engineers-from-france

"Yes, my point of view is utilitarian and functional. Robots have a lot to offer us. When I see the percentage of the population that will be elderly in the next few years, it’s clear that we won’t have enough working people to look after them. So it could be interesting to have a robot in charge of monitoring these people when they are at the end of their lives for example. So robots are useful but we have to be aware that they should complement humans and not replace humans."

"I suggest a COP [conference of parties] be held on artificial intelligence. It is urgent that we take an interest in the repercussions of what we’re doing. It’s our responsibility!"

"The goal is not to replace the human. The machine is, for the moment, incapable of this. Our robots are not very precise yet. We are making more cognitive advances than physical ones. Mechatronics are going to need a lot more research. Making entirely humanoid robots remains complicated."

"As soon as we hear a machine speak, it’s implied that the machine understands. That it has the capacity of a human. Which is not the case. For example Sophia from Hanson Robotics speaks in a way that is semantically coherent but she is following a script, she’s absolutely not autonomous, she has no desires or intentions. She’s a marionette. Engineers have given her a scripted dialog. Machine learning allows for learning from data, but without understanding. This machine has nothing to do yet with a living embryo."

"Each country has its own values and robots should comply with the values of the country they are in, kind of like labor laws."

"Firstly, it is unconscionable to want to try to reproduce a human as we can easily deceive and manipulate. Here I am targeting for example Google Home and Sophia. Next we must be careful with attachment and empathy. If we live with machines all the time, there will be consequences on our relationships with others. Then there will be a division between those who have access to this technology and understand it and those who don’t. We are widening the gap of technological inequality, and long-term it’s anti-democratic."

"We first need a certain set of ethics for designers, which is why researchers are in the loop. Then we need to give people the ability to understand the system they’re using. I’m part of a nudging project that aims to explain gently to people. We’ll also need to teach robotics at school so children can have perspective when it comes to questions of artificial intelligence and robotics. And then we’ll need legal rules. In the same way that there’s a committee who decides whether a medicinal product is put on the market or not, we’ll need an ethical committee who validates a robot or not before its market launch. But not everything should be constrained by ethical reasoning. We can do business that’s ethical and responsible. When I say ethics, I’m not talking about philosophy. I’m talking about making machines that respect our values. We have to ask ourselves how these new robots harbor a danger for humans and accordingly how we can regulate it."

"We understand ethics when it comes to data, this is why we need the new GDPR regulations. But when it comes to co-evolution with machines we aren’t talking about what changes it will lead to in terms of inter-human relations. Psychiatrists are interested in this question but the world of technology isn’t yet. Certain manufacturers I work with such as Softbank Robotics [who make the robots Pepper and Nao] are starting to understand the idea of ethics. But we still need to find a compromise between ethics and business. We need to agree together on a system of human values that will be respected by the robots who interact with us."

"Yes, I think that this is where Europe and also the United States can make a difference. Maybe the price will be the main argument for someone buying a robot. But maybe there will also be an ethical aspect that will influence their choice of one robot over another. For this we need to make ethics “fashionable”."

"All of my work focuses on the idea that we need to keep a boundary between humans and robots. But Google is blurring the lines with this voice. It opens the door to unethical applications. The voice is what’s easiest to imitate for the moment, from a technological standpoint. It’s possible to trick the person who doesn’t know who they’re communicating with. You can make someone say things they never said. You can even make the dead speak. It’s a breach of trust."

"Because beyond hell, it is in any salon, with bronze of Barbedienne or not, that the suffering is: as soon as other people see clearly in the game of the human being."

"Do you want me to tell you how this is going? The guy suffocates, he sinks, he drowns, only his eyes are out of the water and what does he see? A bronze from Barbedienne."

"dear Bernard, with his two bronzes of Barbedienne and his wedding crown in orange blossom that stands on the mantelpiece..."

"I must add that Albertine greatly admired at home a large bronze of Barbedienne."

"Material can follow a circular path, but energy can only add up. One of the challenges is that even "circular economy" needs "linear energy"."

"When we have replaced human workers by machines, we have gained the fact that we can change the world for 1,000 to 10,000 times less in terms of monetary input. This explains all that has happened to us during the Industrial Revolution. [...] This basically explains all that we have witnessed during the last two centuries."

"In physics, energy has a very precise definition: it is what characterises something changing in the world surrounding us. [...] Counting energy is therefore nothing else than counting how much the world has changed."

"If we have a bottleneck on energy, in terms of volume not in terms of price, then we can have a bottleneck on production. And its is probably what has been happening by little steps since 1975. [...] And if we have an additional bottleneck on resources, then we will also get an additional bottleneck on production."

"The production of motive power is then due... not to an actual consumption of caloric, but to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body... to its re-establishment of equilibrium..."

"The production of motion in steam-engines is always accompanied by... the re-establishing of equilibrium in the caloric; that is, its passage from a body in which the temperature is more or less elevated, to another in which it is lower."

"[T]he production of heat alone is not sufficient to give birth to the impelling power: it is necessary that there should also be cold; without it, the heat would be useless."

"I do not know why these two expressions, good sense and common sense, are confounded. There is nothing less common than good sense."

"Why try to be witty? I would rather be thought stupid and modest than witty and pretentious."

"Notwithstanding the work of all kinds done by steam-engines... their theory is very little understood, and the attempts to improve them are still directed almost by chance."

"Egotism is the most common and most hated of all vices. Properly speaking, it is the only one which should be hated."

"The pleasures of self-love are the only ones that can really be turned into ridicule."

"The phenomenon of the production of motion by heat has not been considered from a sufficiently general point of view. We have considered it only in machines... [for which] the phenomenon is... incomplete. It becomes difficult to recognize its principles and study its laws. ...[T]he principle of the production of motion by heat... must be considered independently of any mechanism or... particular agent. It is necessary to establish principles applicable not only to steam-engines but to all imaginable heat-engines, whatever the working substance and whatever the method by which it is operated."

"We shall have [a complete theory] only when the laws of Physics shall be extended enough, generalized enough, to make known beforehand all the effects of heat acting in a determined manner on any body."

"What happens... in a steam-engine... ? The caloric developed in the furnace by the effect of the combustion traverses the walls of the boiler, produces steam, and in some way incorporates itself with it. The latter carrying it away, takes it first into the cylinder, where it performs some function, and from thence into the condenser, where it is liquefied by contact with the cold water... [T]he cold water of the condenser takes possession of the caloric... It is heated by the intervention of the steam as if it had been placed directly over the furnace. The steam is here only a means of transporting the caloric."

"[W]e have just described the re-establishment of equilibrium in the caloric, its passage from a... heated body to a cooler one."

"Men desire nothing so much as to make themselves envied."

"The strain of suffering causes the mind to decay."

"It must be that all honest people are in the galleys; only knaves are to be met with elsewhere."

"Show neither passion nor weariness in discussion."

"Abstain from all pleasantry which could wound."

"Never direct an argument against any one. If you know some particulars against your adversary, you have a right to make him aware of it to keep him under control, but proceed with discretion, and do not wound him before others."

"Question thyself to learn what will please others."

"Suffer slight disagreeables without seeming to perceive them, but repulse decisively any one who evidently intends to injure or humiliate you."

"Yield frequently to the first inspiration. Too much meditation on the same subject ends by suggesting the worst part, or at least causes loss of precious time."

"One should never feign a character that he has not, or affect a character that he cannot sustain."

"Self-possession without self-sufficiency. Courage without effrontery."

"Make intimate acquaintances only with much circumspection; perfect confidence in those who have been thoroughly tested. Nothing to do with others."

"Speak little of what you know, and not at all of what you do not know."

"Speak to every one of that which he knows best. This will put him at his ease, and be profitable to you."

"Employ only expressions of the most perfect propriety."

"Listen attentively to your interlocutor, and so prepare him to listen in the same way to your reply, and predispose him in favor of your arguments."

"Nature, in providing us with combustibles on all sides, has given us the power to produce, at all times and in all places, heat and the impelling power which is the result of it. To develop this power, to appropriate it to our uses, is the object of heat-engines."

"Iron and heat are... the supporters, the bases, of the mechanic arts."

"[I]f we should find about us only bodies as hot as our furnaces, how can we condense steam? What should we do with it if once produced?"

"No useless discourse. All conversation which does not serve to enlighten ourselves or others, to interest the heart or amuse the mind, is hurtful."