ROBOT APOCALYPSE

Recently, when a robot killed a factory worker, it sent a wave of panic across the media about robots.

 

Vanity Fair.com reported that as a tech person was assembling a car at a Volkswagen plant, the robot suddenly grabbed and crushed the guy against a metal plate. Though the higher-ups at Volkswagen said the robot was not defective -- the tech guy was probably within an unsafe range -- that didn't stop Twitter users from worrying about a future in which humans were going to be unable to control the machines they created.

"Can we grow up a little," said one of the top editors at Jalopinik.com. It's a group of experts who test and report on the latest new cars and tech inventions. Referring to the Volkswagen death as a "Terminator style execution," that revealed how unprepared we are for a  machine-filled future, Jalopnik said, "The robot didn't know it was a human when it killed the worker," and proceeded to warn us -- "Our interactions with robots are going to become more commonplace. How are we going to react when an autonomous car makes the choice to kill one kid to save five adults?"

The UK's Financial Times reported that since the first robot killing in 1979, in a factory, there have been fewer than one a day -- that "Factually robots have reduced deaths from industrial accidents because robots are used for most dangerous jobs. The robot that killed the Volkswagen worker was designed to work in a cage away from humans. The next wave of robots are being built to work alongside humans, with scanners and sensors making them aware of the people around them. This was an accident, not a warning about future threats."

Meanwhile Mashable.com -- the leading global media company with 24 million followers and 42 million monthly visitors, that keeps the digital generation informed, said that toilets, zippers, and pants cause more deaths than robots. Mashable suggests that we are obsessed with the idea of a robopocalypse, because we fear becoming obsolete. Since software and algorithms are "squeezing humans out of jobs-- it's far easier to joke that robots are going to take over world, than it is to have a tough conversation about their impact on workers. Perhaps it's time to stop fretting about a robot's self awareness and work a little more on our own."

I am thinking that all the warnings about medications, all the ads telling-selling stuff about breathing, sleeping, eating, exercising, are creating fear.

Fear gets us to buy products, buy into ideas -- like robots are usurpers of jobs, potential enemies, foes who someday may be running the world. I don't buy overly advertised anything -- I just hold on tight to my own common sense and instinctive mistrust.

Maybe that's what you need to do.

(VIDEO) JOHN CULLUM ON PLAYING 'SMALL' ROLES

How does  Broadway Star John feel about doing small roles, nowadays -- no longer playing the leading man.

"It would make me nuts!" Emily says. "All those shows  that need an old man character who's got Alzheimer's, all those cranky grandfather parts!"

John admits that it can make him feel a bit nutty, but reveals why those smaller roles are work he loves to do.

DO YOU NEED MORE SLEEP?

I am a poor sleeper. I yawn a lot. When necessary I take a 12 minute nap on the cot in the studio.

I have been a very poor sleeper for umpteen years.  I have tried over the counter remedies and doctor's prescriptions -- Ambien, Valium, Benadryl, valerian, melatonin, many other homeopathic remedies, warm milk, liquor, gone off caffeine, counted sheep, counted chimpanzees, reviewed lines in a play, reviewed steps in choreography -- I still do not fall asleep.
I fall awake.

My current routine: After tucking pillows under my neck and knees, I mutter "Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care," repeat the Shakespeare words, counting as I start with the left leg, "One Ten Thousand, sleep that knits..." while sensing the flow of blood in 10 toes, then ankle, calf, knee, thigh, hip joint before concentrating on the right leg, and its toes. I repeat this 15 to 30 times, till my mind rebels, and a loud awareness that I am wide awake drives me out of bed into the kitchen for a snack and some TV.

I've bumped into new news: The Military is working on a process called transcranial direct stimulation (tDCS) that zaps the brain with electricity, and keeps people up for as much as 30 hours. Caffeine lasts two hours, tDCS currently lasts six. It's like Modafinil, a stimulant that Wall street-investors use, according to Jama Internal Medicine, a journal published by the American Medical Association.

Uber drivers take 20 minute naps, every four hours. That means they get two hours of sleep in 24 hours.

Various sleep experts are now saying we just need five hours a night. Most millennials (people born after 2000) are mostly into five hours). The latest talk about sleep says "sleep less, do more."

Quite a few experts say the Internet, email, and social networking are giving us shots of dopamine, a chemical the brain releases to simulate pleasure. We used to get this from caffeine, and now we're sold caffeine's in toothbrushes, stockings, soap, bath bubbles, beer, marshmallows, lollipops, coke, red bull, and bottled water. (And of course, we continue to be told over and over, that caffeine keeps us awake.)

So don't drink coffee? Do drink it? Drink it less?

Guys, we're flashed a lot of facts -- re coffee, saccharin, eggs, cholesterol, omega 3, belly fat, dental hygiene, bacteria, calories, carbs, exercise -- those are the ones that stay in my mind.

Excuse me, but I put most of this into my BB pile (bullshit baloney). I've paid attention to a lot of facts that sound life and death important, but these facts have faded like smoke rings.

After a sleepless night, semi sleepless night, or a moderately good night, I do my work and do it well.  How well I do it depends -- not on sleep-- but on whether or not the topic excites me.

Thus, therefore, ergo: I am dropping my "raveled sleeve" routine. Maybe I'll learn to sing this to myself.

QUANTUMMING STUFF

The top computer guys are racing to be the first to make a quantum computer.

Hey -- are we on the verge of technology that would make your computer into an out-of-date thing, like an  abacus? Are our computers sort of like horses that we were riding not really that long ago, and now we're riding in jets?

I'm not a computer creator, programmer, math person, scientist. I am just a user. I vaguely understand that the computer I'm using is going to be replaced by something faster, better, much more advanced.

Yes, I have read in more than one place, that the quantum will be millions of times more powerful than today's fastest super computer. Oh my goodness, all that stuff we bought, we did, to update, to make our computers do more, faster, and better.

What will the new computers have that's different from what we have now?

Bits -- binary digits is what we have. We are going to need qubits.

Quantum computers make calculations using qubits and rely on physics to make multiple parallel universes. Example -- if you had to find an "x" written in 37 million books in the Library of Congress, a typical computer would look at every page in every book, one at a time -- it would do this very quickly but in a serial process. The Quantum could look at every page in every book at the same time -- yes, simultaneously -- looking for the X by splitting the task into a billion parallel universes and finding them all, right away, simultaneously.

That's the difference.

IBM announced excitedly that it found a way to detect a spooky-weird quantum error characteristic -- the very act of looking for an answer can make the qubit change its answer. So science guys need to create some mechanism that can figure out which is right answer.

Huh?

Yes, it's weird and it's spooky too. The art of programming qubits is as big a challenge as making the Quantum machine in the first place.

Software today -- based on algorithms which are linear one-step-at-a-time calculations -- is definitely going to be useless. We will have to find a way of coming up with a recipe for apple pie in which all the ingredients combine in the pan in the same split second.