New Book from MIT Sloan Researchers Illuminates Cambrian Explosion in Robotics
MIT Sloan recently discussed a new book from Professors Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson entitled Machine Platform Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future, which considers where “humans fit in the new world of work.”
The advent of robotic prep and line cooks—exemplified by San Francisco’s Eatsa restaurant, Moley Robotics’ automated kitchen and Momentum Machines’ hyper-speed hamburger maker—are examples of what Toyota Research Institute CEO Gill Pratt has dubbed a “Cambrian Explosion” in robotics. Pratt references the original Cambrian Explosion circa 500 million B.C. give or take, during which “all major forms of life on Earth—phyla—appeared.”
Pratt explains, “One of the most important enablers of the Cambrian Explosion was vision — the moment when biological species first developed the ability to see the world. We are now at a similar threshold for machines.”
McAfee and Brynjolfsson’s research illuminates this Cambrian Explosion by focusing on “major developments in five parallel, interdependent and overlapping areas: data, algorithms, networks, the cloud and exponentially improving hardware”—or the handy-dandy acronym DANCE.
Data: The big data era is upon us with “signals from sensors in smartphones and industrial equipment, digital photos and videos, a nonstop global torrent of social media and many other sources.”
Algorithms: Big data “supports and accelerates the developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning, [whose] results get better as the amount of data they’re given increases.”
Networks: Improvements in wireless communication means “better and faster data accumulation.” It also means “robots and flying drones can coordinate their work and react together on the fly to quickly-changing circumstances.”
The cloud: The cloud makes an “unprecedented amount of computing power available to organizations and individuals,” accelerating the robotic Cambrian Explosion by 1) lowering the barrier to entry; 2) quickly discerning “which information-processing tasks should be done in each robot’s local brain, and which should be done by the great global brain in the cloud”; and 3) the creation of a universal “hive mind,” like Tesla cars, which “share data about the roadside objects they pass, [helping] the company build over time an understanding of which objects are permanent.”
Exponential improvements in digital hardware: If Moore’s law—the steady doubling in integrated circuit capability every eighteen to twenty-four months—is any indication, it is likely we will “continue to enjoy simultaneously lower prices and higher performance from our digital gear processors, memory, sensors, storage, communications and so on for a long time to come.”
The question of when automation might replace humans entirely is still theoretical, according to McAfee and Brynjolfsson. “Robots are making impressive progress, but they’re still a lot slower than we are when they try to do humanlike things. After all, our brains and bodies draw on millions of years of evolution, rewarding the designs that solved well the problems posed by the physical world.”
About the Author
Jonathan Pfeffer
Jonathan Pfeffer joined the Clear Admit and MetroMBA teams in 2015 after spending several years as an arts/culture writer, editor, and radio producer. In addition to his role as contributing writer at MetroMBA and contributing editor at Clear Admit, he is co-founder and lead producer of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. He holds a BA in Film/Video, Ethnomusicology, and Media Studies from Oberlin College.
