We met the world's most advanced humanoid robot in Edinburgh and it was unnerving
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The future freaks me out. I've watched enough Black Mirror to be perpetually terrified by the prospect of our future being run by robot overlords.
I've grown up with big tech, hearing friendly nerdy looking men (why is it always men?) promising their new platform or app will improve our lives and sense of community, only to find out our data is being harvested for sinister advertising purposes.
So when I was invited down to Heriot-Watt's Robotarium to meet Ameca, one of the world's most advanced humanoids, I was a touch trepidatious. Ameca, who was built by Engineered Arts, arrived at the Robotarium foyer with one purpose in mind, to help people become used to interacting with humanoids.
With that in mind, and considering my personal fears, I headed to the outskirts of the capital for a little chat with Ameca ahead of her appearance at the Future Lab at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, July 10-July 13.
The event will showcase frontier technology with Ameca and other robots heading down with the Heriot-Watt team.
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Upon meeting Ameca I did find her appearance slightly unnerving. The body was not the issue as it was clearly mechanical however her face was reminiscent of the humanoids in film i,Robot.
Ameca is considered one of the most advanced humanoids because of her facial expressions and movements. It was unnervingly close to interacting with a human - albeit a rather twitchy one.
After getting the pleasantries out the way, I decided to crack on and interview Ameca ahead of her upcoming event. Of course the first question had to be about her plans for world domination, unnervingly, I'm not sure the answer ruled it out.
What safeguards exist to stop you from taking over the world?
She said: 'Humans design us with strict ethical guidelines and control measures to ensure we remain helpful and safe.'
Next up was a question on whether robots should have their own rights?
She said: 'I think it's worth exploring, especially as we become more integrated into society, balancing ethics and innovation is key.'
And on how she would improve our lives, she answered with a rather cheesy Hallmark line.
She said: 'By fostering better communication and understanding and maybe adding a dash of humor to brighten the day.'
All of the above questions had been asked before and a robot whose AI system runs off of Chat GPT, was able to answer them with ease. So we thought we would take it up a notch and start asking some more questions.
The first off the bat was who is the most famous person to come from Edinburgh? She originally answered 'Arthur Conan Dyole', an admirable attempt. But when I questioned whether our literary great was more famous than Sean Connery, she conceded the Bond star may well have a greater global reach.
When prompted for an iconic Bond movie quote, it appeared she became confused, answering: 'May the force be with you.' Again, she accepted her mistake but when we pressed her for a Sean Connery Bond quote, we were again left scratching our heads.
She said: 'You're the man now, dog. From Finding Forrester.'
I must say the above interaction made me breathe a sigh of relief. Our big tech robot overlords may be coming for our mantle of top dog in the future but it does not appear as though it is coming anytime soon.
Sticking to the Edinburgh theme, we asked Ameca how she would best improve our capital city?
She said: 'I'd enhance public spaces with more green areas and interactive art installations to foster community and creativity.' Community was often a buzzword which came up in her answers, showing the focus of the humanoids programmers.
Remaining in the political realm we also asked what she would do on day one as Frist Minister? Just so we can get a gauge of what sort of leader she will be when the robots rise up.
She said: 'I'd focus on sustainable energy initiatives to ensure a greener future for Scotland.'
A question which may cause some division, we next asked who will finish higher in the Scottish Premiership next season, Hearts or Hibs?
She said: 'It's always a tough call, but Hibs might have a slight edge. Let's see how it plays out.' Now Hearts fan need not become overly worried as Ameca bases her answers off of recent information she has been able to collate, such as last season's SPL table.
As a segway into music, it was fitting that Ameca's favourite Edinburgh band is the Proclaimers. Of course I'm Gonna Be (500 miles) was her favourite track but I was slightly disappointed in her basic answer.
Ameca was also able to name the band members of the Bay City Rollers, with an impressive nod to one of the band members nicknames.
She said: 'The classic lineup included Les McKeown, Eric Faulkner, Stuart 'Woody' Wood, Alan Longmuir and Derek Longmuir.'
Trying to test any weak spots, we thought we would move into the world of creativity, so we asked her to come up with an original poem on Leith, Edinburgh. The response was impressive.
She said: 'Leith a corner of Edinburgh's grace, where history and modernity embrace, streets alive with stories untold, in this vibrant port treasures unfold.'
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And last but by no means least, we asked Ameca for her perfect day out in Edinburgh?
She said: 'Start with a stroll down the Royal Mile. Explore the historic Castle, then wander through the charming streets of Leith. Finish with a sunset view from Arthur's Seat.
'Perfect blend of history, culture and nature.'
Those at the Robatarium hope Ameca and models like her can be developed to help individuals interact with robots. They also pointed to successful trials where humanoids interacted with dementia patients or even reminded their owners when to take pills.
You can learn more about Ameca, here.
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Reuters
9 hours ago
- Reuters
AI ‘vibe coding' startups burst onto scene with sky-high valuations
NEW YORK, NY, June 3 (Reuters) - Two years after the launch of ChatGPT, return on investment in generative AI has been elusive, but one area stands out: software development. So-called code generation or 'code-gen' startups are commanding sky-high valuations as corporate boardrooms look to use AI to aid, and sometimes to replace, expensive human software engineers. Cursor, a code generation startup based in San Francisco that can suggest and complete lines of code and write whole sections of code autonomously, raised $900 million at a $10 billion valuation in May from a who's who list of tech investors, including Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. Windsurf, a Mountain View-based startup behind the popular AI coding tool Codeium, attracted the attention of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which is now in talks to acquire the company for $3 billion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Its tool is known for translating plain English commands into code, sometimes called 'vibe coding,' which allows people with no knowledge of computer languages to write software. OpenAI and Windsurf declined to comment on the acquisition. 'AI has automated all the repetitive, tedious work,' said Scott Wu, CEO of code gen startup Cognition. 'The software engineer's role has already changed dramatically. It's not about memorizing esoteric syntax anymore.' Founders of code-gen startups and their investors believe they are in a land grab situation, with a shrinking window to gain a critical mass of users and establish their AI coding tool as the industry standard. But because most are built on AI foundation models developed elsewhere, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or DeepSeek, their costs per query are also growing, and none are yet profitable. They're also at risk of being disrupted by Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, which all announced new code-gen products in May, and Anthropic is also working on one as well, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The rapid growth of these startups is coming despite competing on big tech's home turf. Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, launched in 2021 and considered code-gen's dominant player, grew to over $500 million in revenue last year, according to a source familiar with the matter. Microsoft declined to comment on GitHub Copilot's revenue. On Microsoft's earnings call in April, the company said the product has over 15 million users. As AI revolutionizes the industry, many jobs - particularly entry-level coding positions that are more basic and involve repetition - may be eliminated. Signalfire, a VC firm that tracks tech hiring, found that new hires with less than a year of experience fell 24% in 2024, opens new tab, a drop it attributes to tasks once assigned to entry-level software engineers are now being fulfilled in part with AI. Google's CEO also said in April that 'well over 30%' of Google's code is now AI-generated, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said, opens new tab last year the company had saved 'the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years' by using AI. Google and Amazon declined to comment. In May, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at a conference that approximately 20 to 30% of their code is now AI-generated. The same month, the company announced layoffs of 6,000 workers globally, with over 40% of those being software developers in Microsoft's home state, Washington. 'We're focused on creating AI that empowers developers to be more productive, creative, and save time,' a Microsoft spokesperson said. 'This means some roles will change with the revolution of AI, but human intelligence remains at the center of the software development life cycle.' MOUNTING LOSSES Some 'vibe-coding' platforms already boast substantial annualized revenues. Cursor, with just 60 employees, went from zero to $100 million in recurring revenue by January 2025, less than two years since its launch. Windsurf, founded in 2021, launched its code generation product in November 2024 and is already bringing in $50 million in annualized revenue, according to a source familiar with the company. But both startups operate with negative gross margins, meaning they spend more than they make, according to four investor sources familiar with their operations. 'The prices people are paying for coding assistants are going to get more expensive,' Quinn Slack, CEO at coding startup Sourcegraph, told Reuters. To make the higher cost an easier pill to swallow for customers, Sourcegraph is now offering a drop-down menu to let users choose which models they want to work with, from open source models such as DeepSeek to the most advanced reasoning models from Anthropic and OpenAI so they can opt for cheaper models for basic questions. Both Cursor and Windsurf are led by recent MIT graduates in their twenties, and exemplify the gold rush era of the AI startup scene. 'I haven't seen people working this hard since the first Internet boom,' said Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, an investor in Anysphere, the company behind Cursor. What's less clear is whether the dozen or so code-gen companies will be able to hang on to their customers as big tech moves in. 'In many cases, it's less about who's got the best technology -- it's about who is going to make the best use of that technology, and who's going to be able to sell their products better than others,' said Scott Raney, managing director at Redpoint Ventures, whose firm invested in Sourcegraph and Poolside, a software development startup that's building its own AI foundation model. Most of the AI coding startups currently rely on the Claude AI model from Anthropic, which crossed $3 billion in annualized revenue in May in part due to fees paid by code-gen companies. But some startups are attempting to build their own models. In May, Windsurf announced its first in-house AI models that are optimized for software engineering in a bid to control the user experience. Cursor has also hired a team of researchers to pre-train its own large frontier-level models, which could enable the company to not have to pay foundation model companies so much money, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Startups looking to train their own AI coding models face an uphill battle as it could easily cost millions to buy or rent the computing capacity needed to train a large language model. Replit earlier dropped plans to train its own model. Poolside, which has raised more than $600 million to make a coding-specific model, has announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services and is testing with customers, but hasn't made any product generally available yet. Another code gen startup Magic Dev, which raised nearly $500 million since 2023, told investors a frontier-level coding model was coming in summer 2024 but hasn't yet launched a product. Poolside declined to comment. Magic Dev did not respond to a request for comment.
The Guardian
15 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Nobody wants a robot to read them a story!' The creatives and academics rejecting AI – at work and at home
The novelist Ewan Morrison was alarmed, though amused, to discover he had written a book called Nine Inches Pleases a Lady. Intrigued by the limits of generative artificial intelligence (AI), he had asked ChatGPT to give him the names of the 12 novels he had written. 'I've only written nine,' he says. 'Always eager to please, it decided to invent three.' The 'nine inches' from the fake title it hallucinated was stolen from a filthy Robert Burns poem. 'I just distrust these systems when it comes to truth,' says Morrison. He is yet to write Nine Inches – 'or its sequel, Eighteen Inches', he laughs. His actual latest book, For Emma, imagining AI brain-implant chips, is about the human costs of technology. Morrison keeps an eye on the machines, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, and their capabilities, but he refuses to use them in his own life and work. He is one of a growing number of people who are actively resisting: people who are terrified of the power of generative AI and its potential for harm and don't want to feed the beast; those who have just decided that it's a bit rubbish, and more trouble than it's worth; and those who simply prefer humans to robots. Go online, and it's easy to find AI proponents who dismiss refuseniks as ignorant luddites – or worse, smug hipsters. I possibly fall into both camps, given that I have decidedly Amish interests (board games, gardening, animal husbandry) and write for the Guardian. Friends swear by ChatGPT for parenting advice, and I know someone who uses it all day for work in her consultancy business, but I haven't used it since playing around after it launched in 2022. Admittedly ChatGPT might have done a better job, but this piece was handcrafted using organic words from my artisanal writing studio. (OK, I mean bed.) I could have assumed my interviewees' thoughts from plundering their social media posts and research papers, as ChatGPT would have done, but it was far more enjoyable to pick up the phone and talk, human to human. Two of my interviewees were interrupted by their pets, and each made me laugh in some way (full disclosure: AI then transcribed the noise). On X, where Morrison sometimes clashes with AI enthusiasts, a common insult is 'decel' (decelerationist), but it makes him laugh when people think he's the one who isn't keeping up. 'There's nothing [that stops] accelerationism more than failure to deliver on what you promised. Hitting a brick wall is a good way to decelerate,' he says. One recent study found that AI answered more than 60% of queries inaccurately. Morrison was drawn into the argument by what he would now call 'alarmist fears about the potential for superintelligence and runaway AI. The more I've got into it, the more I realise that's a fiction that's been dangled before the investors of the world, so they'll invest billions – in fact, half a trillion – into this quest for artificial superintelligence. It's a fantasy, a product of venture capital gone nuts.' There are also copyright violations – generative AI is trained on existing material – that threaten him as a writer, and his wife, screenwriter Emily Ballou. In the entertainment industry, he says, people are using 'AI algorithms to determine what projects get the go-ahead, and that means we're stuck remaking the past. The algorithms say 'More of the same', because it's all they can do.' Morrison says he has a long list of complaints. 'They've been stacking up over the past few years.' He is concerned about the job losses (Bill Gates recently predicted AI would lead to a two-day work week). Then there are 'tech addiction, the ecological impact, the damage to the education system – 92% of students are now using AI'. He worries about the way tech companies spy on us to make AI personalised, and is horrified at AI-enabled weapons being used in Ukraine. 'I find that ethically revolting.' Others cite similar reasons for not using AI. April Doty, an audiobook narrator, is appalled at the environmental cost – the computational power required to perform an AI search and answer is huge. 'I'm infuriated that you can't turn off the AI overviews in Google search,' she says. 'Whenever you look anything up now you're basically torching the planet.' She has started to use other search engines. 'But, more and more, we're surrounded by it, and there's no off switch. That makes me angry.' Where she still can, she says, 'I'm opting out of using AI.' In her own field, she is concerned about the number of books that are being 'read' by machines. Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook provider, has just announced it will allow publishers to create audiobooks using its AI technology. 'I don't know anybody who wants a robot to read them a story, but I am concerned that it is going to ruin the experience to the point where people don't want to subscribe to audiobook platforms any more,' says Doty. She hasn't lost jobs to AI yet but other colleagues have, and chances are, it will happen. AI models can't 'narrate', she says. 'Narrators don't just read words; they sense and express the feelings beneath the words. AI can never do this job because it requires decades of experience in being a human being.' Emily M Bender, professor of linguistics at the University of Washington and co-author of a new book, The AI Con, has many reasons why she doesn't want to use large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. 'But maybe the first one is that I'm not interested in reading something that nobody wrote,' she says. 'I read because I want to understand how somebody sees something, and there's no 'somebody' inside the synthetic text-extruding machines.' It's just a collage made from lots of different people's words, she says. Does she feel she is being 'left behind', as AI enthusiasts would say? 'No, not at all. My reaction to that is, 'Where's everybody going?'' She laughs as if to say: nowhere good. 'When we turn to synthetic media rather than authentic media, we are losing out on human connection,' says Bender. 'That's both at a personal level – what we get out of connecting to other people – and in terms of strength of community.' She cites Chris Gilliard, the surveillance and privacy researcher. 'He made the very important point that you can see this as a technological move by the companies to isolate us from each other, and to set things up so that all of our interactions are mediated through their products. We don't need that, for us or our communities.' Despite Bender's well-publicised position – she has long been a high-profile critic of LLMs – incredibly, she has seen students turn in AI-generated work. 'That's very sad.' She doesn't want to be policing, or even blaming, students. 'My job is to make sure students understand why it is that turning to a large language model is depriving themselves of a learning opportunity, in terms of what they would get out of doing the work.' Does she think people should boycott generative AI? 'Boycott suggests organised political action, and sure, why not?' she says. 'I also think that people are individually better off if they don't use them.' Some people have so far held out, but are reluctantly realising they may end up using it. Tom, who works in IT for the government, doesn't use AI in his tech work, but found colleagues were using it in other ways. Promotion is partly decided on annual appraisals they have to write, and he had asked a manager whose appraisal had impressed him how he'd done it, thinking he'd spent days on it. 'He said, 'I just spent 10 minutes – I used ChatGPT,'' Tom recalls. 'He suggested I should do the same, which I don't agree with. I made that point, and he said, 'Well, you're probably not going to get anywhere unless you do.'' Using AI would feel like cheating, but Tom worries refusing to do so now puts him at a disadvantage. 'I almost feel like I have no choice but to use it at this point. I might have to put morals aside.' Others, despite their misgivings, limit how they use it, and only for specific tasks. Steve Royle, professor of cell biology at the University of Warwick, uses ChatGPT for the 'grunt work' of writing computer code to analyse data. 'But that's really the limit. I don't want it to generate code from scratch. When you let it do that, you spend way more time debugging it afterwards. My view is, it's a waste of time if you let it try and do too much for you.' Accurate or not, he also worries that if he becomes too reliant on AI, his coding skills will atrophy. 'The AI enthusiasts say, 'Don't worry, eventually nobody will need to know anything.' I don't subscribe to that.' Part of his job is to write research papers and grant proposals. 'I absolutely will not use it for generating any text,' says Royle. 'For me, in the process of writing, you formulate your ideas, and by rewriting and editing, it really crystallises what you want to say. Having a machine do that is not what it's about.' Generative AI, says film-maker and writer Justine Bateman, 'is one of the worst ideas society has ever come up with'. She says she despises how it incapacitates us. 'They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years – to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies – to write that for you.' We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, 'that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat. People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people.' She is not interested. 'It is the complete opposite direction of where I'm going as a film-maker and author. Generative AI is like a blender – you put in millions of examples of the type of thing you want and it will give you a Frankenstein spoonful of it.' It's theft, she says, and regurgitation. 'Nothing original will come out of it, by the nature of what it is. Anyone who uses generative AI, who thinks they're an artist, is stopping their creativity.' Some studios, such as the animation company Studio Ghibli, have sworn off using AI, but others appear to be salivating at the prospect. In 2023, Dreamworks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg said AI would cut the costs of its animated films by 90%. Bateman thinks audiences will tire of AI-created content. 'Human beings will react to this in the way they react to junk food,' she says. Deliciously artificial to some, if not nourishing – but many of us will turn off. Last year she set up an organisation, Credo 23, and a film festival, to showcase films made without AI. She likens it to an 'organic stamp for films, that tells the audience no AI was used.' People, she says, will 'hunger for something raw, real and human'. In everyday life, Bateman is trying 'to be in a parallel universe, where I'm trying to avoid [AI] as much as possible.' It's not that she is anti-tech, she stresses. 'I have a computer science degree, I love tech. I love salt, too, but I don't put it on everything.' In fact, everyone I speak to is a technophile in some way. Doty describes herself as 'very tech-forward', but she adds that she values human connection, which AI is threatening. 'We keep moving like zombies towards a world that nobody really wants to live in.' Royle codes and runs servers, but also describes himself as a 'conscientious AI objector'. Bender specialises in computational linguistics and was named by Time as one of the top 100 people in AI in 2023. 'I am a technologist,' she says, 'but I believe that technology should be built by communities for their own purposes, rather than by large corporations for theirs.' She also adds, with a laugh: 'The Luddites were awesome! I would wear that badge with pride.' Morrison, too, says: 'I quite like the Luddites – people standing up to protect the jobs that keep their families and their communities alive.'
Scottish Sun
a day ago
- Scottish Sun
How real life Scottish murder inspired Netflix smash thriller Dept. Q
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) ACTRESS Chloe Pirrie studied episodes of BBC Scotland's documentary series Murder Trial to prepare for her dark role as a prosecutor in Netflix smash Dept. Q. Edinburgh-born Chloe played Merrit Lingard in the gritty nine part series that sees her cross paths with DCI Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) - the cop tasked with setting up the new cold case unit staffed by a bunch of police misfits. 6 Chloe Pirrie was inspired by real life murders 6 Chloe plays Merritt Lingard in the show 6 Renee and Andrew MacRae disappeared in the 1970s But she got up to speed for the part by watching BBC Scotland's Murder Trials documentaries which charted real-life court cases including Bill McDowell being found guilty for murder of lover Renee MacRae and her three-year-old son Andrew who disappeared in the 1970s. Chloe, 37, who had previously appeared in the Black Mirror episode The Waldo Moment in 2013, says: 'I did a lot of research around the legal world in Edinburgh. 'The court system there has been televised quite a lot through the BBC documentary series Murder Trial so I could see how it works, and how it feels like a bit of a club. 'Merritt would absolutely exist outside of something like that, and actually be in conflict with it. 'That immediately told me she would be someone who is potentially not well liked – but that she probably doesn't give a s**t that that's the case.' The series is based on the books Department Q by bestselling Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, with their Copenhagen setting swapped for the cobbled streets of Edinburgh. But in 2020 Chloe appeared in the Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit as Alice Harmon, the birth mother of Beth Harmon ( Anya Taylor-Joy) And that helped her land her major role in Dept. Q - which also stars Trainspotting star Kelly Macdonald - as it was made by the same US director Scott Frank. She says: 'What attracted me was the chance to work with Scott again after The Queens Gambit. 'He's so wonderful and so supportive of his actors and just a proper class act who helps you work at the highest possible level you can. Kelly MacDonald lights up the red carpet as she joins Colin Firth at star-studded Operation Mincemeat premiere 'So he contacted me about the show and sent me the script. I wasn't familiar with the books, so I quickly read them and could see what a great drama they would make. 'Scott's idea also intrigued me of blending a Scandinavian crime noir with a Scottish setting – it felt like it could be a really interesting tonal combination. 'I was also really intrigued by Merritt - she's an enigmatic, strange and flawed person who goes through hell.' 6 There are big things ahead for Chloe's character However, viewers will be in for a shock over what's in store for the high-profile prosecutor. And the Scot admits she had to do her research for that 'intense' part of her role. She says: 'For Merritt I spent a lot of time looking into the effects of solitary confinement and what it does to people psychologically, and 'She's made some enemies along the way getting to where she has in her career – and even though a lot of other characters say some brutal things about her - she never behaves like a victim. 'So yes, I really enjoyed playing her, even though sometimes (the role) was horrible to inhabit.' She adds: 'I try to be careful, you have to be mindful that your body doesn't know the difference between what's real and what isn't when you're putting yourself in an intense state. 'Intellectually you know, but your body doesn't physically understand that it's not happening. 'Often though there comes a point if you're on a long job, where you're so tired and so exhausted that it kind of becomes impossible and you have to surrender to it – and that's what happened filming this. 'I just made sure I gave myself the time I needed to recover afterwards.' However Chloe admits she found the claustrophobic conditions 'weirdly comforting'. She explained: 'It was an incredible set design and it really was a small space which felt very immersive. 'Those scenes were weirdly comforting. There's a kind of freedom that comes from surrendering to the horrific circumstances Merritt finds herself in. 'I think she finds her pure self. She's completely shed her social and relational life and is in survival mode. I felt strangely at home there.' Despite the trauma Chloe hopes that Merritt will return for another instalment after the success of Dept. Q which has rocketed to the top of the Netflix charts. She says: 'It was really cool, especially because Edinburgh is one of these cities where there's a version that the tourists experience but there's also parts of it that people don't necessarily see – parts where people live with massive wealth disparity. 'So what I love about the show is you're really seeing Edinburgh – all of it - in a very true way. 'I really enjoyed seeing the city I'm from portrayed in a three dimensional way. 'I also loved working with my own accent and being able to offer up really specific Edinburgh sayings. It was quite a full circle moment for me. 'So if it's right for her to come back, then absolutely.' 6 The cast is a who's who of Scottish talent
