IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2023 - 4

F ROM THE ED I T O R ' S D E S K
AI-Fused Automation
By Yi Guo
ChatGPT is everywhere. From the weekend
party table to the weekday university
seminars, people have been talking
about ChatGPT. Since its public launch
at the end of last November, it reached
100 million users in January and has
become the fastest-growing Internet
service ever. GPT is short for generative
pretrained transformer, and the chatbot
is the large language model pretrained
with text databases from the Internet and
human feedback. The
hype around ChatGPT
may be well justified, as
the tech innovation could
transform some fields,
such as how humans
interact with machines.
Will it be long before
truly intelligent machines
are developed to transform
industrial sectors
such as manufacturing?
Indeed, people have
asked, " Where are all the
robots? " [1] Given that
Elon Musk of Tesla predicted
that we might exceed a one-to-one
ratio of humanoid robots to humans on 1
March, it is believed that the rich world
suffers from too little automation, not too
much [1]. In each of the previous industrial
revolutions, newly developed tools
and technologies were applied, and the
manufacturing sector was transformed
with new jobs and wealth. No exception
is expected for the current one. A manuDigital
Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2023.3266616
Date of current version: 15 June 2023
4
IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE JUNE 2023
"
"
THE RAM EDITORIAL
BOARD WILL MEET
AT ICRA AND IROS,
facturing renaissance relies
on innovative technologies,
and advanced manufacturing
is critical to the growth
of the economy. Fears over
the job-displacing effects of
technology are nothing new.
However, in reality, labor
markets across the rich world
are getting structurally tighter as the
population ages. The fusion of AI and
automation with human
wisdom will hold the key
to success in the current
industrial revolution.
Robotics and autoAND
WE WOULD BE
HAPPY TO TALK WITH
YOU ABOUT THE
MAGAZINE.
mation are in the name
of our magazine. As
noted in the " President's
Message " [2] by Seth
Hutchinson, the past
president of the IEEE
Robotics and Automation
Society, manufacturing
was the main application
that drove much of the
research in both robotics
and automation in the 1980s. With the
increased amount of research and broader
application domains, each of the subdisciplines
of robotics and automation has
grown to be a discipline of its own in the
21st century. In recent years, more interdisciplinary
research has emerged, and
broader societal impacts are witnessed.
We should nurture a synergistic relationship
between robotics and automation.
This June issue consists of special
issue articles that responded to the call
for papers on " Machine Learning for
Industry 4.0. " I would like
to thank Lead Guest Editor
Mengchu Zhou for proposing
this special issue on
automation. My gratitude
also goes to Guest Editors
Birgit Vogel-Heuser, Heeyoung
Kim, Bin Liu, and Yan
Qiao for managing the peer
review process of paper submission.
You may have also heard the recent
news that the IEEE International Conference
on Automation Science and Engineering
(CASE) has been added to the
conference list for our authors to present
their IEEE Robotics and Automation
Magazine (RAM) papers. As detailed on
the RAM website, authors of accepted
RAM papers will be given the option to
select the conference from the list, which
includes the IEEE International Conference
on Robotics and Automation (ICRA),
the IEEE/RSJ International Conference
on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS),
and CASE, at which they wish to present.
As always, I welcome your comments
and ideas on RAM and the broader Society
concerns relevant to our profession.
The RAM editorial board will meet at
ICRA and IROS, and we would be happy
to talk with you about the magazine.
Enjoy reading the June issue!
REFERENCES
[1] " Where are all the robots? " The Economist,
pp. 51-53, Mar. 11th-17th 2023. https://www.economist.
com/business/2023/03/06/dont-fear-an-ai-induced
-jobs-apocalypse-just-yet
[2] S. Hutchinson, " Robotics and automation
[President's Message], " IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag.,
vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 6-8, Jun. 2021, doi: 10.1109/MRA.
2021.3076550.
1070-9932/23©2023IEEE

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7158-351X https://www.economist.com/business/2023/03/06/dont-fear-an-ai-induced-jobs-apocalypse-just-yet https://www.economist.com/business/2023/03/06/dont-fear-an-ai-induced-jobs-apocalypse-just-yet https://www.economist.com/business/2023/03/06/dont-fear-an-ai-induced-jobs-apocalypse-just-yet

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2023

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