Self-Awareness in Robots
 

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/5...wlc=1279612119

I stumbled across this a while ago, and it doesn't appear to be here, so... I am thoroughly stoked on this idea. This kinda makes the robot like a baby. Add a few more sensors to collect data about the surrounding world (via camera, pressure, microphone) and you've got a human almost.

As I was leaving work to go to lunch on Friday, this old guy walked in and started asking questions about some of our technologies. He said he was working on some project with university students to give robots senses like smell, taste, etc (he was curious if we had any sensors for smell sense we used to make/develop oxygen sensors and such.) He also said they were working on self-replicating robots. Pretty cool shit IMO.

All of those sci-fi movies predicting the rise of robots and the overthrow of man all begin like this.

One of my co-workers told the guy "Robots are going to take over the world one day" and the guy responded "That's the point."

It's inevitable at this point, so there is no use in worrying about it. We already rely solely on 'robots' or computers if you think about it. Without electricity this planet would shutdown in a matter of days.

Before long, we're not going to have much choice. Technology is getting so advanced that there will be (if there already aren't) things that a single person really can't fully understand in a lifetime. People also seem to be getting exponentially more lazy, and we'll likely use robots and computers for any convenience we can. I don't really see a problem with it either. I don't think there's any reason to expect a Terminator/iRobot sort of thing to happen.

It's already begun. Cars that can parallell park themselves are already relevant, they will soon be driving themselves as there are numerous manufacturers that have already put out several successful concetps. Money has already made the jump to the robot side as paper money is becoming less and less relevant, and debit/credit trasnactions through plastic straight into the grid is what's now the norm; Hell, apple doesn't even accept cash? I mean look back 20 years, and we've come a very long way and it's only a short amount of time before things make another leap into the future.

Everything is becoming automated. The problem with robots becoming exponentially more relevant and aware of their surroundings, and us becoming exponentially less relevant and lazy is that somewhere in that timeline, something could occur to alter the scale away from humans being useful on this planet. The whole doomsday plot of this wouldn't happen in our lifetimes. Maybe we can use robots to become immortal? Transfering a brain to a robot shell would be fun to think about for the future.

There will be one good robot, and Will Smith will save us. I already watched this movie.

Seriously though, this is pretty cool. So, they gather data and think off of that, basically? Or, that's what it'll end up like, when it's all said and done, yeah?

They don't gather data at all as far as I know, they come pre-programmed with it. The scientists purpose is try to create a program that teaches them to learn, and acquire data that they can readily use.

I'm not so sure. Consider how technology has in the past. From man to steam, steam to electricity. From math to computer and computer to robot. Soon, sooner than we can think, it'll be from man to machine. And what's higher than machine?

Absolutely nothing.

Only a simple minded fool would say that there's nothing higher than "machine." Honestly, there isn't even any real indication that we will fully go the way of machines. There are a lot of biological sorts of things being discovered, such as the recent "synthetic life" stuff. The only reason you could possibly thing that machines are "the end" would be that you're not creative enough to come up with what is next. I guarantee you that machines are not the end. Machines only mock life, in general. Life is, in general, more powerful than machines. Once we have the ability to create any sort of organism we want, we'll be able to augment our bodies with living organisms rather than just machines. Or hell, maybe we'll integrate the two technologies together and make machines that are augmented with living organisms (to prevent things like rust, corrosion, etc, and to repair things as necessary.) The possibilities are ENDLESS.

Well, thanks for insulting me in one of my only posts in months. However, I was speaking of the doomsday plot, as quoted. Considering the scenario consists of the end of human life, if not all life, and machines being the end, would machines want to create or have the imagination to create something higher than themselves?

I didn't read any posts, but isn't this really old news?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY__e391IRY

Well look at it this way. Consider that currently machines and/or computer are only a tiny fraction of mental capacity that the average human brain has. Let's say it exponentially multiplies and surpasses the human capabilities wouldn't it have eventually gone through similar processes and imaginative steps that took us thousands of years to create? It's a complex idea, but it honestly makes very logical sense.

Define what you consider to be a fraction of human capacity. Like, storage, computational speed? Problem solving?

And, of course it makes logical sense. But also, if life is weak and can be destroyed, why machines, say, invent artificial life that can also be destroyed?

I honestly think that, should the machine apocalypse be our end, I think it would result in a giant singularity that covers the face of the earth.