BBC Science Focus - 03.2020

20 IDEAS FE ATURE

The year 2010 doesn’t sound like it was that long ago. But a decade ago Tinder, Uber

and Instagram didn’t exist. No one wore wearables, nobody talked to their gadgets at

home and the Tesla was just an idea. Back then, scientists were still looking for the

Higgs Boson, Pluto was a mysterious blurry orb just out of sight and genetic editing was

still just a theoretical concern, not a practical one. The next decade looks set to move

even faster. So here’s our tour to the science and tech to look out for this decade.

words by ROB BANINO, ANDY RIDGWAY, HAYLEY BENNETT

2 THE CLOUD ROBOTICS REVOLUTION

A global network of machines talking and learning from

one another (sound familiar?) could create robo-butlers

Until now, robots have carried their pretty feeble brains inside them.

They’ve received instructions – such as rivet this, or carry that – and done

it. Not only that, but they’ve worked in environments such as factories and

warehouses specially designed or adapted for them. Cloud robotics promises

something entirely new; robots with super-brains stored in the online cloud.

The thinking is that these robots, with their intellectual clout, will be more

flexible in the jobs they do and the places they can work, perhaps even

speeding up their arrival in our homes.

Google Cloud and Amazon Cloud both have robot brains that are learning

and growing inside them. The dream behind cloud robotics is to create

robots that can see, hear, comprehend natural language and understand the

world around them.

One of the leading players in cloud robotics research is Robo Brain, a

project led by researchers at Stanford and Cornell universities in the US.

Funded by Google, Microsoft, government institutions and universities,

the team are building a robot brain on the Amazon cloud, learning how to

integrate different software systems and different sources of data.

Another one to watch is the Everyday Robot Project, by X, the ‘moonshot

factory’ at Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The project aims to develop

robots intelligent enough to make sense of the places we live and work.

They’re making headway too – testing cloud robots in Alphabet offices in

Northern California. So far, the tasks are simple, such as sorting the

recycling (pretty slowly says X), but it’s the shape of robots to come.

SYNTHETIC MEDIA

UNDERMINES REALITY

The entertainment world

will literally create the

next generation of stars

You know about deepfake technology,

where someone’s face is switched into

an existing video scene. But deepfakes

are just the tip of the iceberg when it

comes to synthetic media – a much

wider phenomenon of super-realistic,

artificially generated photos, text, sound

and video that seems destined to shake

our notions of what is actually ‘real’ over

the next decade.

Take a look at the website below. Hit

refresh a few times. None of the faces

you see are real. Uncannily realistic, they

are entirely synthetic – generated by

generative adversarial networks, the

same type of artificial intelligence behind

many deepfakes. These false photos

show just how far synthetic media has

come in the past few years. Elsewhere,

China’s Xinhua state news agency has

provided an insight into possible uses of

synthetic media – computer-generated

news anchors. While the results are a

little clunky, it suggests a direction where

things may be heading.

While such synthetic media has

potential for an explosion in creativity,

it also has the potential for harm, by

providing purveyors of fake news

and state-sponsored misinformation

new, highly malleable channels of

communication.

thispersondoesnotexist.com

1

GETTY IMAGES

TheFetch Cloud

Robotics Platform

is a cloud-driven

Autonomous

Mobile Robot

(AMR) solution

that addresses

material handling

and data collection

for warehouses