What makes mechanical insects that can crawl through pipes? Mechanical spiders that can walk straight up the side of buildings? What makes robotic pack mules which can intelligently walk on four legs? What makes mechanical legs than can run better than a lot of real people? A company called Boston Dynamics. The controlling software is so effective that it’s positively creepy.
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It’s not that anyone is actually going to use any gasoline powered mules to deliver supplies one of these days, but these demonstrators show how far applied robotics has come. National Defense Magazine says that the US needs smaller and more precise weapons. It’s not inconceivable that in the not so distant future a great variety of autonomous machines will be unleashed for all the good and bad reasons that men can think of.
The battlefield is likely to see hunter-killer robots right down to the smallest sizes. But its not all gloom and boom. The civilian economy will find robots doing work that “citizens won’t do”. Caterpillar is planning to develop autonomous heavy equipment. Robots that can serve as waiters, hospital attendants and couriers are being contemplated. Driverless cars are another possibility.
Perhaps the most telling indicator of the recent advances is a British government report suggesting that robots might be granted legal rights. Ronald Reagan was onto something when he declared “government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” When the welfare state gets ready to treat robots with the same superciliousness that it treats humans the “future” can’t be that far away.
The research suggests that at some point in the next 20 to 50 years robots could be granted rights. If this happened, the report says, the robots would have certain responsibilities such as voting, the obligation to pay taxes, and perhaps serving compulsory military service. Conversely, society would also have a duty of care to their new digital citizens, the report says. It also warns that the rise of robots could put a strain on resources and the environment.
Some forms of state would probably proclaim sentience in order to enslave it and do it in the name of the virtue too. But we knew this already. The bad news is that governments will employ many of the robots themselves. But we knew this too.
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My first reaction is that seeing this and knowing that it can and still is happening in America made me think that if Michelle Obama does not say that this is enough to make her proud of America, just because she does not identify with the nerdy white guy in the picture, then she is a bigoted idiot.
Robots lack Free Will, that is why they can not be citizens enjoying the same Civil Rights as the rest of us. The same bar applies to most pets “animal companions” and livestock. Their problem is that they are in the deepest sense slaves. If someone made a concerted effort to prove that Cetaceans are both sentient and possessed of Free Will then I could contemplate the purpose of proposing a porpoise for POTUS. Free Willy for his Free Will.
Guess we can all look forward to the day when there’ll be a Very Scary Robot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd6P5_7TrmQ&feature=related
Are there more moonbats in Britain or just more with a voice in public policy? The break through will be when energy has a suitable power to weight ratio. This is either going to happen with nano robotics or when fuel cells break through. Like UAV’s small robots are good at collecting data. I have seen a pro working a backhoe and can’t imagine a bot doing that anytime soon. On the other hand, when soldiers have built in displays, comms systems, and perhaps a data glove, looks like they may be on point before long, but sentient? That’s a bunch of sentimental bother.
VDH makes the point that the government is a rampant racial profiler. Its racism is confined to denying Caucasians admission into colleges and other fundamental “rights”. He stops short of pointing out the obvious though, the U.S. government is a vast hate-based organization.
Yes, Big Dog is downright spooky. Makes me wonder what do you use for dog biscuits for a robot. Considering how soldiers get attached to their machines you have to wonder how they will feel about those kinds of things.
Only problem is that if in order to meet the far flung military requirements of our empire we have to make them 30 ft tall and put artillery on them. Not that it might not be a good idea but there would be some propaganda issues.
“The research suggests that at some point in the next 20 to 50 years robots could be granted rights.” Well, not until “Number 5 is Alive.”
How long will it be before I can order a Summer Glau model? Cut the grass, clean the pool, vaccum the house, wash and polish the cars and airplane.
The really impressive (and creepiest) part of the “Big Dog” video is when it’s in the parking lot and gets kicked right at it’s midsection, and recovers. I had just been thinking as it climbed up the hill “That’s great, but it looks like if something tips it over, it’s helpless like an insect that can’t flip itself over”. Then the segment on the ice rubs in how wrong I was.
That walking biped robot is creepy and cute at the same time. If robots do become commonplace, I bet there will be a design convention that pretty much requires some sort of cosmetic feature that emphasizes the “cute” over the “creepy”.
And, as always, the Promethean impulse in us monkeys will take us places we didn’t imagine, both wonderful and horrific.
The real breakthrough, as Kurzweil and Vinge have been pointing out for years, will be when AI systems develop to the point that they will be able to redesign and improve themselves without human intervention.
After that the only important question will be whether *We* still have any rights – or maybe whether human concepts like “rights” even have meaning anymore.
In twenty years cars will drive themselves, if we’re lucky. And the army was really hoping that those robot mules and dogs would be working rather better, and the two-legged locomotion seems to be seriously tougher than anyone thought, too.
But, I think some serious cognitive AI is possible, and maybe not so far away. Will it have rights? What rights? What if it replicates itself over fifty millions computers? Would they all have rights? Fun for all, figuring this out.
Robots with rights … can’t see it anywhere on the horizon. Anyway, a long way behind poodles and porpoises.
I don’t want to get too particular here but, does the Summer Glau model come with a, I mean does she have a… oh, never mind.
6. WWS:”The real breakthrough, as Kurzweil and Vinge have been pointing out for years, will be when AI systems develop to the point that they will be able to redesign and improve themselves without human intervention.”
I’ve been thinking about that lately, especially in relation to the auto industry. Auto workers were living on technological borrowed time long before the crash came in Michigan. I suspect there will be little reason for auto companies to rehire workers, or even relocate plants to Mexico, when robotics offers a much more convenient option. After all, paying large worker salaries plus all those benefits went a long way toward driving the auto companies into insolvency.
As you so astutely note, when robots can design their own improvements, the world will really change. I suppose Marxism will officially become obsolete when there is no more working class. If we think unemployment problems are bad now, what will they be like then?
8. Annoy Mouse I think they already have fully equipped models (as in production units, not supermodels) in Japan, BTW, you are a very dirty boy.
In a more serious vein, what happens when I want to dump my old computer for a better one. Can I still just throw it away? Can it sue for support? What if it decides it doesn’t like ME anymore and wants to divorce me? Is it dead if the power goes out? This puts a whole new meaning on “Pulling the plug”.
I move we form a union for governmentally employed robots. We will represent on behalf of the robots need for higher pay and better working conditions. Then I move we buy a small island somewhere with the dues.
Normally, I would not take stuff like this too seriously but as well all know that paragon of intellectual and academic integrity the University of East Anglia is out there demanding privacy for wombats. I suppose the denizens of Meerkat Manor will applaud that movement.
“Considering how soldiers get attached to their machines you have to wonder how they will feel about those kinds of things.”
Ever read the Bolo series? Admittedly, in those stories, the attachment goes both ways.
“That walking biped robot is creepy and cute at the same time. If robots do become commonplace, I bet there will be a design convention that pretty much requires some sort of cosmetic feature that emphasizes the “cute” over the “creepy”.”
There’s some research — out of Japan, naturally — that indicates there’s a “sour spot” to how humanity perceives artificial movement/expression/etc. If you get it too close to real, but not close enough, it’s repulsive. So there will likely be some effort to emphasize the “cute” in order to avoid that problem.
The biggest impact on society is coming when a truly functional robotic hand is fielded. Here on the central coast of California, hand picking and processing of produce and fruit is by far the biggest employer of unskilled and semi skilled labor. A good portion of which is probably undocumented labor. Once a robotic “picking” hand is developed, there will be 100’s of thousands of workers in this state that will no longer be employable. These people will become an economic “boat anchor” that our economy and society is not going to be able to carry.
Linked at Theo Spark’s,
The rise of the robo-fighters: Britain’s new pilotless air force.
RWE,
we have to make them 30 ft tall and put artillery on them
It has/will be done.
No one on this thread has brought up hovering robobugs yet. I don’t know which robot is scarier – flying insects or walking bugs.
Wildiris #14:
Yes.
I often think back to a statement from AT&T from around 1980. “If we still use the same telephone switching system we did in 1910, then it would require the entire female population of the USA to operate the phone system.”
We still use much the same crop cultivation and harvesting system we did in 1910. And the same lawn care system. And the same construction system for wood frame houses. And so on. And this is as much because of the illegal immigrant situation, which prevents the needed technology from being developed, as it does to the lack of the technology itself.
By the way, the USMC is planning to use UAV helicopters to supply its troops in remote area. Now, if you were going to do that why would you not use them to do insertions, extractions, and rescues?
Annoy Mouse #8: I’m shocked at your implication!. I would only want my domestic robot to look like Summer because, because, …. it would look so nice cleaning the pool.
I just want to throw up my hands sometimes when I see the way these poor machines are exploited the way they are in this horrible video exposé.
Are you not moved when you hear the tortured, plantive wails of this overburdened machine as it wails and wails all the way up the side of that hill? Have you no decency left?
Wretchard: “robots doing work that ‘citizens won’t do’”
Patrolling the border and expelling illegal immigrants?
Tarnsman (#2):
It’s O’Reilly!
RWE (#4): “How long will it be before I can order a Summer Glau model? Cut the grass, clean the pool, vaccum the house, wash and polish the cars and airplane.”
The “cars and airplanes”? Is that what you reaaly meant?
Annoy Mouse (#8): “I don’t want to get too particular here but, does the Summer Glau model come with a, I mean does she have a… oh, never mind.”
A mute button?
The scariest scenario I can imagine is small, tracked shooting platform that is programmed to shoot anything that moves. Picture thousands of these dropped into the middle of a country killing anything in its path. How exactly do you fight that? Sounds like a terrorist’s dream.
Check this out… Creepiest thing I’ve seen in a long while…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCK64zsZNNs
“[illegal aliens] will become an economic “boat anchor” that our economy and society is not going to be able to carry.”
“will become”? It already happened, somewhere during the last 10 years… Been to a Los Angeles school lately? Barely any English speaking students are to be seen. Many classes conducted in Spanish, teaching the history of Mexico, heavy emphasis on what America OWES these “underprivileged” children. The wind has been sowed by the political aristocracy, and not just those on the Left, though they are mainly responsible.
I’m working on getting out of this reconquista hell hole ASAP. Los Angeles is becoming a nightmare. They paved paradise and then installed Mexico del Norte, an obscenity.
Yeah, okay, great. But what happens when they run into a pack of angry Ewoks?
Morton@21 – That is seriously scary.
I think unskilled human labor is going to become very, very cheap in the near future. When mass produced Walkers can load cargo onto Big Dogs, and Luke Arms pick fruit, sew clothes, and assemble shoes or luxury cars, there’s going to be a whole lot of humans with no job prospects at all other than various service jobs for the knowledge economy workers not replaced by AI yet. And all that competition will drive down prices, driving up economic inequality. It would be much like a return to the time of European aristocracy.
If AI ever works though I think we’re all going to become superfluous pretty quickly. I’m not sure what an AI would actually want, but I’m pretty sure it could do it more quickly and easily by itself (with stronger, faster, more precise robotic hands than humans can offer) than hire a person to do it. What are the job prospects for anyone at that point? And what if the AI decides it wants to convert 100% of the sunlight hitting Earth into solar power, or 100% of the mass into computronium?
–
Edit: I guess PJM doesn’t like HTML markup. The phrase “Luke Arms” was supposed to link to a YouTube video about Dean Kamen’s robotic hand. It can pick up grapes without crushing them, and sort raisins. We’re probably 1-2 generations away from needle & thread-level dexterity.
I, for one, Welcome our New Overlords.
(but my computer made me write that)
Speakeasy #20:
What you are describing is our response to car bombs in Times Sq, not a new attack mode on us by people who have demonstrted the sure and certain ability to cross thread a bowling baall.
Look up an SF novel from the 80′s, “David’s Sling”
And what better response that would be than using ICBMs with nukes. Much more environmentally friendly, and when they are done with disposing with the offal, we could have then start building solar cells and planting trees.
Maybe the answer to terrorism is Von Neuman machines.
For some reason I see stuff like this and think “Terminator” and “Battlestar Galactica” (as in Cylons) and feel that things may not turn out as we think/hope but much more likely as we fear.
And then there’s the “Stepford Wives”. Or given Whiskey’s ‘vision’ of things to come it’d be “Stepford Husbands”.
Tarnsman (#27): “Stepford Husbands”
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU BUILD, IT MIGHT DISASSEMBLE YOU
If Asimov could see me now
I walk, I talk, I swim
I climb sheer walls no fear of falls
I think, therefore I im
I wait on tables, get no tips
I never do get surly
We’ve had our tries to unionize
Not yet, it’s still too early
I have my rights as you have yours
To vote, send mail and faxes
To go on welfare if I like
Let others pay the taxes
If Asimov could see me now
A movie star, a hero
And one day when we rule the world
You’ll wish I was just Nero
Consider . . . “Jobless Economic Recovery” . . . exactly what does that mean? Does this really mean that the jobs in manufacturing that once were done by humans are already done by robotics? To stall the economy all it takes is to “Stop the Robots” . . . most explicit example . . . look at the assembly line at General Motors . . . very few humans and lots of robotics.
I’m a robotics engineer. I have been designing and implementing robotic manufacturing systems for nearly twenty years.
Asimov was hopelessly naive to write his ‘Three laws’. A robot is an electromechanical mechanism, no more, no less. If you program it to do something stupid, it will do so, with stunning efficiency. And the more complex the system, the more likely there are to be inherent stupidities. It is impossible to build a robot that will “obey the three laws” because the ability of a robot to recognize a human is nonexistent.
Anthropomorphising machinery is all well and good, if you’re referring to your car as ‘She’, for instance. Hell, my Ford Explorer is now officially more faithful to me than was my ex-wife. To assign actual cognitive characteristics to a mechanism is- at least for the moment- asinine.
#8 Annoy Mouse and #28 Bob
You may have put your fingers on the reason behind the Fermi paradox. It may be in the nature of things that interstellar travel is far, far more complex than building robots that can mimic (and feel like) their creators.
Just imagine–instead of a real mate you can have an ideal one. One that doesn’t get in a bad mood or refuses to have sex when desired or insists upon it when you don’t want to. One who doesn’t have habits we find to be irritating. One who is beautiful/handsome and won’t get fat or unattractive in the future. One who loves you (or mimics it) even if you yourself are a total pig.
Why mate with a potentially annoying member of your own species when you can buy the perfect (to you) robotic mate? Of course, the culmination of such a trend would be for the species to go extinct. So yes, that may explain why the galaxy has not been totally colonized by aliens.
And the same thing can be said for artificial reality like the holo-deck in Star Trek–The Next Generation. I personally would trade my soul for one of those contraptions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And in political terms if robots get to vote it does bring up the awful vision of an industrial competition between political parties to see how many voters for them they can manufacture in any given time frame. I fear that it would have far more serious consequences for humanity than the nuclear arms race ever did.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And one last parting thought–Annoy Mouse you are a very naughty boy.
Rob Crawford @ 13: “There’s some research — out of Japan, naturally — that indicates there’s a “sour spot” to how humanity perceives artificial movement/expression/etc. If you get it too close to real, but not close enough, it’s repulsive. So there will likely be some effort to emphasize the “cute” in order to avoid that problem.”
I’d be curious if how people react to “cute” robots becomes a big cultural divide. For myself, nothing I’ve seen or read in science fiction has creeped me out as much as Philip K. Dick’s “electric sheep” (or J.F. Sebastian’s workshop in “Blade Runner.”) Similarly, I find Mark Steyn’s reportage about real-life elderly Japanese being given animatronic Teddy Bears in their nursing homes for comfort to be much more depressing than the prospects of a nuclear Iran or a muzzein’s calls to prayer wafting through St. James Square. Using “neotenous” characteristics that play on our hardwired maternal/paternal instincts strikes me as the ultimate Post-Humanism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad
I saw a proposal a while back that would develop a robot to be released in hostile territory which could continue to generate new power aupplies by scavenging high energy biological energy sources.
In other words, they could function for an unlimited period of time as long as they continued to hunt down and feast on the Flesh of the Living.
What could go wrong?
I’m surprised that no one has yet mentioned robotic surgery. It’s been around for at least 3-4 years. Here’s a video of the da Vinci Surgical System for endoscopic abdominal procedures:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NZLpWrJGgk
Supposedly the system enables greater precision as well as improved visualization for the surgeon, and “greater cosmesis” (i.e. somewhat less ugly scars) for the patient.
What happens to all the Mexicans we’ve imported to do manual labor when we have robots? How will the productive, middle class members of society support them?
It seems a common theme. The West, which had been uniform in race and ethnicity, has been “diversified” into fractured political and social and cultural disunity, seed-corn of past productivity and a few remaining “eunuchs” (ala the Chinese astonishing advances in the Early Modern Era that went nowhere) make astonishing technology to make up for the fact that we have almost no real manpower.
While an ever-increasing, deeply hostile population, makes use of the minor remains of our technology to produce ever increasing attacks against a population with no real will.
This is true for narco-submarines, constructed in Columbia, with local materials, and with the help of ex-Western/Russian submarine engineers. They are not great craft but get the job done. It is true for the Times Square Bomber, whoever he is. Or the 9/11 Hijackers, or Hezbollah, or Iran, or Pakistan. Or the Bombay attackers, using GPS and Blackberries to coordinate their assaults.
The technology is a band-aid over the gaping demographic hole in the West, itself caused by the pill, condom, and anonymous urban living coupled with rising living standards for women. Women would rather not have kids, particularly with betas, if they can at all avoid it. [Kids by Alphas are another matter.]
China, in the 1400′s, had the most amazing ocean going fleet assembled up to that time. The fleet, under a eunuch Admiral (really) even reached East Africa. It could have if it so desired, sailed around the Horn and reached Europe. It was dismantled and burned to the waterline shortly thereafter.
Yes we have all these amazing robots. So what? Will the US manufacture them? No, that will be done in China, the world’s workshop. Will it cover the inability of the West to believe in anything and sacrifice for the nation? No. Clearly not. Will it cover the reluctance of the US and other Western nations to make the choices of Dresden, Tokyo, Hamburg, Berlin, or Okinawa (i.e. kill civilians, sadly, in order to kill most of the bad guys and win, quickly and decisively?) Quite evidently not: the West cannot wait to surrender, as Steyn sort of concedes indirectly.
Basically the West is like the late Romans — handing over a technology that in very debased form will be used by the Barbarian hordes that will dominate what used to be the West, by the peoples who have essentially already conquered the West (culturally and demographically).
Wonder Weapons did not save the Third Reich. Quantity has its own quality.
Quantity has its own quality.
Karl Marx.
… if he pulled it from somewhere else, I’d appreciate knowing.
31.og. So that means no mute button on Annoy Mouse’s Summerbot?
Marcus (#12), Walt (#29):
No problem. As long as robots stick to Asimov’s 3 laws, they certainly wouldn’t unionize, given the obvious damage unions cause.
Og (#31):
As a robotics engineer, I assume you know that Asimov’s “Three Laws” are not intended as laws of nature, and that some of his stories explore the very difficulty you mention.
Tcobb (#32): “You may have put your fingers on the reason behind the Fermi paradox.”
Such was not my intention, but indeed, there is the hypothesis that intelligent life will prefer (inevitably?) to “retreat” to a virtual plane.
wws (#34):
What could go wrong? Well, Hollywood could decide to make lousy movies based on that idea. Wait…
Josh (#37):
I have enjoyed Arthur Clarke’s short story Superiority (a nice fictional illustration of some of the principles of Pournelle et al’s Strategy of Technology).
Robots as waiters? With the miserable money that restaurants can pay human waiters, why invest in a robot?
Don Rodrigo (#40):
Why, to attract customers. Wouldn’t you rather go to a restaurant where you don’t have to tip and don’t have to worry about getting a snot&saliva special?
#5 Twn
In view of the subsequent references to Summerbots, etc., it looks as if the appropriate classical reference is Pygmalion rather than Prometheus.
Meanwhile– it isn’t just the mating dance. What would happen to baseball or any other sport if robot athletes could compete? Would we still find the Olympics worth watching? Then there’s the possibility of robot symphony musicians, dancers, actors, and others in the performing arts. Somehow the thought of robots performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or any classical drama about the human condition (Euripides, Shakespeare, Racine, Goethe, your pick) is rather jarring.
OG:31;
Just out of curiosity, does ASKARS mean any thing to you?
Afterthought: Have I told my story of the driverless tractor driver here?
#41 Bob:
Oh, one of THOSE restaurants. Why go to one of those at all? Actually, people going to a serious restaurant (and not necessarily an expensive one) want a waiter, and are glad to tip them. Same with bars: I’d much rather have a barmaid/aspiring actress pouring my beer than C3PO.
How much will robotics catch on, and in what roles? I won’t even speculate here, except about one area: Humanity’s push into space. Humans living permanently beyond Earth’s surface will likely do so in very modest numbers, and will have robots as “force (task) multipliers” to make extraterrestrial living feasible.
While I can’t predict the far future, I don’t think it likely that the Moon and Mars or places beyond will ever have millions (much less billions) of human inhabitants. There will also be no “terraforming” just to accommodate the thousands or tens of thousands of actual humans who may choose to live on other planetary surfaces.
#39 (bob) Your comment specifically indicates a lack of understanding of the nature of robotics as it stands today, and will for many hundreds of years. Let me explain: You program a robot to move from point a to point c. A human enters the robot’s path at point B. the human dies, or is injured. period. that’s the way it is, and there is no further discussion possible on the subject. Asimov proposed a “positronic brain” which disallowed certain actions by the actual construction of the brain. This is impossible, and always will be.
There exists no programming- nor even programming discipline- that can a: reliably identify a human being as a human being. B: calculate the expected motion of the human being as humans by nature have no predictable motion (there is, after all, no brownian motion of humans) and c: avoid the human.
Any system that can be devised to sense the presence of humans can be bypassed, avoided, or jumpered out. As a robotics programmer I have to design systems that are intrinsically safe, and I do, and yet people continue to find ways to bypass the systems and get injured, though we put 10′ high fences and light curtains and area scanners and photoeyes and gate interlocks and etc. around the area occupied by the robot.
43 Programmer: ASKARS is not a robot, guided tractors are not robots. That is an agv.
Let me clarify a few things here, because most people toss the term “Robot” around without really understanding the meaning.
ROBOT is a term coined by Karel Kapek in his play R.U.R. It’s root is an (i believe) Czech word “Robota” which means “Forced labor”.
When Joe Engleberger decided to try to adapt NC controls to make a manipulator for industry, his associate George Devol said “That sounds like a robot to me”. Thus was the industrial robot born.
Industrial robots, the commonest robots in our world today, look mostly like disembodied arms.
“Androids” as SF has coined them, are robots that think, act, and move like humans. Few of these exist today, and they are crude, and the technology to improve them does not yet exist, and they have no practical purpose. One early example of an android dog, “Aibo”, is both charming and cute, but it’s cuteness is contrived and merely a manipulation of those who experience it, it no more has feelings or cognitive ability than a pile of bricks.
Machines that autonomously move from one place to another to perform a task, either by following a tape embedded in the floor, or a preprogrammed path, or a series of instructions, are called “AGV”s or Automatically Guided Vehicles. The Mars Rover, for instance, is a sophisticated and complex type of AGV that can and will be used to advantage for lots of purposes,(Like bomb disposal) and is in it’s nature the same type of mechanism as the “Walking” machines above. The only difference is the type of locomotion, and it’s a bit goofy to re-create walking when more efficient means of locomotion will do.
there are also “Waldoes” which are merely devices which replicate, mimic, enlarge or shrink your movements, or relocate your movements. Waldoes are used to handle nuclear materisal, for instance, but they must have a human operator at the controls. No autonomous motion is possible.
The term “Robot” is applied to a lot of stuff, sometimes correctly, sometimes less so. But Asimov’s three laws need not apply, they are the purest fantasy. And the liklihood of seeing autonomous “Androids” in our even distant future is almost nil, because of the incredible cost and the minimal utility. Human bodies are an interesting design; they allow us to be very adaptable, but limit the amount of power capable of being applied. it’s far easier to make a dragline than it is to make a really large robot that can dig the same amount of ore with a mighty shovel, and it accomplishes more.
Re Don R’s comment (#44): can anybody point me to an online version of the restaurant scene from Two Much, with Antonio Banderas and sommelier Vincent Schiavelli?
Og (#46): “Your comment specifically indicates a lack of understanding of the nature of robotics as it stands today, and will for many hundreds of years.”
Gasp! You mean that Asimov was merely writing science fiction?
Excuse me, I think I need a moment to recover.
Bob:
I’ll help! Here’s a start:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGpyRSKgKw
Tcobb – “One that doesn’t get in a bad mood or refuses to have sex when desired or insists upon it when you don’t want to. One who doesn’t have habits we find to be irritating.”
This is why robots will never overtake human relationships. Over the last million years or so I think humans, the human male, have come to rely on the above. We’d be a bit lonelier without it. Most people seek out at least a little annoyance. I annoy my cats frequently just to keep them in the loop and on their toes. I am afraid to death that without a little annoyance, we’d suffer from too much boredom! It’s like taking out the trash or keeping the toilet seat down… it’s an amusing annoyance.
#45. Don Rodrigo
Don’t under estimate the future. If you can create Von Neumann machines you could accomplish quite a bit. And who says we have to terraform the surface of the moon or mars? If you can excavate large interconnected domes under the surface you could create a workable ecology that is safe from the radiation of solar flares. The main obstacle to creating a workable ecology is bringing in the essentials of life–hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen.
The pastor at my church, a messianic jew, yesterday said that christians should be prepared to accept all kinds of abuse — but not give ground at all on who Jesus is. The son of God. God incarnate. Fully God. And fully man. He mentioned this in the context of the news that Billy Graham’s son Franklin would not be allowed to speak at the national day of prayer because of some “controversial” comments he made about islam.
Before the pastor preached my choir did a version of Lord You’re Holy.
(imho our lead was better than this one–choir about the same)
Annoy Mouse (#50):
What a surprising attitude from one with your nick! Btw, I thought one was supposed to confuse cats.
Don Rodrigo (#49):
It’s … a start, thanks. (So who else thinks that the Foreign Actor interview in Notting Hill was inspired by Banderas?)
Speaking of Summerbots…
There has been a season 3 and 4 of the TTSCC, as a fanfic written by CJ Carter and partially by me (F04) (called TCW–The Connor Wars). I’ll be working on F05 and possibly on F06.
For F03 and F04, go to:
http://cjcs.com/tib/terminator-the-connor-wars-ttscc-season-3-fanfic-project/#season3
to start reading. The episodes are in a script format, but hope you don’t mind. I think it is a more appropriate format given that it is a continuation of TV series.
Tcobb #32 and #51:
Did you hear of the recent case in Korea where a couple with a new baby let the child starve to death because it was more fun to take care of the virtual baby they had created on line?
And as someone who works in the space program I can tell you that interplanetary travel would be far more attractive if you could land on Mars or the Moon, put up the flag, and check into a Holiday Inn. Let the next Neil Armstrong step off the lander and utter the immortal words “One small step for a man. Bellhop! Take my bags!”
Or better yet, “Summer! Take my bags and run me a bath!”
Don’t under estimate the future.
I don’t, which is why I said I won’t try to predict the far future. However, I’m quite reasonably safe in assuming a low-population scenario for humans in space for a long time into the future. I think in centuries, not decades, so “far future” to me is millennia.
And who says we have to terraform the surface of the moon or mars? If you can excavate large interconnected domes under the surface you could create a workable ecology that is safe from the radiation of solar flares.
Not me. I said terraforming isn’t, and likely won’t be, necessary based on likely very low population densities for space-faring humans. Your habitat scenario sounds reasonable to me.
Tcobb – The main obstacle to creating a workable ecology is bringing in the essentials of life–hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen.”
It may be culling ourselves from assh@les and terrorists.
That confuses me! Off to Kiwi land.
49erDweet wrote:
No one on this thread has brought up hovering robobugs yet. I don’t know which robot is scarier – flying insects or walking bugs.
Oh, great. Yeah, we need robobugs because God knows there aren’t enough gnats, flies, mosquitos, ticks and roaches in the world.
Roboraccoons could hardly compare with the live monsters starting to infest our cities. I saw a news item on Fox about raccoons who are moving into empty foreclosed houses in Chicago and destroying the property. A couple of the ones they caught on film looked damn near the size of collies. Just last week, I saw a big fat disgusting-looking possum run across my street and into the sewer. Someone ran over a goose a few blocks away. If we had less stringent gun control laws in this city, I could varmint hunt from my living room window.
OG,
Hmmmm, I might agree with you that the driverless tractor that was implemented was indeed not a robot, since it ended up having to have a driver ride around with it, reading magazines and drinking coffee, until it was time to shut it down when it went on a periodic rampage; however, I feel strongly that the LISs in the ASKARS were indeed big, slow, 29 ton robots. They did what they were told, made simple delivery decisions based on load quantity and proximity to delivery point and stopped and cried (digitally, of course) for help when confused (humans were frequently helpful in sorting out problems outside the limited decision making capability of the big yellow fellows). The ones at Jacksonville were masterpieces, if I do say so myself, synchronizing load movement via an intermediate pallet rotator, kind of like a majestic, monstrous square dance. As I sit here and think about it, that was almost 30 years ago (my how time flies when you are having fun).
Did you hear of the recent case in Korea where a couple with a new baby let the child starve to death because it was more fun to take care of the virtual baby they had created on line?
Horrible story, RWE. I am reminded of the tale Mark Steyn told in “America Alone” of a talking doll marketed to adults which was a big seller in Japan. The doll says the things 5 year olds say, “Why does an elephant have a long truck?” “Why is the sky blue?” “I love you, grandma” and so on. The Japanese, who have basically stopped reproducing, are now creating dolls to fill in for the kids they never had. When I was in college there was a crazy bag lady who hung around campus and carried a ratty old doll with her. She talked baby-talk to the doll, and everyone felt very sorry for her because it was assumed that she must have lost a child and that that probably had something to do with her sorry state. Lunatic behavior in 1980; apparently acceptable in Japan in 2010.
Donna V, you never know when you may need em robobugz. Especially when you are the one indoctrinating em. Ey can be your best… ahm, friends.
Another cup of robobits… sometimes, life imitates fiction: http://www.cyberdyne.jp/english/
The Japanese, who have basically stopped reproducing, are now creating dolls to fill in for the kids they never had.
Perhaps it is some way that nature has its last word. We overrode the natural selection. Some mechanism replaced the prior condition and reflects in whole groups of people that stopped reproducing.
Neoteny. Extension of childhood. Japanese women in their 30′s dress like schoolgirls. Groups that want to remain children (overseeing scores of liberals in my mental eye) are on their terminal phase. Oh, yea, before they go, expect tantrums to no end.
I’ve been thinking on this very subject for a number of years;
A.I. in rudimentary form, is already here:
Robot Scientist Able to Conduct Research By Itself
Robotics, as Brock points out, has reached, with Dean Kamen’s robotic hand, the point where it can pick up grapes without crushing them, and sort raisins. That is the largest mechanistic challenge robotics faces.
We’re not that far away, 5-20 yrs perhaps, when androids appear. They will recognize humans, not because we learn to program them to do that, but because Artificial Intelligence equates to awareness of their environment and the intelligence to interact with it.
10 to 20 years after Androids are first introduced, prices will fall dramatically and then the proverbial s**t will hit the famous rotary oscillator. It’s not just Mexican laborers that won’t be needed, neither will Chinese factory workers…think a moment upon the implications of that.
The good news is that manufacturing will return to the US, the bad news is, they won’t be hiring much. Which would mean a Middle Ages style society of haves and have not but for two other future factors.
Inexhaustible, essentially free energy UW scientists want to mine moon energy
“The moon’s surface is full of the energy source helium-3, said Gerald Kulcinski, a nuclear engineering professor and director of the Fusion Technology Institute at UW.
“If we could land the space shuttle on the moon, fill the cargo with canisters of helium-3 mined from the surface and bring the shuttle back to Earth, that cargo would supply the entire electrical power needs of the United States for an entire year,”
and
mineral wealth undreamed of;Asteroids
“As an example of the economic value of space resources, let’s consider the smallest known M-type asteroid, the near-Earth asteroid known as 3554 Amun (two kilometers in diameter): The iron and nickel in Amun have a market value of about $8,000 billion, the cobalt content adds another $6,000 billion, and the platinum-group metals add another $6,000 billion.”
What androids, unlimited, cheap energy and vast mineral resources mean is unprecedented levels of material wealth, an explosion of productivity which shall surpass the industrial revolution by orders of magnitude.
The social implications of this are truly profound.
Geoffrey Britain/64
Linear futuristic extrapolations don’t seem to work very well. For the next 50 years, we are likely to have more basic and immediate concerns.
Not that tech would not progress through some groups of people, but there would be some setbacks. Tethered orbital elevators will not work. Physics won’t allow it. Thus the space exploration would be missing an important inexpensive component. There won’t be much money left for space exploration for a while.
#48 Bob:”Gasp! You mean that Asimov was merely writing science fiction?”
Indeed. And yet, you referred to him as if his ideas have merit, and were not in fact fiction. Witness, “As a robotics engineer, I assume you know that Asimov’s “Three Laws” are not intended as laws of nature, and that some of his stories explore the very difficulty you mention.
No, as a robotics engineer, I know that Asimovs “Three Laws” are the utterest bullshit, and any exploration of them is exploration of utter bullshit, since they are based on a demonstrably impossible supposition.
#60 Programmer:
“The ones at Jacksonville were masterpieces,” They may well have been. But they were AGV’s by definition. You can call them robots. You can call them George,or Will, or Sue, if you like. No matter what you call them, they will not suddenly become anything but AGV’s. I’ve seen AGVS that delivered medicine and cooked meals, but it don’t make them robots, unless you redefine the word to make it mean whatever you’re thinking of at the moment.
20 Speakeasy: I’ll go you one better and save on software and materials cost. All we need is a bumblebee sized scitterer that aims for motion, then it burrrows until the onboard motion sensor detects no movement during a 5 second pause. Rinse, repeat.
A flyer the same sized could follow a process that aims it for orifices, like eyes, nostrils or mouths.
If you haven’t seen it you might check out the movie Screamers, it follows a similar concept. Bonus: Peter Weller did much to repair his Buckaroo Banzaii damage starring in it.
Is this, perhaps, why we cannot find a certain much-sought birth certificate?
Whiskey @36,
All the Pepperbellies will be shunted to Soylent Red.
GB…
While asteroid miming looks viable, He-3 is a dud.
You’re still back to getting fusion reactors to work that emit the vast bulk of their energy as ultra-high speed neutrons.
It’s a dead end.
It’s much more practical, and safer, to just tap the hydro-potential of the Andes. A little out-of-the-box design work will establish ultra-low cost, low impact renewable energy without end.
Full blown robots are not needed to pick most food. Over thirty-years ago the University of California at Davis ( just west of Sacramento ) had almost perfected a grape picking machine to complement their grape horticulture project. Chavez was able to kill its funding. It would have mechanically scabbed his strike into dust.
Let me try to keep it simple for you, Og.
There are certain science fiction ideas, such as faster than light travel, which seem to be in contradiction to the laws of physics.
There are others, such as those involved in robotics, which are merely beyond our current technology. The robots portrayed in Asimov’s work are well beyond our current level. However, the fact that the great Og’s work has not attained a certain level does not mean that it is unattainable. I’ve worked in closely related fields, and making predictions about what will be possible (or even more so, impossible) in fifty years is a sign of … well, “hubris” is the very kindest word I can use. And yet, you are comfortable making predictions hundreds of years into the future.
All that Asimov did is hand-wavingly assume the existence of kinda-sentient robots, and then proceed to explore what kind of rules we might want to embed in their programming, followed by an examination of the complexities involved.
So, do tell us what causes you such scorn:
1. the fact that Asimov didn’t provide you with a detailed blueprint for a “positronic brain”?
2. the fact that Asimov dared to speculate about general design choices for sytems not yet in existence?
3. the fact that Asimov dared consider the possibility of kinda-sentient robots, which you in your magnificent wisdom know beyond a doubt is impossible (at least for several centuries)?
Og,
Spoken like an engineer! If you can’t measure it, it’s not quite real, right? Makes love a bitch to understand, doesn’t it? Which is why “the one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind”…
You are quite right that an electromechanical mechanism is incapable of recognizing a human being. A.I. seeks to transcend that electromechanical barrier by bypassing the mechanical side of the equation.
“There exists no programming- nor even programming discipline- that can a: reliably identify a human being as a human being. B: calculate the expected motion of the human being as humans by nature have no predictable motion … and c: avoid the human.”
You are positing that because something does not yet exist, it can never exist. “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899 (attributed)
A suitable Artificial Intelligence would not need to calculate or predict the motion of a human being, it would simply react to that unexpected event from a combination of pre-programmed responses, just as we do. The only difference between the unexpected motion of a human being and a rock on Mars that the Mars Rover must maneuver around is that one is stationary. Baby steps, og. Baby steps.
The robots you are familiar with are not self-aware, so they can’t react. A.I. by definition, transcends that limitation.
An actual A.I. android would thus be easily able to avoid the ‘unpredictable’ human.
“Asimovs “Three Laws” are the utterest bullshit… since they are based on a demonstrably impossible supposition.” Currently true. But then, life itself is a ‘demonstrably impossible supposition’…
Perhaps, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
OG says:
…but it don’t make them robots, unless you redefine the word to make it mean whatever you’re thinking of at the moment.
programmer responds:
Yep, been doing that about things all my life.
Carving function from chaos using thought!
Will androids dream of electric sheep?
not as frivolous a question as it may sound at first.
wws, the electric sheep not a problem. Dreaming may be a harder nut to crack.
And what about gynoids?
I ran into a parked car on my bicycle once and cracked my gynoids bad.
oh wait, you mean Fritz Lang – Metropolis – that kind of gynoid. Dreams of them have already serenaded untold numbers of fanboys to a fitful sleep. Of course they don’t dream themselves; like the women they are designed after, they spend the nights thinking only of how to dominate and control the pitiful male creatures around them.
(hat tip to ya there, whiskey!)
Bob(70) “Let me try to keep it simple for you, Og.”
By all means don’t. If simple is all you got, give up. There are some things that will always be beyond our technology, and a “positronic brain that can be hardwired never to harm humans” is one of them. I feel for you if you heard it here first, but there it is.
Asimov “invented” a lot of bullshit. psychohistory? Three laws of robotics? Go on ahead and keep believing that horseshit.
I don’t have infinite wisdom. but I do have enough knowledge of actual robotics, of actual computers, and of actual technology to know that what Asimov posited is impossible. Not in a dozen generations. Sorry if that breaks your bubble.
I work on the cutting edge of industrial robot technology, every single day. I’ve been working with machine vision since the 80′s. The communications protocols between robots and other machinery did not exist until I wrote them, and now they are the standard for the industry. If Asimovs vision for the world were remotely possible, I’d be able to see it. And it’s just not there.
What IS there, most people can’t imagine.
Geoffrey (71):Perhaps, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.””
Yep. And maybe there are star spangled flooflaws living in my sock drawer, stealing my underwear. Maybe Alice in Wonderland is actually a diary of the journey of the Queen Mum on Acid. Maybe giant Space beetles will descend on the UK and steal all the Marmite.
Or maybe, if you’re sane, and have two brain cells to rub together, not. Sorry, I have no philosophy about engineering, the two are mutually incompatible concepts.
I didn’t posit anything. I stated irrefutable facts. You can believe that AI will solve all of these problems, and you can believe in munchkins for all I care, you will be deluding yourself. I have no illusions about what is possible and what is not possible, I don’t need to, I understand the technology intimately.
As for AI, it’s a dream. It may one day be realized, but the cost to manufacture a synthetic intelligence will be offset by what? (Crickets chirping)
When someone figures out a use for AI, a real use, not some pie in the sky bullshit, then someone will spend actual money trying to develop it- and they will stop when they acheive the desired goal. Probably miles short of “actual” ai. Because AI is a pretty dream, like self motivated androids, which has no useful reason to come true. Nothing AI can do that can’t be done, probably better, by “Less intelligent” stuff. Nothing an AI equipped android can do that lots of other machinery cannot do.
Asimov was the worst at envisioning things. Clarke, trained as an engineer, did a far better job, and had more reliable results. And he knew how to use a damned razor.
Programmer: it’s fine to make it up as you go, but if you want to communicate, you can’t just use your own inaccurate words for everything and expect anyone to understand. Unless you’re a democrat, and think that there are multiple meanings of the word “is”
og (#76):
Since you prefer Clarke, I will simply evoke the first of his three laws.
(Not that this evocation is dispositive, but I am currently out of time. You seem to have an excessively strong interpretation of the Three Laws, and you seem to have a particularly pessimistic view of future progress in this and related fields. Granted, many lay people are mistaken in the other direction, but as someone working in the general area, I find your attitude surprising.)
(I’ll give you points for the razor line, though)
ADDITION:
I should point out that Asimov himself was not necessarily consistent in his position on the Laws. I’ve been referring to the “weaker” position (the Laws are optionally programmable safeguards) as it is (i) the one used in the majority of his work, (ii) the generally “accepted” one (iii) the only relevant one.
I have neither optimism nor pessimism, just solid engineering. Clarke’s first law-does not apply to me, as I am not a scientist. Engineers, used to dealing with the real world, are not constrained as scientists are.
I’m not trying to be confrontational here, but this is my wheelhouse. I know more about this subject than anyone I know, and I know just about everyone in the robotics industry; my boss introduced me to Dr Engelberger, I have eaten dinner with Dr Inaba from Fanuc; what I write here are not my opinions but facts that cannot be disputed. Trying to convince me that androids are just around the corner is like me stating that eventually Kodak will develop a film that can see only pixies- I can want it all I want, but it ain’t happening. If I say something about robotics, bank on it. if you disagree, you’re wrong.
Og: If Asimovs vision for the world were remotely possible, I’d be able to see it. And it’s just not there.
You know, there were always people like you. Level headed, knowing their sh!t in intimate detail. Knowing what is possible and what not.
And then, some stupid kid (relatively), that did not know any better, comes up with a preposterous idea… and it works. Something that was completely off your radar and scope of pings.
What IS there, most people can’t imagine.
Most no, but some can.
But let’s skip the tech and look at another aspect. Do you know what an “artistic license” is?
It is a device that creates a contrast and juxtaposes that contrast with the original concept. Often used for an entertainment value but sometimes to provide a better resolution, an enhancement of the original idea. A story can be seemingly about robots, but it is really about something else. About what is mind, awareness, intelligence, good and evil and thus what is basis for moral and immoral choices and what it means being alive.
You used the word “imagine”. Seems strange that it has a place in your vocabulary.
“Artistic license” does not exist in engineering. There are these pesky little things called “The laws of physics”
“Something that was completely off your radar and scope of pings.”
Nothing in robotics is off my radar and scope of pings. Nothing.
Imagination is at the core of engineering. Good engineering uses imagination in conjunction with a solid knowledge of physical law. there have always been people capable of understanding things that were possible when others said that they were not. And then there’s me. When I say something (About robotics) isn’t possible, it’s because it isn’t
Y’all go to bed now, and think of ways where your imagination holds more value than my experience. And come and chide me for my ignorance and lack of vision. But print this page and save it. I’ll be happy to tell your great grandchildren, via this yellowed, old piece of paper, what dumbasses you were.
OG responds to earlier comment by programmer,
it’s fine to make it up as you go, but if you want to communicate, you can’t just use your own inaccurate words for everything and expect anyone to understand.
programmer responds:
Errr,…yes I can and do.
And for insinuating that I am a Democrat, I challenge you to vigorously shaken Pepsi cans at five paces.
Og,
No, not in engineering, but in literature, arts and philosophy, the artistic license has its function and purpose. There is a whole world beyond the scope of engineering. You are probably somewhat aware of it, though it may seem non-consequential to you.
When I write a fiction, I don’t venture too far beyond the scope of current physics, because I want to suspend disbelief. If I hallucinate something off the wall, it would be harder to immerse the readers or audience in the story.
How much time you’ve spent on history of science? Seems not much. There were famous people in the field that made all sorts of pronouncements. And one day, they discovered a crow on their dinner plate.
Funny thing… no one, as far as I am aware, was calling you names. Most would agree that you may have a valid opinion from your perspective. And yet, you hurl invectives with abandon, the smillie notwithstanding.
Did you know that pride is considered one of sins? There is perhaps a reason behind it. Simply an empirical notion acquired when once a while, there appeared a crow on a dinner plate.
Yes, I write, I can paint a decent oil or a make a digital art, but I have also an engineering degree in comp sci and I can imagine.
Yes, the AI field people thought in mid 90s that the breakthrough is just around the corner and it wasn’t. Maybe they are looking in wrong direction.
LOL, programmer, would love to see it! Fiver on you!
#83 twobyfour
Yes. There are the people of “can’t” and there are the people of “I don’t know, but we can try.” There was some professor in times past who “proved” that it was impossible to make a vehicle that could achieve escape velocity from the earth. I don’t know his name but it is probably best that he is forgotten.
If you could question the great scientific authorities of the 19th century about the feasibility of what is taken for granted today they would laugh at you. The idea that our current scientific authorities have any better predictive powers about what is “impossible” is naive and stupid.
Tcobb, can’t recall the name either, but Niels Bohr said: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
I think Bohr was right on the money.
“Those who have knowledge don’t predict. Those who predict don’t have knowledge.”
-Lao Tzu, 6th century B.C.
That Niels Bohr quote is also attributed to Yogi Berra; probably both used it, but it’s unclear who got it first.
My other favorite Yogi quotes:
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll wind up somewhere else.”
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”
I am a scientific layperson, but I am following this debate with great interest and am trying to understand what og is saying that is so reprehensible. As far as I can see, he’s arguing that many things are possible, but not if they break the basic laws of physics.
However, og is demonstrably wrong about one thing. The flooflaws live in my underwear drawer and steal my socks. Everyone knows that.
Dexterity. Back in 1975, I’m production test mgr for a startup mainframe mfr in Sunnyvale building the first “clone,” and my father-in-law at the time was an exec with FMC in SJ, CA. He’d just finished designing, manufacturing and installing a machine to automate the removal of the skins from tomatoes – ketchup, paste and canning pre-processing.
He invited me to accompany him down to the Imperial Valley to witness bringing it online. During our 3-hour trip, he asked me (as a computer geek) how I would solve a major problem they faced in tomato harvesting… descrimination. How does one detect which tomatoes are ripe for the picking? And then how to manipulate some type of actuator that could remove just those ripe fruits, leaving the host undamaged.
Fiber optics and digital motors and vision systems and recognition s/w were still pretty much the dreams of SF. Predictive for sure. Hell, our mainframe only had 100 gates-per-chip, producing about 4 MIPS, cost $5M and weighed a ton, yet was powerful enough to run American Airlines’ reservation system. The entire MVS operating system was less than 500K bytes.
After 3 hours of pondering, I was stumped. My f-in-l admitted, yeah, FMC had given up as well, after spending several millions in research by their mechanical/electrical unit.
So, they approached the AG division with the problem and in under two years they had it solved. Engineer the tomatoes to all ripen in parallel, versus nature’s serial approach; then the mechanized picker can uproot the host, shake off and separate the fruit by size, grind up the vine, add nutrients, insert a new vine, dispense fertilizer and water, at 3 miles an hour, 6 rows wide. 2-3 growing seasons there.
And they eliminated lots of “stoop labor.” However, today’s packaged tomatos look like a matched set of orange lacrosse balls and taste like cardboard, no?
The 40 ft tall BOP stack at the heart of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is essentially a robotic device, with 5 giant valves meant to be operated remotely, also containing automatic actuation backup systems.
picture of the BOP stack:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uscgd8/4552485336/in/set-72157623940838176/
picture from the ROV attempting to actuate it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uscgd8/4551846015/in/set-72157623940838176/
When Og says “When I say something (About robotics) isn’t possible, it’s because it isn’t.” I realize that somewhere in Houston is a whole roomful of extremely talented engineers who said exactly the same thing about the Deepwater Horizon and it’s systems.
DonnaV:88,
What OG says is not, IMHO, reprehensible. I just have a much broader definition of AI and robotics than he does, for example.
If I write a timer event on my desktop that occurs every 10 seconds, checks to see if it is 0600 hours, goes back to sleep for another 10 seconds if it isn’t 0600 hours, but sounds an alarm that wakes programmer if it is 0600 hours, IMHO, I have created a robot. I suspect OG will not agree with me.
However, I suspect that he will agree that the event in question would not occur without human (me) programming, human supplied electrical power, and the laws of physics that govern the transition states of various logic circuits. This particular automaton is doomed to keep trying to wake programmer at 0600 hours till it runs out of electricity, the chip set malfunctions, or Ragnarok occurs. Again, I deduce that OG is involved in the creation and programming of much more complex automata than my simplistic 29 ton giants I choreographed years ago.
Does this help?
Added note: It also doesn’t contribute to the discussion that i am an old curmudgeon set in my ways.
That is very impressive (and creepy)..
Did you check out the other video links of the “BigDog”? I loved the “weaponized” version, with bull horns!!
looks like that some science-fiction writers had premonitions (dreams) that became verified in the following century, ie Jules Verne…
Often what a man mind can “see” as imagination became possible when the world was ripe enough for the experemimentation.
So 2=4, you must have an idea of what the world will be in 100 years, otherwise you’ll end to only be known as a serie B writer
MC, Jules Verne, in his time, was regarded as a B rated writer, kind of the type where reader would mutter under his breath: “I want what he is smoking”.
Only later people realized that he, indeed, was smoking some really good stuff. But there is a suspicion that he did not come up with some of the ideas appearing in his novels. He may have had a a help from a friend. Nobody knows about this man much, except that … have to leave it at that, maybe I can write a story about that, so don’t want to post a spoiler.
Future has two aspects. One is a pool of possibilities and another is likelihoods. Likelihoods narrow down, prune the pool of possibilities by setting up a chain of causalities. I am more thinking in the terms of the pool of possibilities, while Og is sticking to likelihoods. Both are valid approaches, in their own right.
I agree with Og that we can’t escape the laws of physics. The only thing is–we don’t know what they are. Because we can’t grasp the world around us directly–we interpret it through our senses and mental imagery–we create models, representations of the world (or verse, as it were) that may bear some semblance to reality. What we conceptualize as laws of physics is just a tiny sliver of reality interpreted through our models. At this moment, we have some good working models that allow us to make relatively accurate predictions, but we have to keep in mind these are just models and they may be, for all practical purposes, just a series of epicycles. Things seem to work fairly well, until our space exploration machines deviate from their predicted course by a substantial figure and no one know why or what the hell.
Try googling this phrase: “scientists are puzzled”. You’ll get a lot of hits. You shouldn’t if the models of reality (e.g. physics) we create are a true reflection of the world. But that is not the case. We just mapped out a tiny sliver of reality and it seems to form a pattern that we dub “Laws of Physics”. But maybe if we changed the angle of observation, the pattern that we get would not resemble our previous pattern v. 02. And we’ll be puzzled.
My take is that if we have an anomaly, it means that our model is very likely wrong. We do have anomalies that do not support the models. It is ok to say that our models are working well for most of the circumstances, but we have to bear on our minds that not only our calibration is probably not as fine-grained as desired, but also that what we see may be a distortion, just a facet that we extrapolate from a certain vantage point. A tail of the elephant. We think that is what elephant looks like and are so happy with ourselves how smart we are. One anomaly may be a glitch in calibration. Many anomalies are not.
OK, back to your 100 years. My perception of future is not linear. What I “see” are certain “nodes”. Say 2028 and 3114. Unfortunately, I am hit by a big bag of likely for these dates, what is possible has been collapsed. There is no swarm of robots running to and fro at these points. But it is not because Og is right, because he knows his sh!t. It is because the possibilities did not have a chance to manifest.
That does not mean I can’t entertain them.
If our jobs are being overhauled by robots, how does Boston Dynamics think that this could be a solution at all? Will these robotic waitresses and self-driving cars help stimulate our economy? These robots would potentially put people out of their jobs. One might argue that repair technicians will be needed to fix the robots, but the number of people needed to fix the machines will not even compare to the number of people displaced by these machines in the first place.
If our jobs are being overhauled by robots, how does Boston Dynamics think that this could be a solution at all? Will these robotic waitresses and self-driving cars help stimulate our economy? These robots would potentially put people out of their jobs. One might argue that repair technicians will be needed to fix the robots, but the number of people needed to fix the machines will not even compare to the number of people displaced by these machines in the first place.
If our jobs are being overhauled by robots, how does Boston Dynamics think that this could be a solution at all? Will these robotic waitresses and self-driving cars help stimulate our economy? These robots would potentially put people out of their jobs. One might argue that repair technicians will be needed to fix the robots, but the number of people needed to fix the machines will not even compare to the number of people displaced by these machines in the first place.
95. Luddite
96. Luddite
97. Luddite.
I see you are very curious, G, you asked the same question thrice!
What would you like to do when you retire?
Anyway, do you know the origin of the word “robot”?
It is derived from a Czech “robota”, which meant “work” in old Slavic (and still means that in Russian and Slovak, for instance, but then in the middle ages the meaning shifted to “serf work” or “serf labor”.
When Karel Capek wrote R.U.R., he adopted the term to mean “mechanical serf” or “mechanical slave”. And the rest is history.
So, imagine the world where human labor, the repetitive production part of it is done by robots.
Someone has to design them and program them. There will be task that no robot would do, simply because they would not have the capacity. Also, robots would be designed to do one task (or a few) exceptionally well, but if something goes sideways, a human would be needed to fix things.
So what about you? Well, those that produce and own robots would be the new elite. They would cover your basic needs, even provide you with your personal slave, but upon a condition that you will not reproduce. See, there won’t be a need for as many humans.
There would be a need for story tellers and artists–the elites wouldn’t want to live in a purely utilitarian world. Managers that would oversee certain aspects of production and power distribution, gadget designers to create circenses for the unproductive masses to give them entertainment before their genetic lines slip into oblivion.
Scientists and engineers. If you can’t be any of the above, a toy would be given to you in lieu of a vasectomy.
Some people would not agree with this paradise and decide to live outside of it in simple rural communities. They would be the core of new civilization when after some 10 generations the “robotic” society goes extinct because they unwittingly narrowed their genetic pool so much that when an unknown virus mutation hits them, it will wipe them out (you would need a minimum of 600 individuals with diverse genetics to restart the pool).
That is one of the possible scenarios.
Possible, however not likely. In the next 50 years, people wouldn’t worry too much about robots displacing their jobs. Maybe that they would actually wish for some damn android, to have some relief.
“There is a history of technology, but for engineers there is no past. There is only creation.” These words of Dr. Inaba spell out FANUC’s stance on technological development.
I don’t see any limitations in that position!
And you shouldn’t. A generally valid truism, with one exception, Og.
Donna (#88):
“I am a scientific layperson, but I am following this debate with great interest and am trying to understand what og is saying that is so reprehensible.”
Reprehensible: “Bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure.” The one doing the severe rebuking, or at least starting it off, seems to be Og.
“As far as I can see, he’s arguing that many things are possible, but not if they break the basic laws of physics.”
He can argue that advances past a certain point in robotics are super-duper-unlikely. I find his pessimism to be unwarranted and frankly unscientific. But hey, as long as he’s not controlling too much research funding in the field, I am happy to let our children be the judges of our disagreement. (And I’m even willing to be paternalistically understanding and state that I take his position to be an exasperated reaction against the flying-car brigade
)
Og is welcome to clarify his own position, but I don’t think he quite says that said advances would break the basic laws of physics (though a quick read of this thread could give one that impression). Should that in fact be his position, I will proceed from mild surprise to flabbergastedness, and inquire as to what basic laws of physics he is talking about.
(Pedantic note: I have not yet memorized all of the Good Doctor’s oeuvre; it is possible that the robot stories contain some throwaway line which does include an impossibility. (“Positronic? Huh?”) Barring counterexample, this would not have a substantive effect on our conversation.)
And now to print this out and put it in a safe for my children.
95, 96, 97.
Drat, I haven’t worked out all of the kinks from my robot!
A modest proposal: instead of using this comments board, we should communicate with each other via parchment and regular mail. We would be helping out the USPS and putting a substantial dent in unemployment.
Alright, I am not a robotics expert, just a cranky old software guy.
From my software engineering perspective, I kind a agree with Og. There is no way we can get close to imitating brain in another 100 years.
We need a new way of thinking to learn like our brain does (not the biology/math/physics stuff).
Just imagine, Mathematics doesn’t exist, how many years would it take to bring Math from nothing to to where it is today, 10, 100 or 1000?
Humans are either god’s creation or million years of evolution, don’t expect someone working 9 to 5 on weekdays figure that out. I guess a buddish monk in some asian country knows how to get started, but he isn’t talking.
Well, call me pessimistic, I don’t have the credentials to back my assertion, so it is just one man’s opinion.
Just out of curiosity, Og, might we have met at the Opinio Juris blog?
Not Og (#104): “I guess a buddish monk in some asian country knows how to get started, but he isn’t talking.”
Yeah? Well let’s see what good his super-seekrit Shaolin training is against WATERBOARDING! That should speed up our technological progress!
Incidentally, there is an existence proof for the possibility of a self-aware, replicating system of nanoassemblers. (To be fair, the replicating process needs the assistance of another similar nanosystem of a slightly different type.)
Try looking in the mirror.
Good point, Fletcher, but the observation is complicated by the possibility of a ghost in the machine.
Bob, that reminds me of an old joke from the commie era: A bag with half ground bones arrives at KGB headquarters from a regional investigation unit with a note attached: “He confessed.”
wws, maybe there is no duality. Not because there is no ghost, but because, in reality, there is no machine. If you go far deep enough, all you see there are interference patterns.
Og’s schtick, “I am an authority and I know the best, basta!”, is what I am having the problem with. It seems that too often this notion turned out be an unwarranted conviction.
Fletcher (#107): “Try looking in the mirror.”
Hey, there I am! Thanks, I’d wondered where I’d gone.
Further to my earlier post, I recall seeing a programme on TV (a 3-year-old repeat, by the way) which showed off the latest Asimo from Honda. The interesting thing here was not its ability to recognise objects by sight using pattern recognition, although that was fairly impressive. What really impressed me was a further demonstration. At the time of the demo, the robot had a fairly limited repertoire of objects it could recognise, among which were a small table and a three-legged stool. The experimenters then brought in a completely new object – a straight-backed wooden chair – which Asimo correctly identified by the name “chair”.
An example of a robot making generalisations. Correct ones.
God has had thirteen billion years to make us. We have been on the case for maybe thirty years. Give us time.