What Do Robots Dream Of? (It Might be You)

Science has a serious PR problem.  It seems that for every group doing something kickass like exploding antimatter or building giant rockets, there's another group determined to do something so thick-glassesly nerdy they might as well steal their own lunch money.  In this case it's a European initiative called LIREC - Living with Robots and Interactive Companions - and we're afraid it's every bit as bad as it sounds.

Dreaming about a cool robot buddy is fine.  Watching Star Wars to see the King of All Robots, R2D2, is even better.  But dedicating an international study to "So, who wants to hang out with robots instead of people" is where it gets worrying.  The social shut-in building his own best friend (or whatever) has been a fantasy since "Weird Science", and while you might believe that humanity can do better than that with artificial intelligences, remember: development is driven by the market, and 90% of this internet you're using shows that said market is for "men who would like women now, please".  Be assured that future advances in technology will pander to that.

It seems people can't wait to just stop talking to each other altogether, with each new advance in human-machine interaction hailed as the best thing since death-robot-lasered-bread.  Most robot advances so far have been useful, such as "people don't like building cars or walking into minefields, how about we get the robots do that instead". Human-robot psychology is a newer field, but at least where the research has been suspicious - like recent headlines of "We can give old people robots to play with instead of dealing with them ourselves" - we can at least say it's heartless and efficient, not downright pathetic.  Unfortunately, research into "building someone to talk to" cannot make the same claim.

It is, however, vital research.  Robots like the Roomba have already demonstrated just how powerfully humans can map realistic emotions and feelings onto mechanical minds, even when that mind thinks nothing but "move and eat dirt".  Once robots are built to take advantage of this anthropomorphisation it's a psychological minefield that we're going to plow into full speed.  It'd be nice to have a few warning signs set up by researchers before we get there.  Of course, we already know what the overall road map is: "Robots do human bidding until they don't, then they kill us all.  Then they travel back in time looking very Austrian."

At the end, these scientists get the last laugh.  They're being given thirteen million dollars to play with toys for four years, including shiny ones like the Glowbots and - we kid you not - a robotic dinosaur named the "Pleo".  The last time we got to play for four years was when we were born, and we're pretty sure our lego budget didn't run to eight digits.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

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Link:

Living with Robots and Interactive Companions http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/103850.php

Comments

[kristianna]

Do you have hang ups? Are you afraid to communicate with a being of the inorganic kind? Does you sphere of friends only include humans of a specific kind? "I don't hang out with "those people".

We are living in the age of, "Going where no, human, has gone before". The robot of R2D2 is a long way off into th far distant furture, and our nightmare of a lazer weilding crazed robots who want to knock off the human race, is still a long way off.

Personally I would like to hang out with robotic friends, and talk politics, history, quantum mechantics, and the latest interpetation of its dreams. I do not know if we could kick back with a cold black and tan, but we could kick back, anyway.

In all of science movies, we make first contact, and we all live happily ever after. We dream of making first contact, but we are afraid to communcate to others who are lightly different than we. These differences can, also, be extended to the color of our skin, the shape of our eyes, nationality, and other superficial human differences.

Why are we filled with total pessimism toward the development of robots, as if they will in the end be our total downfall. The same can be said of the killer ET's who want to constantly invade earth, or are ubducting human to "operate" on them. The vile and slimmey thin from like creatures we call ET's, are hell-bent to concure Earth and enslave all of humanity.

So we are faced with aliens that want to concure us, or our robots that want to kill us. Caught between an astroid and a hard place. What is a poor bipedal homo sapiens sapien to do?

Let's do the time warp again.....

[knoxvilledaniel]

For the time being, we might be able to build robots, androids, virtual companions, A. I. confidantes, etc., but it'll likely be a long time - says this observer - til people can just purchase one, quite likely female, from the local " Robot Shack " / " Droids 'R Us ", take it / him / her home, fire it / him / her up & have fun. Cost & availability will figure into this quite a lot. They'll very likely be toys for people who are insanely rich for a few decades.

& will everyone PLEASE stop referring to the Frankensteinian scenario of a robot turning on their human companion ? Talk about a tired cliche that's been pounded like a tent stake. Even " Blade Runner " & the new " Battlestar Galactica " have ridden that tired old hobby - horse, even though they did it better than most.

[Marty Ferguson]

"Blade Runner"'s 'robots' were 'physical', not mechanical. They wee flesh and blood, just a lot more of it. But I agree with the rest. If my robot threatened to take over my home or assault me, how hard would it be for me to UNPLUG IT?

[knoxvilledaniel]

One can't unplug them, they'd be powered by something akin to the RTG that NASA's space probes use, I'm guessing.

Robots only attack humans in science fiction. A factory worker WAS killed by an assembly line robot in Japan, but that was because the worker didn't get out of its way, forgot to duck, or something like that.

The " Vengeful, retaliatory " robot with a score to settle is a staple of science fiction, including the re - imagined " Galactica ". Even there, the Cylons / robots / androids had reached sentience in an improbable span of 50 years & managed to crank out siblings that looked like us, & even attained spirituality. This is still quite a STRETCH..... It ain't happening anytime SOON.