IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2021 - 8

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Inflection Points
By Seth Hutchinson
S
ometimes history is a Morse
function. Inflection points
arrive, unanticipated, and in the
blink of an eye, the present
reality and our expectations for the
future are redefined. The assassinations
of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther
King Jr. in the 1960s, Tiananmen
Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989, the World Trade Center attacks
in 2001-all occupied mere seconds,
minutes, or, at most, a few days; each
changed the trajectory of history.
We now seem to be experiencing a
degenerate inflection point, a two-year
blink of an eye that has seen the arrival of
COVID-19; the murder of George Floyd,
along with an alarming rise, and frightening
normalization, of white nationalism
in the West; the stumbling implementation
of Brexit; an insurrection at the U.S.
Capitol, the jailing of Alexei Navalny in
Russia, and the Chinese crackdown on
democracy in Hong Kong; and in the
tech world, a sea change realization that
robotics, machine learning, and artificial
intelligence (AI) are not, a priori, inherently
good. David Byrne might well ask:
Well, how did we get here?
As engineers, we might better ask:
How do we fix this? I'm not so arrogant
as to believe roboticists will eradicate
the problems of racism and misogyny,
save democracy, or independently harness
technology as an unadulterated
force for good, but as I have written in
the past, I do believe that we have the
responsibility, collectively and as indiDigital
Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2021.3120497
Date of current version: 9 December 2021
viduals, to be leaders, whether
in our technical disciplines,
in our institutions, or in our
respective bodies politic. As
my term as president of the
IEEE Robotics and Automation
Society (RAS) comes to an
end, I'm optimistic about the role we
will play in shaping the future.
Professional societies, the RAS
included, have stepped up, codifying
their values and putting structures in
place to implement and preserve them.
Individuals have stepped up, at times
incurring significant personal cost, to
hold organizations and institutions
accountable. The younger generation of
researchers has begun to reevaluate the
reward structures and criteria for success
in academia, placing increased emphasis
on nontechnical aspects of professional
life, prioritizing societal benefits over
novel technological advances. Research
productivity for its own sake, absent an
accounting of its potential societal
impact, is no longer the be-all and endall
for academic success. In the private
sector, a growing number of companies
has begun to explicitly reckon with the
potential adverse effects of technology,
particularly in the areas of machine
learning and AI.
When history is a Morse function, its
gradient typically has significant predictive
value. For degenerate inflection
points-two-year blinks of an eye-such
predictions are ill-advised. Yes, there are
positive indicators, some of which are
listed in the above, but greed, bigotry,
and chauvinism are dominant forces in
today's culture, working to divert society
8 * IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE * DECEMBER 2021
toward malevolent ends. The
prediction covariance is high.
When prediction is difficult,
correction is left to do
the heavy lifting. Luckily,
greed, bigoty, and chauvinism
struggle to prevail when denied
access to modern technology. Capitalism
without automation is more evenly
matched against a unified workforce.
Bigotry without easy access to social
media disintegrates into a disconnected
collection of powerless bullies. Chauvinists
without access to weaponized
technologies retreat into bitterness
and isolation.
In academia, we have enormous
freedom when choosing the directions
for our research and its target applications.
In industry, we have the freedom
to decide who will profit from our ideas,
our creativity, and our labor. We choose
not only the applications of our creativity
but also the beneficiaries. The gradient
may not tell us much at the
inflection point, but we have the ability
to push the system away from that
inflection, in a direction of our choosing.
We can steer the gradient. It is
essential that we do so.
At the end of this year, I will conclude
my term as president-a two-year
blink of an eye. My successor will be
Frank Park, of Seoul National University.
For the past year or more, Frank
and I have worked closely to ensure that
our goals for the Society coincide. Frank
is a first-class scientist and a thoughtful
and wise leader. For the Society, the gradient
is pointing in a good direction.
IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2021

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