Robotic machines versus human workers

Machines doing jobs once done by humans is nothing new, explains Professor Mike Duke from the School of Engineering Teaching and Research at the University of Waikato. Not only have factories been switching from humans to mechanised labour for decades, but sectors such as Aotearoa New Zealand’s commercial fruit and wine industries are finding more and more uses for artificial intelligence and machine automation.

Learn about some of the advances in AI and robotics in industry, including the horticulture sector in New Zealand, and meet Archie – a machine being developed to replace humans in some vineyard work.

Questions for discussion

• What do you think are some of the advantages of using robots and AI to replace humans?

• What do you think Mike means when he says Archie is not sentient?

• Can you think of some jobs that have been replaced or supplemented by machines in your lifetime? For example, supermarket self checkouts.

Transcript

Professor Mike Duke

What impact is this new technology going to have on our jobs? What dangers are we going to face in the future for our security? If you went back in time to the old factories in the 1930s, they were full of people doing mundane, boring jobs that none of us would want to do today. That’s history. Of course, technology has moved on. We’ve now got robots that will do all the jobs of the humans. There’s no humans in that picture at all. So where we had thousands, now there’s none, and it’s all been done by robots.

If you look at things like fruit grading, which is a classic New Zealand type thing you had to do, if you went back in time, it was done by people. Human brains are actually sitting there determining whether you should pass or fail a bit of fruit. If you went to a New Zealand packhouse, you’re not gonna see rows and rows of people looking at apples deciding whether they’re good or bad. What you’re gonna see is machines like this. The blue box that you see has got all the conveyor of apples coming through. There are dozens of pictures taken of each apple. It’s artificial intelligence, combined with algorithms, determining whether that apple is good or bad. As the apple goes down the line, it is then ticked off into a good apple, or if it’s a bad one, down to the juicer end. That’s all being done using a form of narrow artificial intelligence. You’re seeing, behind those packhouse walls, this type of technology that’s meant a lot of jobs went in that area, but they weren’t jobs that people wanted to do.

Moving on, what if we take all that technology, the clever cameras and the computer vision and the artificial intelligence? Is it possible that we can take these types of robots and put them out into the fields where we actually see them doing things in orchards and vineyards?

The MaaraTech Project does exactly that. So we’re trying to say, can we take all of that technology and combine it to have a machine that, when it goes out into say a vineyard, will go to a place and perform a task that a human would do, including the thought processes behind what you are actually doing to it. And one of the classic ones is vine pruning. If you get it wrong, you can muck a really good vine up for a few years. So with that, Archie, which is one of the robots we’ve been working on, said that they would talk through how they would do this task.

Archie

Hi humans, I’m Archie the robot vine pruner. Each year, every vine has five or six critical cuts that affect how grapes grow. It is very important for the vineyard owners to get this right. Instead of semi-skilled human pruners, they want us robots to do it so they get consistently high-quality vines for less cost. I use artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the key features of the vine and their locations. I then map it to the actual vine. I then go to the physical location and make the cuts, just like the experts want, every time.

Professor Mike Duke

Well, to be honest with you, Archie is a robot that does need what we call narrow artificial intelligence to function properly. But unlike the video that I’ve made, Archie is not conscious. It doesn’t have – it’s not thinking like that at all. And it certainly isn’t sentient. But robots like Archie will replace jobs in New Zealand – just like we saw from the apple packing or from the factories but there’ll be different jobs – so it is gonna have an impact.

Acknowledgements

Professor Mike Duke, Dean of Engineering and Dr John Gallagher Chair in Engineering at the University of Waikato, and founding member of Waikato Robotics Automation and Sensing (WaiRAS) research group.

Video footage courtesy of the University of Waikato. The video is from a recording of the Kaupapa Kōrero panel discussion Bots vs Beings: How Will AI Impact Your Life and Work? Held at the University in June 2023.

The full discussion with Professor Mike Duke, Dr Amanda Williamson, Professor Nick Aga r and Associate Professor Te Taka Keegan and facilitated by Professor Bryony James can be viewed here.