Androids are humanoid robots
Until
very recently Androids remained within the domain of virtual reality such as
films, television, games and books. This has changed very recently as the most
advanced technology known to mankind allows us to design such complex
“creatures”. Those robots, which have made it into the real, outside world,
still look and act very fake, but this will change in the closest future,
sooner than we expect.
This
raises an important and also philosophical questions, and it seems we should
work out how those should be answered, even before we are going to think about
releasing such robots and make them part of our everyday life. I would like to
ask some of them to start the discussion.
Technically
speaking about the physical aspect of the future robots, just like humans, the
robots physical capabilities are dependent on their bodies, and how they work.
What is really important is that there a new technologies emerging, such as
hybrid machines, allowing to blur the line between biology and technology. The
very basic difference between computers and living things is that their inner
workings are maintained by different principles. In biology, in living
organisms the biological “cell” is sustained by a set of chemical
transformations: metabolism. Computer systems are sustained by processing data
in cycles, the speed of which are determined by electrically induced vibrations
in a crystal – the clock frequency of the CPU. In bio-engineering, however, the
line between metabolism and clock frequency slowly evaporates as biological
cell cultures are grown directly on computer chips. We could say that biology
is maintained by metabolism, and that computer systems are maintained by a
clock frequency. This may sound like science fiction but today we are already
in possession of nearly enough technologies to turn this into reality.
Human performance grows at the gradual rate. But we
now have a system, deep learning, that we know it actually grows in capability
exponentially.
Currently we see things around us and we say:
“computer’s are still pretty dumb”. But in 5 years time computers will be off this
chart below. So we need to start thinking about this capability right now.
Examples of such capabilities are that computers can
understand by listening to human voice. They can see, understand and describe
what they saw. In 2011 the study shows that in fact they can see and recognize
traffic signs better than people. Since that time a lot has happened. In 2012
google announced that they had a deep learning algorithm watch YouTube videos
and crunch the data on 16 thousand computers for a month and the computer
independently learned about concepts such as people and cats just by watching
the videos. This is much like the way that humans learn. Humans don’t learn by
being told what they see but they are learning for themselves what these things
are. Also in 2012 Geoffrey Hinton won a very popular ImageNet competition
looking to try to figure out from 1.5 million images what they’re pictures of.
As of 2014 we’re now down to a 6% error rate (down from 30%). This is better
than people, again.
Computer learning capabilities are now already being
used in industry. For example: google announced last year, that they had mapped
every single location in France. In 2 hours. And the way that did was that they
fed street view images into a deep learning algorithm who could recognize and
read street numbers.
We can already start imagining androids assisting us
in certain tasks in everyday life. It happens that someday things may go wrong.
We can imagine different, dangerous, sudden and unexpected situations involving
androids, such as when human’s life is in endangered. In such, the robot would
have to make hard choices, often going beyond schematic logic and include
common-sense reasoning and empathy. But what is a reasonable expectation to
have of a robot?
Different questions are also related with the legal
status of the android. Can an android own something? Should the android be
subject to the law? Can the android be held accountable for its actions, and in
some cases be subject to punishment?
Today we treat robots just like any other machines. In
the future Android reality it seems wrong to simply shut him off, for example
during transportation. Androids will not have their own, humanlike emotions,
although they will be able to recreate such and respond to them appropriately.
If a machine looks human, we expect it to have human
capabilities. However, if an android lacks humanlike responses in some aspect,
we will still tend to perceive it more like a machine and less like a human.
In the near future androids will act and look more
like humans and we will tend to perceive them more like humans, in a result we
will have to ask ourselves what kind of relationship we can form with them and
how such relationships will affect the way we live?
The androids that will be part of our children and
grandchildren’s worlds will be more than just machines and we will have to
learn to integrate them in our daily lives just like we did with smartphones
and computers today.
What do you think about such a future and when do you
think it will become a reality?
What do you think will be most and least attractive
about such a future?
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P209JS3Pg3M hot robot slave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbFFs4DHWys akira robot
Comments
Quoting wikipedia: Based on discoveries made through neural mapping of the limbic system, the neurobiological explanation of human emotion is that emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state organized in the limbic system of the mammalian brain. If distinguished from reactive responses of reptiles, emotions would then be mammalian elaborations of general vertebrate arousal patterns, in which neurochemicals (for example, dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin) step-up or step-down the brain's activity level, as visible in body movements, gestures, and postures. Emotions can likely be mediated by pheromones.
I believe that if we could recreate something working like a human organism, we could equip it with sufficient tools to make them receive similar signals to human emotions. It wouldn't make any difference whether it's artificially produced or not, it could influence androids just like it affects us :)
But when I’m reading your article more and more, I’m more and more in consternation. I don't want robots will take control on people. In my opinion it won't be good.
In my opinion androids may be very useful when it comes to dangerous works, such as mining, working with explosives etc. But on the other hand it may take away a lot of jobs. There are a lot of people that are good at physical labour and replacing them by the machines may be more efficient, but not good for the economy. And if the world turns into a system managed by computers - where does that leave humans? What will they be doing with all their free time? I think that computers will be smart enough not to need constant control. So maybe everybody will be assigned to repairing the robots?
Speaking of making hard choices - I think that on one hand it may be better, because if the choice will be made based on some algorithms, there would be no one to blame for the results (for example when letting someone go when they are brain dead). On the other hand sometimes bravery overcomes any logical and reasonable thinking and it saves lives (e.g. firefighters). I think that this is why there should always be someone with feelings that controls the machines. And we should not lose control over the computers, this is a very important matter.
I have one question that is to be posed: what about having feelings for androids? Even now there are people that marry their own computers or inflatable dolls, but where is the end of it and what happens if a person owns a perfectly educated, well mannered, smart, pretty, human-like robot? I have no doubts that there will be some cases of trying to legalise the affection for a robot and I wonder how it will be managed.
Artifical Intelligence is hot topic nowadays with these 'bad things' that come with it.
Don't you think that Asimov's Laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics) have already been broken?
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Drones are robots, right? Following this: they do harm to people. So the first and second laws got broken here.
It makes future completely unpredictable - I’m afraid that in future our descendants will have to learn how to distinguish people from androids - and it’s scary.
You wrote android in second sentence using capital “A” - I thought that it will be some article about Google’s Android and another thought was you are respectful to robots!
Do we need another toy that will be the next target of moral considerations?
Where is the limit?
Whether the program will have souls and feelings?
If we ever face an machine with awareness then I think we will have to respect it and no longer treat it is a thing. I just don't think it will happen so soon.
From positive and negative sides: well, positive we will get cheep labor for the most dangerous jobs and in some way our life will become comfortable. Negative - there probably will arise some movements with motto like 'Cyborgs are also people - they can feel' or some other stuff from all those crack-heads that smoke weed and think about 'equality', 'nature' and other stuff.
In all those 'AI riots' and terminator stuff I do not believe as every person who builds such things will definitely keep in mind such scenario (at least if such person does not obsessed with conducting warfare with a help of cyborg-assassins, then we will be screwed). Plus three Azimow' laws also should be implemented, so from that point everything is cool.
Artificial intelligence and robotics is currently a hot topic. In recent years this branch of science has made great advances. More and more devices are referred to as 'intelligent' or 'smart'.
I think that in the future robots will replace most of the people working physically. People have a limited capacity, while the electrically powered robots can work non-stop, don't get sick and don't have to be free. As soon as the robot will drop the cost of production they become a norm in the industry.
That kind of future isn't coming any time soon though, looking back at how the AI originated and what is its state today, in my opinion we're talking here about a good 30 years at least.
And to make androids popular and a common thing? Put another 20 on top of that.
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