Balls, cubes and pyramids

Or — how to create concepts?

Consider a robot hand exploring its environment by touch alone.

Add visual aspect, or a camera.

Then there is verbal side, written and spoken, text seen and voices heard.

The hand is given a bunch of objects, the camera is viewing the action and the verbal – bot, chatgpt or whatnot – is chatting about it.

How do they agree on simple things such as “what is a ball”? For a human that is trivial, after the first 2-4 years of verbal and eye-hand coordination learning and development.

But how would anything similar be built for machines?

The robot parts would be facing something like the illustration below – generated by AI, obviously.

What is a concept?

For humans, a concept is an internal representation in the mind of a person. Concepts are formed automatically based on the lifetime experiences and observations of a self-motivated individual. Concepts are shared through communication, language, gestures, shared behavior and thus have commonalities.

Concept autodiscovery in research lit

For robots, for AI, concept formation could be similar. Tenorio-Gonzales and Mordes propose a method for “Automatic discovery of concepts and actions” (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2017.09.023” where there is an “intrinsic motivation to discover new concepts, states and actions to learn behavior policies.”.
In other words, a learning system should be programmed with goals and aspirations to drive the machine to discover it’s environment.

Actual representation of a concept is assumed to be a graph. In order for concepts to be compatible between different sensory systems, the concept graphs need to refere beyond the neural representation of sensory input, i.e. the set of visual cues of “roundness” need to be connected, but not the only topic related to a concept “sphere”, or “ball”.

Aino Concept Repository

Aino Repository system will provide a Concept Dictionary so that the components can register and query concepts understood by the part. Concept Dictionary contains Knowledge Graphs with language elements so that a motor unit that recognizes and can manipulate a spherical object would map relevant sensory and motor operations to other representations of the concept “Ball”.

Concept is a (collection of) Knowledge Graphs (KG) in the text below.

Operations:

Add an item in the Concept Dictionary
Find an item in the Concept Dictionary
Modify an item in the Concept Dictionary (new version or modified Concept – Ball, Football)

Find a KG in the KG Registry – keyword based for humans.
Find a KG in the KG registry – content based for AI component / part discovery.
Add a KG – Component into the KG registry. KG – Component relationship is m-n.
Remove a KG – Component relationship.
Modify a KG – new version.

Runtime operations:

Pass a KG from Component A to Receiving Components (a group).
Receive response from Processing Component to Requesting Component.
Search Component Registry based on a set of KGs (smallest set has one KG).

Summary and next steps

There are ways for ML systems and robots to discover concepts on their own, concept auto discovery. There are also ways to represent them and Knowledge Graphs are a good approximation.

Knowledge Graphs – JSON, or XML – can be used as database keys to store and retrieve information.

Ainolabs intends to build a repository system where digital assets (Knowledge) with possible physical products can be stored and accessed for purchase, i.e. “Robot parts market”.


How to build a Barista Robot of parts?

Ainolabs’ search for Holy Grail is to build sufficiently advanced system to can replace an experienced professional. That Holy Grail is challenging for several reasons, but mostly because the way to do that would be to collect an immense amount of multi-channel data about professional environment and then to process that into a single, all-encompassing model.

The difficulty stems not only from the volume of data, but also the nature of it. A professional acts in a multi-sensory environment – 5 human senses, touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. In working environment sight and hearing are dominant. In addition to these a professional working in an organization needs to be attuned to the social environment – who said what, when. These combined explain why it might take an infant 20+ years to become proficient in e.g. Business Strategy Consulting.

Considering a simpler task: Could a Barista Robot be built out of components?

A Barista Robot would need to interface with customers. A good over the counter customer service representative notices clients as they come in, keeps track of their order so that they’ll all be served in time, notices their demeanor and addresses each customer in an appropriately courteous and polite manner.

A Barista Robot needs also to brew coffee and possibly recommend suitable combinations.

There are great chatbot-style customer service machines. There are also robot arms that can brew coffee. The question is – how to combine the two so that the system Robot Barista would fluently serve incoming clients?

A modular architecture was proposed in The Medium in 2023 – see https://medium.com/@amir.ghm/breaking-the-llms-16k-token-limit-introducing-the-modular-ai-systems-architecture-5a23b37139ac

That might do the trick if it was somehow possible to define the interfaces between parts somehow similar as to APIs are defined as swagger files or Docker components’ dependencies are listed in the manifest.

That however is really puzzling, in biological terms equivalent to surgically attach great barista hands to a well-spoken customer service representative. Besides unethical, that wouldn’t work since a barista’s hand needs to be connected with a barista’s nervous system.

In digital terms – how would one connect a great customer service agent LLM with a great Coffee Making Barista model to a Barista robot arm?

I don’t know, I wish someone did.

Innovation is Change

The Economist put “innovation” to its proper place in a recent column.
“Innovation. Sustainability. Purpose. Yuck”. Indeed. Thanks for them to point that out. Accordingly, the title says “Innovation”, but the subject really is change. Innovation is change, change in making a new product, new feature, new market need – change in supply and demand.

From change management perspective, a new product, new company has the simplest imaginable setting, illustrated below.

Company has conducted rigorous and thorough market research and analysis, and has reached a view of key competitive features to their product, represented by the orange-hued area on the right.

Customers – some of whom were consulted during the market research – had their own views, the jobs to be done. They see features and other products in the marketplace that help with their goals.

The company, in a single-product case a startup, is making a bet that this initial product and its features are sufficient to gain market traction, or sales. That initial step is crucial, subject to much literature and outside the scope here, except from the change perspective.
The company believes something new is coming out, and that the change they make is beneficial to their prospective and expected customers.
Customers see the same, or perhaps just another offering in the same or similar category. For customers to user the new product, they’d need to change their perception and behavior – and there we are, with change again.

That inspiring column by The Economist? – see https://www.economist.com/business/2022/05/14/the-woolliest-words-in-business.

Who can you trust?


Setting computers and technical gadgets aside for a moment – who and what can you trust?

If you trust something to happen – sunrise tomorrow – you perhaps rely on substantial past experience. A philosopher might point out that past experience does not guarantee future: It is somewhat possible that the sun has collapsed 8 minutes ago.

An astrophysicist would counter that based on what we know about stars, ours is still young and has a few billion years left, so no worries.

A meteorologist might ask if you mean that you’ll see the sunrise and would talk about clouds in the morning.

Still the event might not be seen by you if you slept until later and only saw that the sun is up. It must have risen since it is there.

Then what would it mean if you trust another person? That person will always be there for you? Tells you the truth as he/she knows it? Knows the subject, or is just helpfully speculating? How about keeping your secrets?

In brief, humans handle many shades and degrees of trust. Machines handle explicit trust, and poorly at that. For machines ever to be close to us in building relationships and via them collective and individual wisdom – we have a ways to go in technical development.

In the meanwhile – hope you have people you can trust in ways that are important to you.

Procrastination

So many people have written about procrastination. So many people have delayed and postponed writing about procrastination, so why oh why would I bother. Isn’t it better to play one more round of Clash Royale, maybe clean the cupboards, fold linen or whatever.

Professionally procrastination comes into play when you lose inspiration. An inspired mind and body will just keep on going, unless exhausted or otherwise stalled. A hobby, no matter how trivial or silly, is by definition inspirational, so how come the work can become something else?

Occasionally it does, and when that happens you can try to grit yourself through that, push harder, “get things done” – or you can ask “if it seems I don’t want to do this, I’d rather clean the toilet – is this job worth doing”.

I have no answers to that question, only the question. If you are stuck, can’t motivate yourself, and procrastinate over a thing – Was it worth doing in the first place?

Innovation and change

What is an innovation? And what is a change in business? Is it a change if prices go up and then down (discount sale)? Under what circumstances would the customers see price changes as something new, as an innovation? How small a change can be to count as novel?

The answers depend on the specifics of the market situation and customer perception. On the other hand, if nothing changes, the market most likely will not observe novelty or innovation.

We’ll rely on definition bin dissertation by Robert van der Have, “Seeking Speed: Managing the Search for Knowledge Innovate Faster”

“These [innovation] activities span from the creation and development
of new knowledge into an invention, and the process of its subsequent further
commercial development, including application toward specific objectives,
culminating in its practical utilization and economic/commercial exploitation.“

Ideas are not innovations. Rather “an innovation is a new product, service or process that is commercially exploited.” This leaves open the question of incremental innovation, i.e. new product variants or service improvements. For the sake of this discussion innovation and change are considered the same. Thus, an innovation is a completely or partially new product or service that is commercially exploited. This leaves out failed innovations, i.e. ideas that may have been implemented inside a company but were either discarded before commercial launch or ended up as market failures. These need to be taken into account in discussing innovation.

Our interest is in concrete innovation practices, how to effectively develop and deploy new and improved products. At times a sequence of such changes is so profound that the product is actually a completely new innovation. New radical changes are somewhat outside our scope as that is closer to science and research, and as such subject to different mechanisms.

Blue bubbles represent products and services as seen by the customers. Small blue dots represent relevant features of the products. Highlight is used to illustrate how features and products are connected. Please note that there are mutual synergies between products. Naive illustration is a pizza, fork and knife where fork and knife are separate products, both essential and more useful together than one at a time. The author realizes that utensils are often sold together as a unit and begs for forgiveness on this silly illustration.

Orange bubbles, dots and areas represent companies’ view. Orange bubbles represent products, SKUs in concrete terms, and the small dots their components, features, inventions, manufacturing, delivery, service and other aspects that make the product complete. Competitive differentiation lies in these aspects and how they are packaged together as an offering.

Details matter, implementation counts, only products that have been delivered matter. To get from ideas to products to revenue and profit ideas need to be turned into innovations and delivered to customers. That is the interest and we’ll return to that in the next part. As soon as we are done procrastinating.

Innovation and Black Friday

Black Friday innovation is usually seen mainly from retail, channel and shopper experience perspective. That it is,  similar to singles day and other similar established seasonal shopping sprees.

There is an underlying innovation cycle, too. The products are current, latest and greatest, new models and the roll-out is recent so that customer perception of new features is still fresh when the big sales comes up. This creates the perfect setup for innovators – market expectation about  new product releases, discount signal “buy now ” and general market visibility. Sure, marketing is tough as everyone is trying to get their message across, but in general the audience is tuned in.

This makes the seasonal and expected events like Black Friday innovation drivers. Consumers expect great offers on great products. Would there be riots about last year’s models? No way – it is about desirable products that are better, and there is innovation driver. You’ll want your product to be the one people are rushing to get. 

love paper bags with sale text
Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com

Innovators, that is product development, have been busy way before the  visibility of the year’s biggest shopping days. Products need to be competitive, which means that attractive product features have been identified, checked, specified, designed etc all the way to marketing messages and delivery capacity.

Is there a guaranteed recipe for making a hit product for the season? Safe to say no, unless you are Apple who keeps on doing that every year.  Certain practices may help, though.

Innovation is about change, and change especially from the customers’ perspective. Organizationally change can be easy or hard, and one could argue that cultures that make experiments easy and fast to implement are better prepared to identify  and implement beneficial changes to their products.

Besides operational and innovation culture, strategy plays a role. Without a clear and chared vision about who your company serves, how and by which product and service categories better than others innovative culture will become lost in great ideas for adjacent markets. That may serve a purpose for the society, may open up startup opportunities, but how about your sales and profitability?

Culture and strategy need to be backed up by actual ability. That for innovation means smart, capable, motivated people. Your business strategy is implemented and executed by people who are comfortable with, enjoy and are attracted to and share the mission, strategy and culture at your business.

I started looking at Singles day and Black Friday as I was trying to figure out if they are “just” annual sales, publicity gimmicks or if there is something for an innovator to observe. I think there is, as true and innovative marketing and product research has happened before the event, and the big sales events are the culmination of great innovations done, be that consumer electronics, fashion, food, or anything else.

We are interested in your view on the topic. Please don’t hesitate to drop a note to info@ainolabs.com

AI is a good tool

Opinion piece in NYT confirms once again Ainolabs bias about the immense usefulness of ML and fundamental futility of human equivalent AI.

“… there is no such thing as disembodied understanding. Your neural, chemical and bodily responses are in continual conversation with one another, so both understanding and experiencing are mental and physical simultaneously. “

It is quite possible that a silicon based entity reaches consciousness. It just won’t be human. 

This is related to trying out GPT-3 for Ainolabs’ Mentor Bot. Very useful for specific purposes, hit rate for meaningful conversation is another thing alltogether.

You Are Not Who You Think You Are