South Korean cafe uses robot barista to ensure social distancing

South Korean cafe uses robot barista to ensure social distancing

A cafe in Daejeon, South Korea, is now using robots to prepare drinks and deliver them to customers.

The whole system involves a coffee-making robotic arm and a serving robot and can make 60 different types of coffee. The capsule-shaped robot has a tray installed in it to carry drinks. The system can communicate and transmit data to other device.

An order of six drinks, processed through a kiosk, took just seven minutes. The only human employee at the two-story cafe also has some cleaning duties and refills ingredients

Lee Dong-bae, director of research at Vision Semicon said, “Robots could help people observe social distancing in public. Our system needs no input from people from order to delivery, and tables are sparsely arranged to ensure smooth movements of the robots, which fits well with the current distancing campaign”.

The manufacturer aims to supply at least 30 cafes with robots this year.

Quarantine, social distancing best tools to fight coronavirus: AI expert

Quarantine, social distancing best tools to fight coronavirus: AI expert

New Delhi: Artificial Intelligence is being used across many levels in the fight against the coronavirus, but the best tools to tackle any pandemic are quarantine and social distancing, asserts one of the world’s leading AI experts Toby Walsh.

He says an AI epidemiologist was the first to identify the first signs of the pandemic, scanning millions of tweets and blog posts to pinpoint a new disease coming out of Wuhan back in December 2019.

“AI can be (and is being) used across many levels of the fight to beat the coronavirus. AI is also being used in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of COVID-19,” says Walsh, Scientia Professor of AI at the University of New South Wales and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

“Technology will help. But old-fashioned tools will help win the war. The best tool we have is the oldest – the one we’ve used for 700 years against any pandemic, namely quarantine. In Venice in 1377, ships from plague-stricken countries were forced to wait off its port for 40 days to assure that no latent cases were aboard,” Walsh told PTI in an interview.

“The next best tool that will help us prevent the spread is social distancing. Technologies like AI will help on top of this. But it is these simple, blunt and old tools that will ultimately decide how many people die,” he says.

On the role of AI in the fight against this deadly virus, he says, “AI is being used in the hunt to search for existing drugs that can be repurposed to fight the disease. It is also being used to understand the biochemistry of the coronavirus. Besides, AI help is taken to diagnose those infected with COVID-19 by reading CT-scans for the distinctive patterns on people’s lungs.”

Walsh has recently come out with a book “2062: The World that AI Made” in which he explores the impact artificial intelligence will have on work, war, economics, politics, everyday life and even human death.

He started writing the book, published by Speaking Tiger, the day he finished reading Yuval Noah Harari’s “Home Deus”.

“AI is a profound technology that will change the very fabric of our society. But we won’t become gods. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It is our mortality and our humanity that will become deeply important as the features that will distinguish us from the immortal and omnipotent machines that we will create,” he says.

When Walsh finished writing the book, his eight-year-old daughter asked him what it was about.

“I told her the book was about the world she will inherit. How will the world in 40 or 50 years be when machines are as smart if not smarter than us, when machines can do almost all our jobs. Will these machines even be conscious? What will our society be like then? And then I did the maths, and in 2062, she will be exactly my age to the year,” he recalls.

“This book focuses on the year 2062. Most experts in AI believe that there’s a 50 per cent chance we will have created machines that can think as well as us by 2062,” he says.

Artificial Intelligence, says Walsh, will change the world dramatically.

“We need, therefore, to think big about the changes we should make to society today if we are to ensure that the world of 2062 is the one we want,” he says.

“If we make the right choices, AI promises to make life better – not just for the few but for the many. It can let us all live healthier, wealthier and perhaps even happier lives,” he adds.

Oil prices at 17-year lows as virus ravages world

Oil prices at 17-year lows as virus ravages world

Singapore: Oil prices extended losses in Asian trade Monday, March 30 and languished at 17-year lows, with the coronavirus crisis escalating around the world and no end in sight to a vicious price war.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate fell 5.3 percent to trade at $20 a barrel, while international benchmark Brent crude was off 6.5 percent at $23.

The falls came after the death toll from the pandemic surged past 30,000 at the weekend as cases in hard-hit Europe and the United States showed no sign of letting up. Senior US scientist Anthony Fauci estimated the virus could possibly result in 100,000 to 200,000 deaths in the United States, while President Donald Trump extended “social distancing” guidelines until April 30.

The president also said that he expected the country to be well on our way to recovery by June 1 dropping his previous target of mid-April.

The virus has infected more than 140,000 in the world’s top economy and left more than 2,400 dead.

Oil markets have been plunging for weeks as lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed by governments worldwide to fight the virus strangle demand.

Even as demand falls, supply has increased dramatically after top producers Saudi Arabia and Russia engage in a price war following a row about whether to cut output to support prices.

At the end of last week, Riyadh said it had not been in touch with Moscow about potential output cuts while Russia’s deputy energy minister said oil at $25 a barrel was not a catastrophe for the country’s producers signaling the two sides are still far apart.

“Demand concerns are critical but well known, what really took the market down were the signals we got from Saudi Arabia and Russia that they intend to continue their current path,” Vivek Dhar, a commodities analyst at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, told Bloomberg News.

“Market hopes of a deal have come undone.” There are fears the commodity could fall further as storage tanks around the globe approach full capacity.

“When the storage capacity is filled, we should probably expect a response from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other essential oil producers,” AxiCorp’s Stephen Innes said, though he warned “the longer their response takes, the higher the risk of another steep decline in oil prices”.

The retreat on oil markets comes after a bounce with equities last week that came after policymakers worldwide unleashed massive stimulus measures to prop up the virus-hit global economy.