Must be a very good for morale having to walk around with a rictus grin plastered to your fizzog. A laugh a minute. I suppose we should be grateful for the small mercy that it applies to everyone and that it isn’t only the women who are being subjected to this indignity. Cheer up love, you’re much prettier when you smile and all that bollocks.
Mayflower, the AI ship sent to sail from the UK to the US with no humans, made it three days before breaking down
The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS), which set sail this week from the UK to the US, failed just three days into its journey. It appears a mechanical fault occurred, something the Mayflower's AI can't fix itself. Oh no - bit of a mechanical problem with @AI_Mayflower. She’s safe but is clearly out of sorts. We are going back …
COMMENTS
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Saturday 19th June 2021 08:42 GMT Sgt_Oddball
To be fair....
This is a good way to cheer up staff. All those who are miserable being in endless meetings need never have to darken the rooms again.
Getting fired? Nope, not in this room your not.
Project going down the crapper? No pointless meetings in this room...
Getting touchy, feely with a co-worker? Well make it loud enough and only those audience members grinning like a lunatic can come and join the fun.
Everyone's a winner*.
* yeah right....
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Saturday 19th June 2021 11:32 GMT ShadowSystems
At 45RPM...
Does it work if the person is wearing a mask for Covid protection? Can you just draw a smile on the mask & thus ignore the requirement? What if you have had a stroke & no longer control one side of your face, will the system refuse to let you in because you "refuse" (*can't*) smile? What about those that have had cosmetic surgery ("Facelifts") to the point where their normal expression is more akin to a psychotic clown snarling? All these questions & more are there for the inquiring (insane?) mind...
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Monday 21st June 2021 16:58 GMT Sherrie Ludwig
Re: At 45RPM...
What if you have had a stroke & no longer control one side of your face, will the system refuse to let you in because you "refuse" (*can't*) smile?
I had carotid artery surgery February 2019, and for three months any attempt to open my mouth resulted in the right side of my mouth dropping alarmingly. Talking was very difficult, and I had to eat in solitude or gross out my meal companions. It's back to normal now, thankfully, but I wonder how a situation like that would have been handled.
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Saturday 19th June 2021 12:09 GMT John Miles
They are probably aiming for everyone to be smiling like Jack Nicholson
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Sunday 20th June 2021 00:54 GMT bombastic bob
It reminds me of too many science fiction dystopias and they never turn out well
and one particular Dr. Who episode... (the yellow smiley button on your back isn't smiling, oops)
and when the building and everything in it (that isn't you) is a networked bunch of nanobots, they always know whether or not you are smiling...
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Monday 21st June 2021 11:08 GMT I ain't Spartacus
I'm totally fine with having to smile to get into meetings. Perfect excuse to avoid them - sorry boss, couldn't get past the door guardian.
But things can take an even more sinister turn, when said door-control system is also put on the break room or the toilets. The the shit really might hit the fan...
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Saturday 19th June 2021 10:29 GMT Shalghar
Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"
And they are still lucky that at least the "come home" function has not also malfunctioned.
Then again, maybe it has and the remainders of the "AI" will enthusiastically commit self destruction by ramming the docks at ever increasing full throttle like that tesla that plowed into a concrete lane dividing block.
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Sunday 20th June 2021 18:31 GMT doublelayer
Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"
For a vehicle which has a lot of maneuverability and a lot of warning about obstacles, two days is not a very long time. It's not like a car which needs to spend a lot of its time on correctly navigating and not hitting things. It's not the AI's fault that something mechanical broke, but there's one good reason to have engineers on ships whenever they're used.
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Sunday 20th June 2021 18:36 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"
On the other hand, it demonstrates the costs of not having a crew on board. Autonomous cargo ships are the long term goal, but unless you have a real person on board to do repairs and maintenance or some way of getting one there through an Atlantic or Pacific storm, then I suspect insurance is going to be high, or the overall rates will climb massively once the first few very expensive losses have to be paid out.
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Monday 21st June 2021 10:46 GMT Cuddles
Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"
The simple answer to that is convoys. Even if you can't eliminate people entirely, having a single fairly small boat full of engineers escorting a bunch of autonomous ships would still likely be a lot cheaper than having to have staff on every boat.
Even in the worst case, I don't see there being a lot of very expensive losses involved. Like the one in this case, most mechanical issues are likely to lead to reduced sailing ability. So things might be late, but not lost entirely. Even major issues are much more likely to leave a boat without power rather than destroy it entirely, so even if you need to take a week or so to send out a rescue boat, you're still not looking at a complete loss. Delays happen for a variety of reasons anyway, so nothing critically time senstive gets sent by ship. So it will really come down to whether occasional resuce operations and late penalties are cheaper overall than paying to have crew on every ship at all times.
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Monday 21st June 2021 14:06 GMT Someone Else
Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"
Even major issues are much more likely to leave a boat without power rather than destroy it entirely, so even if you need to take a week or so to send out a rescue boat, you're still not looking at a complete loss. Delays happen for a variety of reasons anyway, so nothing critically time senstive gets sent by ship.
'Course, if it breaks down in the Suez Canal...
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Wednesday 23rd June 2021 14:05 GMT ThatOne
Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"
> if you need to take a week or so to send out a rescue boat
...then you don't need to bother at all. Ships tend to drift, and unless they are in the middle of a large (and empty!) ocean, they will eventually run aground (not to mention traffic issues). Check the international shipping lanes, they tend to pass through quite narrow places and near coasts, so if your ship is without power for more than half a day it's a total loss.
I don't think they can avoid having engineers on board. Their task is not so much to repair stuff once it has broken down, but to make sure it won't break down, by intervening while the issue is still non-critical. Once engines stop the ship is doomed, unless the shipowner hires some eye-wateringly expensive high sea tug(s) to pull it to the nearest harbor. And even in that case you'd need somebody on board to catch the (extremely heavy) tug line.
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Monday 21st June 2021 16:52 GMT Dave559
Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"
"The simple answer to that is convoys. Even if you can't eliminate people entirely, having a single fairly small boat full of engineers escorting a bunch of autonomous ships would still likely be a lot cheaper than having to have staff on every boat."
I'd feel sorry for those poor engineers having to endure their ship radio chiming into life every few minutes with plaintive automated announcements: "Unexpected breakdown in the boating area." (And the autonomous ships' consoles spewing out endless bonus point coupons for big hammers (and the occasional spanner) after each maintenance visit…)
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Monday 21st June 2021 03:59 GMT bazza
Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"
A large part of a merchant mariner's time is spent on maintenance, including maintenance of the cargo (eg refrigerated containers). That will have to be going on regardless. There is also watch keeping.
A lot of the business reason behind such labour is insurance. A well run ship has cheaper premiums. A ship that is crewless is going to be expensive to insure.
Another part of it is piracy. Most ships routinely go through the Malaca strait and the western Indian Ocean to Suez, both places where piracy can be a problem. If word gets out that there's $billions in cargo sailing past with no one on board to defend it, then the pirates are going to be having a terrific time. Their grins may even be enough to make those Canon cameras let them on board.
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Monday 21st June 2021 10:11 GMT bazza
Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"
They've got the cargo. That's the hostage. And sure, they can make the ship go anywhere they want. The last thing anyone is going to want is a ship that cannot be manually controlled.
A container ship can have several $billion's worth of cargo on board. That's too much to be lost or even interrupted on a routine basis.
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Saturday 19th June 2021 10:40 GMT Shalghar
Re: Idiots
How could that "smile recognition" work in times of lockdown fetishists still running wild and loose with no end in sight, and the looming possibility of mandatory masquerade everywhere again ?
I wonder how any "face recognition" algorythm might interpret the distorted swine snout / duck beak profile of those ffp2 dust filters.
Real life also knows a lot of of other non smile reasons, root canal or other dental problems for example. Maybe those poor employees will need some kind of inverted venetian carnival mask, covering the lower part of the face with an eerie, "AI"-compatible smile painted on.
"Positive atmosphere", yeah, as if anyone would keep a fake smile after getting through the door, or anyone knowing that smiles are mandatory would actually see them as positive or genuine.
At least some "We all have to grin like a lunatic and hate every second of that" cameradie might come from it.
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Monday 21st June 2021 09:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Trollface "With no one onboard to fix it"
"Who fixes the machines that repair themselves?"
Cue the prescient sci-fi story about an internet-connected world whose AI city maintenance system is starting to fail - and no one now knows how it works. "The Machine Stops" - written by E.M.Forster in 1909.
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Saturday 19th June 2021 12:34 GMT Shalghar
Re: Never learn ...
At least the next "crisis" where tax payers money "must" be wasted to "rescue system relevant banks" can now be produced with a lot less people/potential whistleblowers/risks involved, which leaves a lot more of the "rescue" money for a smaller circle of the usual suspects.
As an added bonus, any "responsibility" will quite likely be in the vicinity of a post masters Horizon.
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Saturday 19th June 2021 14:20 GMT ThatOne
Re: Never learn ...
> Just what any market needs: an automatic bubble/frenzy generating computer application.
Who profits from those bubbles? Obviously real estate agents, so you can be sure they will do anything they can to inflate prices as much as possible, and if they can do it under the unquestionable excuse of "computer says", they certainly will.
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Sunday 20th June 2021 18:43 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Never learn ...
On the other hand, it's actual people makiing the offers. Doesn't matter what the posted price of the property is, people will only pay what they think it's worth. Prices already bubble in "in-demand" areas. Just look at the 2nd home and holiday let market in the SW and Wales at the moment. That's having devastating consequences in some small villages where most of the properties are already empty in the winter and the locals have no chance to buy. That may well burst in a couple of years leaving some 2nd homers and holiday letters in negative equity. The smart ones will be selling next year and start the local price crashes.
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Saturday 19th June 2021 13:04 GMT Eclectic Man
Discrimination
The requirement to be smiling clearly discriminates against everyone with a facial disfigurement, or just wearing a face mask. How can this possibly be legal?
It also reminded me of an exchange between Poirot and Princess Dragomirof in the old Albert Finney film 'Murder on the Orient Express'*
Poirot: "You do not smile, princess."
Princess: "My doctor has advised against it."
*The one with the wonderful Richard Rodney Bennett score, Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, vivacious Vanessa Redgrave, and Ingrid Bergman, not the more recent Sir Ken Branagh version.
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Sunday 20th June 2021 18:36 GMT doublelayer
Re: Discrimination
"How can this possibly be legal?"
A good question, but the one which comes to my mind is how can this possibly be useful? Most illegal or unethical things that businesses do at least seem to have some benefit to somebody--more profitable, more profit right now and then it's someone else's problem, less regulation, etc. What is the expected benefit of the development funds thrown away on this? It seems to have no purpose whatsoever even if we assume somebody willing to make everyone else miserable.
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Sunday 20th June 2021 22:15 GMT yetanotheraoc
Re: Discrimination
"how can this possibly be useful?"
Maybe you are insufficiently devious. Board of directors is onsite, plant managers want them to meet with some line people -- except not frowny-face there. No soup for you!
Still, application to employees must be more or less UAT. The true commercial application is more to *customers*. Smiling faces, e.g. at massage parlors, can be charged more.
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Saturday 19th June 2021 17:33 GMT nautica
"Artificial Intelligence": oxymoron. Used by morons known as Artificial Intelligentia.
"These machines...do exactly as they are told, no more and no less. This fact is the hardest concept to grasp when one first tries to use a computer.--Donald Knuth
“The question of whether Machines Can Think... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim."--Edsger W. Dijkstra
"I have found that the reason a lot of people are interested in artificial intelligence is [for] the same reason a lot of people are interested in artificial limbs: they are missing one."--David L. Parnas
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Saturday 19th June 2021 19:51 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: "Artificial Intelligence": oxymoron. Used by morons known as Artificial Intelligentia.
Microsoft’s Kate Crawford: ‘AI is neither artificial nor intelligent’
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Sunday 20th June 2021 07:05 GMT The Oncoming Scorn
Re: "Artificial Intelligence": oxymoron. Used by morons known as Artificial Intelligentia.
You forgot The Fourth Doctor.
The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots. They do exactly what you tell them at amazing speed, even if you order them to kill you.
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Sunday 20th June 2021 18:40 GMT doublelayer
Re: "Artificial Intelligence": oxymoron. Used by morons known as Artificial Intelligentia.
I find this quote the best of the ones posted:
“The question of whether Machines Can Think... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim."--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Exactly. In that it's mostly about the definition of "think" or "swim". Submarines do go underwater and move through it, so does that count or not. Likewise, certain programs can do things which in a human require intelligence and using methods not expressly written by the programmer, but does that constitute thinking? It's a question best answered by philosophers, so before they come along let's run away.
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Monday 21st June 2021 17:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
AI ship piracy seems pointless
Yeah, but disable the controls and it sits there, we can already disable some cars remotely. so, pirates can either 1. destroy the ship or cargo, or 2. have a BIG boat to tow it. Also: if a bank can be built with mantrap doors, wouldn't some remote control active traps be installed in sensitive areas of this ship? Hold the pirates for ransom, or wait until they die of starvation, send in the hazmat suits to clean out the bodies and back on its merry way.
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Monday 21st June 2021 23:19 GMT nautica
Re: AI ship piracy seems pointless
"...Also: if a bank can be built with mantrap doors..."
Excuse the going off topic, BUT...
It has been long assumed that mantraps are illegal, world-wide.
Do you mind elaborating? Is it simply that inherently lethal mantraps are illegal, and not the non-lethal type?
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