How Robots Think: Why Artificial Intelligence Is Nothing Like the Human Mind
Mick Mountz, Founder & CEO, Kiva Systems
in conversation with Jason Tanz
Bio
Mick Mountz
Mick Mountz is founder and CEO of Kiva Systems. Mountz founded Kiva Systems in 2003, after experiencing the inadequacy of existing material-handling technologies for ecommerce at the grocery delivery startup Webvan. Kiva's integrated order-fulfillment solution employs hundreds of mobile robots and distributed intelligence to enable faster, more flexible ecommerce distribution centers for companies like The Gap, Saks Fifth Avenue, Diapers.com, Staples, Walgreens, and Crate and Barrel. Under Mountz's leadership, Kiva was ranked sixth on the 2009 Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in the US.
Before joining Webvan, Mountz spent three years as a product manager at Apple Computer, where he helped move new technologies like FireWire, DVD, Fast Ethernet, and 3D graphics acceleration into the standard desktop platform.
He began his career as a mechanical and manufacturing engineer at Motorola. In 2008, Mountz received an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the New England region. He holds twelve U.S. technology patents.
Jason Tanz
As executive editor, Jason Tanz oversees the magazine’s print and tablet editions. In his six years at WIRED, he has edited stories on everything from Bezos to bank heists, hackers to high-speed rail. Tanz previously worked at Fortune and SmartMoney, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, and Spin. A 2004 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow, he is the author of Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America.
Design, construction, and use of machines (robots) to perform tasks done traditionally by human beings. Robots are widely used in such industries as automobile manufacture to perform simple repetitive tasks, and in industries where work must be performed in environments hazardous to humans. Many aspects of robotics involve artificial intelligence; robots may be equipped with the equivalent of human senses such as vision, touch, and the ability to sense temperature. Some are even capable of simple decision making, and current robotics research is geared toward devising robots with a degree of self-sufficiency that will permit mobility and decision-making in an unstructured environment. Today's industrial robots do not resemble human beings; a robot in human form is called an android.
And soon they will will be transporting little containers to your door - like a physical internet .
This will turn industrial and commercial production/operation upside down, because not only will it change the way we produce, it will change what we consume.
Along with broadband, it will also facilitate massive decentralisation in terms of urban/rural living: to the horror of people who think we should be forced into high-density cities .