A more modern look at androids

[dale coba]

My murky instincts:

I feel like there's some virtue to redundancy, rather than compartmentalization of computing functions. How much, what's the balance? What's the virtue trending forward, as chips get ever smaller and cheaper?

I'm also curious how much could be thrown to the cloud, in a world with an absolutely reliable (and relied upon) wi-fi infrastructure.

- Dale Coba

[smalk]

I just came up with something during my boring shift at work today, something I am integrating into my ever evolving idea of a fembot, which will debut in one of my upcoming works.

De-centralized brain. Like an Octopus.

So, I start out with an organic brain-like computer in the head. It stores all the memories, it has the whole emotional center, higher reasoning, blah blah blah. Then, there is a second brain in the head which processes all the audio, visual, smell, and taste senses.

In the torso, there is a larger secondary brain which processes movement, touch, and all involuntary bodily functions below the neck. In each hand, arm, leg, and foot, there is another smaller brain which processes every touch and movement of the particular limb, all linking up to the torso brain.

All the brains link to another brain in the head, which houses the A.I., which processes all the sensory information and memories. This brain is attached to the organic brain, and the organic brain can be transferred from one body to another. Because the motor functions are in another brain, the organic brain doesn't need to be as large as a human brain, and is considerably smaller.

Thoughts?

As any other technical ideas: what's the catch? Assuming that you can actually transfer an organic brain to a different body, given the cost of such implementation, what's the advantage in having de-centralization?

[Spaz]

Efficiency. My androids have removable heads. If the head is removed, why do you still need the part of the brain that controls primary motor functions in the head? Why do you need the primary sense of touch functions in the head?

By outsourcing them to other brains spread out throughout the main body, you can make the storage part of the brain smaller.

Oh, and it isn't exactly a brain. It is an organic computer with an organic storage medium, with some conventional mechanical parts to facilitate data transfer with the mechanical parts.

[Spaz]

Well, I figure the only net activity mine have is proprietary. A direct link to a server where they can send error reports, receive bug fixes and updates, and possibly, in an emergency, do an emergency upload of their memories not unlike the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. Also, in order to remove bulky monitors that wouldn't realistically bend with the bodies, a tablet with a proprietary connection via satellite.

Aside from that, access panels would provide access to major components. Limbs could be replaced rather than simply repaired.

[smalk]

Efficiency. My androids have removable heads. If the head is removed, why do you still need the part of the brain that controls primary motor functions in the head? Why do you need the primary sense of touch functions in the head?

By outsourcing them to other brains spread out throughout the main body, you can make the storage part of the brain smaller.

It makes sense, assuming the the android's head is supposed to operate for long periods of time removed from the body (thus giving motivation for the engineering cost versus the efficiency benefit).

[dale coba]

Personally, I hate wi-fi in nearly every form. I get sick when I'm near anything with much power, let alone broadcasting.

Wi-fi is winning everywhere I turn. Google cars will be mostly autonomous, until the authorities flip the switch to take control and drive you to the police station (or off a cliff and into a quarry). When I see huge groups of people making smart choices regarding privacy, security, safety - then I'll believe a non-wi-fi, Robotman-style tech approach to fembots could win.

- Dale Coba

[--NightBattery--]

How About...
an android access to the cloud made hard as making bit coins, with a lot of filters in order to ensure the persona of the android is not tampered?

[dale coba]

Microsoft Makes Bet Quantum Computing Is Next Breakthrough

Microsoft’s topological approach is generally perceived as the most high-risk by scientists, because the type of exotic anyon particle needed to generate qubits has not been definitively proved to exist.

- Dale Coba

[FaceoffFembot]

You tell 'em Robotman. Reminds me of a rant by sci-fi author Peter Watts.

[Svengli]

OK,

I've been meaning to get to this for a while.

The plausible android I'd imagine would be more or less a bio-analog device. It would have pretty much the anatomy of a human but with the various cell-types somewhat redesigned for greater efficiency and to be able to take direct electrical power. Muscle more powerful, skin perfectly smooth and beautiful, all of the cell types would reproduce nearly perfectly preventing aging, etc. The brain would be the part that would be most distinct from human anatomy. This would naturally be designed/redesigned to have whatever behaviors and parameters we the designers/consumers might wish.

This construct would be created with a process akin to printing with the entire object created in suspected animation and then activated. Possibly there would be a period of "cell orientation" after the printing where the various cells of the artificial organs would bind together and create the necessary smaller-scale structures of the various organs.

One could still have a few body panels if one wanted them for esthetics.

It's a pretty simple idea - aside from being extraordinarily complex to do and out of reach of today's technology.

But what's out of reach is the construction of the cells that could feed the large scale android/organ printer I describe. Individual human organs have been "printed" today. And today, we can replace the DNA of a cell.

The problem is that we have no idea how to "program" DNA. Well, not no idea, scientists have some idea how DNA operates and some idea what genes do what. But if one considers the DNA of even the simplest organism as something like a computer program, that program would a terabyte of hand-coded assembly language "spaghetti code". Biological system's organization is essentially a collection of clockwork that only worked at random collected together over a bizillion millennia. So it simply can't be understood by mere human reflection.

So... to jump to a further point being debated these days, to do this stuff, we face a "bootstraping", a chicken-and-egg problem - all the miraculous things promised by the "singularity" require systems complex beyond our human ability to design or comprehend. If we had strong AI already, we could get it to figure out these problems. Unfortunately, the plan is to use the large system to get any strong AI working. To simulate a brain/biology/atomic-scale-structures we need strong AI and to get strong AI, we're expect to already have simulated/mastered these things.

The ironic thing is that computer scientists began producing things that seemed kind of like AIs fifty years ago (shrdlu) and have made far less progress than the vast increase in "computing power" would suggest was possible.

So to do all this, I suspect what's needed is a conceptual revolution rather than a technological revolution. But that's a whole different story.

[Spaz]

Part of what you have to say is pretty close to what I am implementing in my latest story, "The Replacement".

I got the idea from an episode of Eureka, where they actually printed whole human bodies, and from the episode of Almost Human - Skin. Basically, the premise is the best way to replicate human skin is to use human skin.

Basically, the skeletal structure and the organs are mechanical, but then the body is put in a complex 3D printer which uses actual skin samples from the subject, and raw organic material, to print modified musculature and skin. I basically got this idea from the way the replicators work on Star Trek. The skin and musculature would be modified at a genetic level to look and feel exactly like human skin, but not to decompose if the unit is without power.

The "blood" that circulates through the android contains tiny nanorobots that heal the skin when it is damaged.

I believe this fits in with the modern theme, not a future theme, because we already have 3D printing technology, and NASA is currently developing a protein resequencer, which is as close to a replicator as we will likely get for the next few decades.