The BBC gets to grips with robot cameras

This week’s links:

• Pete Phillips of Durham’s CODEC Research Centre for Digital Theology speaks on Transhumanism for Premier Radio (in Nov): “We are all cyborgs already. We are all transhuman already.”
• The BBC’s Jane Wakefield writes about a Swedish implant party: “People bond over the experience and start asking questions about what it means to be a man and machine.”
• Redditors discuss whether to refer to themselves as futurists or transhumanists when asked whether they have a religion: “I don’t call myself a futurist because the name is kind of silly imo.”
• The Independent reports that the BBC’s robot cameras continue to wind up presenters, as Martine Croxhall said in one forced voice-over: “If I sidle in you can pretend you haven’t noticed.”
• Wired reports that Google is replacing Captchas with algorithms that distinguish between people and machines, including detecting tiny movements that happen when people move their mouse
• Sandor Veres of Sheffield writes on The Conversation about a new ESRC-funded project that will “examine how to formally verify and ultimately legally certify robots’ decision-making processes”
• The Guardian re-posted an article from December 1981 – “Robot kills factory worker: The accident was the first of its kind in Japan, a nation which has the largest robot workforce in the world”
• The BBC’s Padraig Belton writes about robots in retail: “robots on the shop floor could bring back the personal service while shopping we associate more with the past, than the future.”