The researchers used adaptive control and Nash equilibrium game theory to program a robot that can understand its human user's behavior in order to better anticipate their movements and respond to them. The researchers overcame the robot’s inability to understand a human's intentions by enabling the robot to identify its human user while safely and efficiently interacting with their motion. The resulting system allows a robot to continuously learn the human user's control and adapt its own control correspondingly. Imperial College London’s Etienne Burdet said that to apply game theory to human-robot interaction, “it was necessary to understand how the robot can identify the human user’s control goals simultaneously to smoothly interacting with them."  ... " 

Cortana and Alexa are Talking

Always been intrigued by this, and how it would work.   How will the work be handed off?  Just by a choice of their users?   I like to think of this as a conversation between two agents, that could cooperate to provide value.  Look forward to see a clear example, and a look at the future.  Includes video announcement.   And could this also include other Azure based chatbots?    I have both assistants in place, so if they want to test it ....

After a long delay, Amazon’s and Microsoft’s bots are finally talking  By Daniel Terdiman in Wired

Nearly a year ago, Amazon and Microsoft said they had worked out a deal to integrate their two digital assistants, Alexa and Cortana. You’d be able to get your Amazon Echo device to do things like check your Exchange email or set or check calendar appointments, while also being able to use Cortana to get Alexa to do things like turn on the lights, play Jeopardy, place orders on Amazon.com, access Alexa skills, and so on....."

Robots and Surveillance Teams

Researchers link robots into surveillance team   By Bill Steele

Rod Kurcoba, Cornell Engineering Communications

Seeing many possible views of the same area from fixed and mobile cameras could be confusing to a human, but a computer can combine it all, track people and objects and notice significant events.  

If you were monitoring a security camera and saw someone set down a backpack and walk away, you might pay special attention – especially if you had been alerted to watch that particular person. According to Cornell researchers, this might be a job robots could do better than humans, by communicating at the speed of light and sharing images.... " 

Robots Working Together

A topic of interest that addresses applications like cooperation and teamwork in robots.   Working with each other or with people.

From GaTech:

Team of Robots Learns to Work Together, Without Colliding
Georgia Tech News Center (09/06/16) Jason Maderer 

New algorithms created by Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) researchers enable robots to move within inches of each other, without colliding, to complete their task. The team, led by roboticist Magnus Egerstedt, director of Georgia Tech's Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines, is the first to create such minimally invasive safety algorithms. A set of safe states and barrier certificates ensure each bot stays in its own safe set throughout the entire maneuver, the researchers note. In a demonstration involving four robots, the machines approach from four different areas, meet in the middle, circle counterclockwise within inches of each other, then fan out into opposite directions. In another demonstration, eight robots perform the same task, this time circling clockwise before dispersing. Instead of keeping their distance and taking the long way around their neighbors, the robots move very independently wherever they wish. "Robots are very conservative--they want to make sure they're safe," Egerstedt says. "You couldn't pack the interstate with self-driving cars with today's technology." He says a minimally invasive safety controller similar to the algorithms could be used for the next generation of air traffic control.  ... " 

Thinking About Cooperation

What the implications between people, machines, assistants?   Can we include a cooperative ethic inside an assistant?

The Cost of Cooperating

A Conversation With David Rand ... 

Why is it that we care about other people? Why do we have those feelings? Also, at a cognitive level, how is that implemented? Another way of asking this is: Are we predisposed to be selfish? Do we only get ourselves to be cooperative and work for the greater good by exerting self-control and rational deliberation, overriding those selfish impulses? Or are we predisposed towards cooperating, but in these situations where cooperation doesn't actually pay, if we stop and think about it, rationality and deliberation lead us to be selfish by overriding the impulse to be a good person and help other people?     

DAVID RAND is an associate professor of psychology, economics, and management at Yale University, and the director of Yale University’s Human Cooperation Laboratory. David Rand's Edge Bio Page