Decision Mechanics

Insight. Applied.

ScaleR package now available as part of free Microsoft R Client

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The ScaleR package provides functions for performing scalable and extremely high performance data management, analysis, and visualization in R. It was only available to those who had a Microsoft R Server license—until now.

With the introduction of the free Microsoft R Client for Windows tool you can now work with the full set of ScaleR functions without having to part with a cent.

Of course, there’s a catch—there are constraints. Specifically

[…] the data to be processed must fit in local memory, and processing is limited up to two threads for ScaleR functions.

However, this allows you to prototype your analyses using the free client and push them to SQL Server or Hadoop using Microsoft R Server when you need to scale.

Campaign to Stop Killer Robots

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Campaign to Stop Killer Robots banner

There’s an international coalition that is

[…] working to preemptively ban fully autonomous weapons.

To be clear, this isn’t the type of robot used to kill a sniper recently. We are talking about systems designed to make a kill decision without human intervention.

What really drew my attention to the (serious) campaign, however, was the name—Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. If only all marketing was as snappy.

Robot kills person?

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I noticed some headlines in the last few days about the “unprecedented” use of a robot to kill a person. At first, I was worried that, as we prepare to have robots move among us, one of our faithful servants had already broken Asimov’s first law of robotics

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

However, it turns out that the Dallas Police Department used a bomb-disposal robot to transport a bomb into the vicinity of a sniper and then remotely detonate it. That seems more like novel use of a radio-controlled car than deployment of morally ambiguous cutting-edge machine intelligence.

Seems like “killer robots” are all the rage now.

Self-driving car dilemmas

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ScienceDaily has an interesting article on the moral dilemmas that could face autonomous cars.

Iyad Rahwan of MIT’s Media Lab surveyed people on how safety rules should be programmed in these cars. People generally held a utilitarian view. For example, in a situation where a car could either career into a group of schoolchildren or smash into a wall, killing it’s occupants, most people believed it should do the latter. More lives are saved.

However, there’s a tragedy of the commons hiding behind this socially responsible facade. When asked if they would actually purchase a car that was programmed to act in this manner most people said “No.”

So basically promote the common good as long as I’m not at risk.

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics offer little guidance here, as they deal in absolutes rather than trade-offs. And it’s the trade-offs that generally provide us with the thorniest dilemmas.

Self-driving cars represent an early attempt to place hordes of robots in regular, direct contact with the general public. Until now, we’ve largely confined them to factories…or space…or used them in highly specialized environments (e.g. military operations). As robots start to move among us these ethical dilemmas will become increasingly significant.