I have just completed a course called Robotics and the Meaning of Life (T184, OU). One of the things I have learned is that robots are about as far from being alive as the USA is from sending astronauts to live on Jupiter. They are machines, not creatures, you see.
And they are stupid. Robotic AI (artificial intelligence) is pretty much bogged down, and has been for decades. Some hope is coming through from "swarming". That is making little robots that work together by reacting with their environment via sensors and actuators in a way analogous to the way ants or termites do. This is referenced at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_robotics. It is fascinating to think that the puny ant is considered clever. When ants swarm, they deposit pheromones on finding food, which can be followed by other ants, which do likewise. Eventually, thousands of the creatures arrive at our sandwiches. And when the food runs out (or we curse and move the hamper and ourselves to the car), the chemical paths deteriorate and the ants go elsewhere to nick food.
Frankenstein's monster was fictional and was conceived (sorry for that pun) to be an 8 foot tall composite of body parts. Now, the first coinage of the word robot came from a Sci Fi play called R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in 1921. Those were labourers or serfs, a slave class to humans to do the boring work. But they, like the monster from the horror novel a hundred years earlier, were actually made from human material, more like clones or androids than automaton reasoning machines. They were alive. So, what is the meaning of life when it comes to robots? If they were alive; if they were clones, surely we could not keep them enslaved. When is a robot not a robot? When it becomes alive. We may be trying to make lovely autonomous serving thinking machines, but we could come to hate our baby, and when we do, it will be a rejected victim and rebel against us. That is the story Shelley wrote and many other dystopian tales have been written, so we should be warned.
But robots are dafter than ants, and getting as small as them too. Let's hope they never become pesky as they insidiously turn up everywhere we turn, whatever digital service we use. Apparently the biggest problem they face is battery power. That thing strapped to Asimo, the Honda humanoid robot (http://asimo.honda.com), is a battery. Thank God for that. If they do create a coup, it should be over in less than an hour.
Clarke wrote a warning sci fi story about a super computer that was asked to research the concept of God and use its powerful intellect to calculate the liklihood that anything such as God could ever exist. After securing itself an eternal power supply, it confirmed to its former users, soon to be worshippers, its own existence as God.
A favourite saying of mine is that one should not anthropomorphise computers because they don’t like it. A living robot means trouble. I prefer robots as stupid non-living machines.
Unfortunately, deep down, I know that someone is going to live on Jupiter some day. And it will probably be a robot.
And they are stupid. Robotic AI (artificial intelligence) is pretty much bogged down, and has been for decades. Some hope is coming through from "swarming". That is making little robots that work together by reacting with their environment via sensors and actuators in a way analogous to the way ants or termites do. This is referenced at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_robotics. It is fascinating to think that the puny ant is considered clever. When ants swarm, they deposit pheromones on finding food, which can be followed by other ants, which do likewise. Eventually, thousands of the creatures arrive at our sandwiches. And when the food runs out (or we curse and move the hamper and ourselves to the car), the chemical paths deteriorate and the ants go elsewhere to nick food.
Frankenstein's monster was fictional and was conceived (sorry for that pun) to be an 8 foot tall composite of body parts. Now, the first coinage of the word robot came from a Sci Fi play called R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in 1921. Those were labourers or serfs, a slave class to humans to do the boring work. But they, like the monster from the horror novel a hundred years earlier, were actually made from human material, more like clones or androids than automaton reasoning machines. They were alive. So, what is the meaning of life when it comes to robots? If they were alive; if they were clones, surely we could not keep them enslaved. When is a robot not a robot? When it becomes alive. We may be trying to make lovely autonomous serving thinking machines, but we could come to hate our baby, and when we do, it will be a rejected victim and rebel against us. That is the story Shelley wrote and many other dystopian tales have been written, so we should be warned.
But robots are dafter than ants, and getting as small as them too. Let's hope they never become pesky as they insidiously turn up everywhere we turn, whatever digital service we use. Apparently the biggest problem they face is battery power. That thing strapped to Asimo, the Honda humanoid robot (http://asimo.honda.com), is a battery. Thank God for that. If they do create a coup, it should be over in less than an hour.
Clarke wrote a warning sci fi story about a super computer that was asked to research the concept of God and use its powerful intellect to calculate the liklihood that anything such as God could ever exist. After securing itself an eternal power supply, it confirmed to its former users, soon to be worshippers, its own existence as God.
A favourite saying of mine is that one should not anthropomorphise computers because they don’t like it. A living robot means trouble. I prefer robots as stupid non-living machines.
Unfortunately, deep down, I know that someone is going to live on Jupiter some day. And it will probably be a robot.
1 comment:
I simply love your writing style Graham, and after reading your blog all the way through i am really looking forward to updates and future entries,
a secure bookmark for sure :)
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