These Canadians are helping the world become replicant ready: Don Pittis

Sorry, science fiction fans. The replicantsthat do the dirty work in the new Blade Runner movie are not likely to be ready by 2049.

But two Canadian women are world leaders in laying the groundwork.

"One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that Canada is at the forefront of AI ethics and roboethics," says AJung Moon, CEO of Generation R, a startup company that helps organizations prepare for the robot invasion.

Comfort level

Representing the Open RoboethicsInstitute (ORI),Moon addressedthe United Nations in 2015, helping to developthe global discussion on ethical issues that includethe proper limits of robot autonomy.

"What decisions are we comfortable delegating to robots?" Moon asked theGeneva gathering.

Aptly located in Vancouver, a world capital of science fiction entertainment production, ORI is an outgrowth of the University of British Columbia's specialization in human robotinteraction. In such a new field, the institute is considered venerable.

"ORI has been around for five years and nota lot of institutes that study this topic can say the same thing," says Moon.

In a world where robotics and artificial intelligence aresweeping into every part of the production chain, Generation R may have found a niche.

The company recently completed a study for Technical Safety BC, a self-fundingorganization charged with licensing and inspecting the safety of technical installations in the province.

Artificial intelligence safety

The technical authority recently began incorporatingmachine learningthe basis for modern artificial intelligence into its system for deciding where to get the best bang for itsbuck in the use of its limited inspection staff.

The job of Generation R was to spot where the new AI system was likely to encounter problems with the human-centred task.

Workers at Technical Safety BC were worried that the new automated prediction algorithm would create ethical problems, missing or misjudging risks orstealing jobs rather than helping workers to do their jobs better.

Generation R was reassuring and suggested a series of corrective measures, but that doesn't mean robots won't begin doing jobs that people are doing now.

In fact, experts, say automation is best when it is stealing jobs in what they call thethree Ds,those that are dull, dirty or dangerous. But whatever they do, automated systems, just like replicants, have to get along with people.

Friendly robots

"We're about friendly robots," says UBC'sElizabeth Croft, a mechanical engineering prof anddirector of the world-leading Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Lab (CARIS).

According to Croft, the idea that a higher minimum wage will take away dull and repetitive jobs is almost besidethe point. The replacement of low-wage jobs is inevitable. The trick is to make people happy about it.

"To maintain our standard of living weactually have to embrace this kind of technology," says Croft.

The way to do that is to be surethere are still plenty of good quality, complex and interesting jobs forhuman labourthat, so far at least, only humans can do. That seems to be working out.

• Canada added10,000 jobs in September
• Maybe robots aren't the enemy

"Where robots are good isreliability, repeatability, the heavy lifting,able to untiringly do dumb taskspick-and-place pick-and-place, they can do that over and over again,"saysCroft.

"You want to focus your labour to those high-value activities where there needs to be logic under uncertainty."

Moving people into those higher-value, higher-wage jobs is the only way to increase Canadian productivity, leavingthe bad jobs forthe computers and robots.

"To be able to do that effectively there is a point where people and robots have to come together to really obtain that full value of that transition," says Croft.

Essentially, the robots have to be constructed and used in a way that makes people happy and comfortable.

And unlike in the world of Blade Runner 2049,we don't have to worry about how the robots feel about itso far.

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