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- xodar
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More Good News
Learning to love robots
The human tendency to anthropomorphise will allow automatons to become part of society
Learning to love robots
The human tendency to anthropomorphise will allow automatons to become part of society
Simon Ings The Guardian, Tuesday March 25 2008 Article history
This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday March 25 2008 on p31 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:02 on March 25 2008. London, 1977: the international grandmaster Michael Stean is losing to Chess 4.6, a computer programme developed at Northwestern University, Illinois. Stean is steamed: he is losing. Chess 4.6 is, he says, "an iron monster". When finally he admits defeat, however, he does so with grace, declaring 4.6 a genius.
Whether we're leaving it all to the cat, or thrashing an Austin 1300 estate with a stick, we anthropomorphise as much of the world as we can. Twelve thousand years ago we took wild animals and fashioned them in our image: domestic cats have evolved babyish complexions to appeal to our love of cute.
Anthropomorphism, although apparently a sentimental tic, is central to what makes us human. A baby's realisation that other people are more than animated furniture develops over time, prompted and reinforced by a pattern of exchanged glances. Long before children acquire this understanding (called theory of mind), they are fascinated by eyes, and by the direction of another's gaze. We become human only because, early on, someone treated us as human.
How complex does something have to be before it passes as human? The answer seems to be not very. A consortium led by the University of Plymouth has just won a £4.7m grant to teach a humanoid robot named iCub how to speak English. Its theory of mind may depend less on intellectual potential than on the scientists' willingness to treat their charge like a real infant.
Let's hope it grows into a sociable little thing. The bald fact is, we need him. The US Census Bureau has estimated that the nation's elderly population will more than double by 2050, to 80 million. But there are simply not enough young to look after them. A study by Saint Louis University, Missouri, shows robot dogs are as much of a comfort to the elderly as real dogs. In 30 years, robot carers will be required for practical help, as well as solace, for old people.
Domestic robots are already big business. The sale of service robots in Japan is expected to top £5bn by 2015. Mind is the final hurdle, but robots don't have to be as clever as us to care for us, converse with us, or accompany us. They just have to be clever enough. Our instinct for anthropomorphism will do the rest.
This, anyway, is the message of Love and Sex with Robots, a book by David Levy. A chess international master, Levy was driven by his passion for artificial intelligence to lead the team that created Converse - a programme which, in 1997, won the Loebner prize, an award for the most convincing computer conversationalist.
Now in his mid-60s, Levy is bringing artificial life to sex. "Humans long for affection and tend to be affectionate to those who offer it," he says, and predicts that prostitution has only about another 20 years to run before robots take over. Robots with credibly human bodies are already here. Add minds clever enough to handle a little language, and how could we possibly avoid loving them?
Levy argues that robots will appeal to our better natures. It has already happened. Remember those Japanese toys you had to "feed" at all hours of the night? "A remarkable aspect of the Tamagotchi's huge popularity," writes Levy, "is that it possesses hardly any elements of character or personality, its great attraction coming from its need for almost constant nurturing."
His book reminds us that humanity is an act: it is something we do. When our robots become pets, carers, even companions, we will, quite naturally, feel the urge to treat them well. When it comes to being human, we will give them the benefit of the doubt, the way we give the benefit of the doubt to our pets, our children, and each other.
· Simon Ings is the author of The Eye: a Natural History
simonings@gmail.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... psychology
"You can believe me, because I never lie and I'm always right." -- George Leroy Tirebiter.
If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it I don't give a rat's ass.
http://www.bbotw.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-4384-8
http://www.bbotw.com/description.asp?ISBN=0-7414-2058-9
If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it I don't give a rat's ass.
http://www.bbotw.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-4384-8
http://www.bbotw.com/description.asp?ISBN=0-7414-2058-9
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In somewhat related news, a fairly even handed and frank interview with the individual known as Zoltan (who I see posted here many moons ago) has been featured on gizmondo.com, a pretty mainstream tech blog.
http://gizmodo.com/367698/technosexual- ... robot-love
http://gizmodo.com/367698/technosexual- ... robot-love
- xodar
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That fembots have made it to standard media from specialized forums (like this) and scifi shows their increasing acceptability.
That means more rapid advances, falling prices, and increasing resistence from some quarters.
That means more rapid advances, falling prices, and increasing resistence from some quarters.
"You can believe me, because I never lie and I'm always right." -- George Leroy Tirebiter.
If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it I don't give a rat's ass.
http://www.bbotw.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-4384-8
http://www.bbotw.com/description.asp?ISBN=0-7414-2058-9
If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it I don't give a rat's ass.
http://www.bbotw.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-4384-8
http://www.bbotw.com/description.asp?ISBN=0-7414-2058-9
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- Bart
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Well to be honest I don't think I will ever see a true working fembot in my lifetime. And I'm not even talking about those indistinguishable from humans. Probably at Disneyland at some point (let's see who dies first, me or the Disney brand).
Predictions like this have been around forever:
Robot marriage in 2050
Mars station in 2020
Flying cars everywhere in 2000
Hotels on the moon in 1970
Cars driven by the mighty power of Plutonium in 1960
World Peace in 1945
It's sad but true, our whole fetish is nothing but a fantasy. Just like elves, fembots will never happen. If human succesfully starts playing God, he will do with genetics, bionics and all that crap. Robotics would be just too expensive. And really, it would add nothing to society, while flying an plutonium driven car on the Mars really would!!
(Oh my, I feel like having a coming down right now!)
Predictions like this have been around forever:
Robot marriage in 2050
Mars station in 2020
Flying cars everywhere in 2000
Hotels on the moon in 1970
Cars driven by the mighty power of Plutonium in 1960
World Peace in 1945
It's sad but true, our whole fetish is nothing but a fantasy. Just like elves, fembots will never happen. If human succesfully starts playing God, he will do with genetics, bionics and all that crap. Robotics would be just too expensive. And really, it would add nothing to society, while flying an plutonium driven car on the Mars really would!!
(Oh my, I feel like having a coming down right now!)
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- xodar
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I've been alive for all of those predictions that haven't happened.
There has to be a general, widespread reason for developments.
Electric lights are safer and more convenient than lanterns that had to be lit, routinely tended, and could spill burning fuel everywhere.
People would really rather drive a car regularly than a helicopter or jet pack. It's easier to drive a car in a rainstorm than to fly and despite accidents cars are at least less threatening than suddenly plummeting out of the sky.
It was military necessity and not science that resulted in space travel and so it will be again.
It is military necessity that is speeding the development of robots plus their cheapness in space exploration (they don't need life support, for example).
It was the result of military injuries that spurred the development of plastic surgery in WWI and WWII -- till it became so effective and cheap that cosmetic uses became widely accessible.
So something has to be practical, cheap, and a vital necessity -- not necessarily in that order -- to have enough of a developmental spurt to become an autonomous industry. It also needs a capitalist economy.
Fembots, like cars were for some decades, will remain a rich kid's toy however convenient and increasingly perfected for some time.
What will contribute to their spread will be such things as increasingly difficult and specialized relationships -- as in the increasing anti-male behavior of feminists and the specialization of an affluent society in indulging fetishes -- and the increasing number of old people who will in some ways be youthful and in others still in need of assistance.
Midcentury will probably be the turning point as it will for applied effective bioscience.
However, we have to keep the issue alive and kicking.
I came across a news item about methods of recording a visual record of sounds that were developed in the 1850s, and now some voices from then are accessible via laser -- not the original intent of even belief.
We all know airplanes and lightbulbs existed as experiments before the Wrights and Edison: they simply came up with a practical and widely accessible method of the technologies.
Right now I see us as filling a similar role.
There has to be a general, widespread reason for developments.
Electric lights are safer and more convenient than lanterns that had to be lit, routinely tended, and could spill burning fuel everywhere.
People would really rather drive a car regularly than a helicopter or jet pack. It's easier to drive a car in a rainstorm than to fly and despite accidents cars are at least less threatening than suddenly plummeting out of the sky.
It was military necessity and not science that resulted in space travel and so it will be again.
It is military necessity that is speeding the development of robots plus their cheapness in space exploration (they don't need life support, for example).
It was the result of military injuries that spurred the development of plastic surgery in WWI and WWII -- till it became so effective and cheap that cosmetic uses became widely accessible.
So something has to be practical, cheap, and a vital necessity -- not necessarily in that order -- to have enough of a developmental spurt to become an autonomous industry. It also needs a capitalist economy.
Fembots, like cars were for some decades, will remain a rich kid's toy however convenient and increasingly perfected for some time.
What will contribute to their spread will be such things as increasingly difficult and specialized relationships -- as in the increasing anti-male behavior of feminists and the specialization of an affluent society in indulging fetishes -- and the increasing number of old people who will in some ways be youthful and in others still in need of assistance.
Midcentury will probably be the turning point as it will for applied effective bioscience.
However, we have to keep the issue alive and kicking.
I came across a news item about methods of recording a visual record of sounds that were developed in the 1850s, and now some voices from then are accessible via laser -- not the original intent of even belief.
We all know airplanes and lightbulbs existed as experiments before the Wrights and Edison: they simply came up with a practical and widely accessible method of the technologies.
Right now I see us as filling a similar role.
"You can believe me, because I never lie and I'm always right." -- George Leroy Tirebiter.
If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it I don't give a rat's ass.
http://www.bbotw.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-4384-8
http://www.bbotw.com/description.asp?ISBN=0-7414-2058-9
If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to hear it I don't give a rat's ass.
http://www.bbotw.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-4384-8
http://www.bbotw.com/description.asp?ISBN=0-7414-2058-9
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I wonder how much it costs?Borias wrote:
Watch this and you'll feel more optimistic.
KITECH, makers of the Ever-1, are still standing by their claim that she'll be walking and dancing by 2010
Oh, and xodar, here's that neccesity you were asking for.
"New World Order" is an oxymoron.
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