| The Robots Aren't as Human as They Seem |
 | | A Boston Dynamics SpotMini robot walks through a conference room during a robotics summit in Boston. Charles Krupa/Associated Press | |
| Each week, technology reporters and columnists from The New York Times review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. |
| Yes, the robots are coming. But they're not as a clever as you are. At least not yet. |
| My name is Cade Metz, and here at The New York Times I cover emerging technologies, which is a fancy term for cool stuff that is probably not as cool as you think it is. My stock example: driverless cars. |
| Driverless cars are very cool. They're a little less cool when they're trying to make an unprotected left-hand turn against oncoming traffic and they just sit there because, unlike human drivers, they don't realize that there comes a time when you just have to go. Much the same applies to robots in general. |
| Last time in this esteemed newsletter, my colleague Steve Lohr warned that automation would change the economy. But as he also explained, jobs are "more likely to be transformed by digital technology than destroyed by it." This becomes clear as you look a little closer at the progress of robotics, including everything from the robotic arms that help build stuff in factories to the jaw-droppingly agile machines under development at a company called Boston Dynamics. |
| This past week, I wrote about Boston Dynamics, which runs a semi-secretive lab in Waltham, Mass., about 10 miles outside Boston. Built to move like animals and even humans, its machines are truly amazing (as YouTube watchers will attest). |
| At times, you can't help but think of these mechanical creations as living things. The company will start selling one of them, a doglike robot called SpotMini, in the coming year. But even Boston Dynamics is not quite sure what these robots are actually good for. |
| Robots play tricks on the mind. We tend to think they are more advanced than they really are, perhaps because of science fiction movies or because our brains are wired to believe in bots. This is particularly true when it comes to the biomimetic machines inside a lab like Boston Dynamics. |
| "When we see a biped that looks like a person or a quadruped that looks like a dog, we project our previous experiences with people and dogs onto these machines. But, in fact, there is nothing inside," said Gill Pratt, who worked with Boston Dynamics as an official at Darpa, a research arm of the Defense Department, and is now exploring new forms of robotics as the chief executive of the Toyota Research Institute. "It is like a hollow doll." |
| Keep that in mind as you think about any other robot. |
| The week I visited Boston Dynamics, I spent time with about 25 other roboticists — which was not hard in the Boston area. Cambridge breeds them as if they were really smart rabbits. As countless start-ups have emerged from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard over the past two decades, they have spread across Boston, into Somerville and on to Waltham. |
| One company at the leading edge of the real world is RightHand Robotics, which is fashioning "picking" robots inside an old post office building in Somerville. Presented with a bin full of stuff, they can grab and pick up individual objects, even if they haven't seen them before. This is just what a company like Amazon need inside its massive distribution centers. |
| But companies like RightHand are still perfecting the art of picking. And the next task — deciding where each object should go — is even harder. Right now, RightHand is leaning on systems that scan the bar code attached to each item. Identifying items without bar codes is harder still. |
| When you consider that Amazon is growing at a tremendous rate, there is no shortage of jobs for good old humans inside those distribution centers. And that won't change for a while. But I will say this: The technology is improving faster than ever before. |
| But enough with the robots. There is more to consider in the here and now: |
| ■ President Trump is kicking his China trade war into overdrive. He says this will maintain American greatness in the face of Beijing's master plan to dominate the technological future. But as our Washington tech correspondent, Cecilia Kang, reports, American tech and telecom companies paint a different picture. |
| ■ The Facebook saga continues, as you knew it would. Our Silicon Valley correspondent Mike Isaac returned from book leave with a scoop: Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the founders of Instagram, the hugely popular, photo-tastic social network owned by Facebook, are leaving the company. And here is why. |
| ■ No, it's not at Facebook levels yet, but the Google saga is picking up steam. Three weeks ago, Google did not attend a Senate hearing dedicated to Russian disinformation on social media, refusing to send a top executive. But the company was on the Capitol Hill hot seat this pat week, as lawmakers questioned whether Google services are silencing conservative voices. Daisuke Wakabayashi and Ms. Kang reported. |
| ■ Of course, the real issue is Russian disinformation. Check out columnist Kevin Roose's piece on USAReally, a website that is not what it might seem. Hint: It's based in Moscow. |
| ■ Back in the really real U.S.A., Amazon is turning Seattle into one giant tech lab. The company's cashierless grocery store, which opened near the downtown area in January, is now a tourist destination, and that is just one way the company is testing its latest ideas in the Great Northwest. Our Seattle tech correspondent, Karen Weise, took readers on a tour. There are no robots. Yet. |
| Cade Metz writes about emerging technologies for The New York Times. You can follow him on Twitter here: @cademetz. |
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