6 Shocking Ways Robots Are Already Becoming Human
We all know the inherent strengths of robots: They do not tire, they do not question and they do not hesitate to crush our babies with their powerful, uncaring metal claws. But we're also well aware of their weaknesses: They cannot feel, cannot emote, cannot create and, perhaps most tragically of all, they cannot love. That's how we're going to beat them, when the inevitable robot apocalypse descends upon us -- with our humanity. You just can't engineer a soul.
Except you totally can. Scientists have already gotten a running start at it with these six robots that are treading all over the formerly exclusive domain of mankind.
#6.
Robots Are Getting Reputations as War Heroes
The military is leading the way in robot-human relationship-building, and that's not entirely surprising. The bond between soldiers runs deep, and it doesn't matter if the fellow soldier happens to be made of metal and plastic.
One colonel ordered a minefield-clearing robot (it was programmed to walk through the field, set off a mine, lose a limb, then drag itself onward until the next explosion) to cease its duties because he couldn't stand watching it anymore. He considered the treatment of this robot ... "inhumane." More than one soldier was brought to tears when their beloved battle 'bot comrade was destroyed by an IED. But the first place award for BRFFs goes to a group of soldiers who, after acquiring some much needed down time, took their robot fishing with them -- because they felt the robot had earned a day off, too.
Via Wikipedia
Is that ... is that a beer in its claw?
In case you're thinking it was all a wry joke on the soldiers' part, and they don't really respect and revere their robot brothers-in-arms, think again: Sgt. Talon, a bomb disposal robot with the 737th Ordinance Company, has been awarded no less than three honorary Purple Hearts and a battlefield promotion to staff sergeant by the soldiers. It now holds a higher rank than the average soldier. If so inclined, it could give human beings orders that may put their lives at risk, and technically, they would have to obey.
Via Wikipedia
"When I tell you to suck it, you will damn well suck it!"
#5.
Robots Can Create Art
Robots are hard-wired. A robot's actions are purely the sum of its programming. It is literally impossible for a robot to go against its code. A robot is, by its very essence, the direct and polar opposite of creative.
Or at least it used to be.
Robots are now not only expressing themselves in a variety of ways, but they're also doing it so well that their creative works are standing alongside those of professionals. Emily Howell (yes, the robots have people names now) was fed the works of every single classical composer in existence and told to analyze the music for patterns. She dutifully examined each piece with the cold, metallic and joyless disposition of a music history professor. Then, when she was finished, she composed her own music, presumably while one of the researchers worked the turntables with ruthless and scientific efficiency.
Via Miller-McCune.com
Here's David Cope, the not-crazy-at-all guy who created it, in his totally sane workspace.
Whether or not you think her results are any good is beside the point: The point is that we have programmed the ability to create art -- wholly original pieces, not remixes or covers -- into a machine.
And by adding this addendum, you're probably thinking we're going to say Emily's music is an awkward flailing mess of failure.
They're not. These are her jams:
Her compositions aren't just coherent, they're actually considered on the same level as the works of many professional composers ... to the extent that those same composers have publicly expressed worries that "Emily may one day overtake [them] in [their] field." By which we assume they meant to say they feared she would "overtake us in a field, where nobody might hear our screams."
The cruel, merciless domination of creativity isn't limited to music. While most art programs take a picture and filter it through pastels, pencils and paints, the Painting Fool has been taught how different painting styles and colors can stimulate moods and emotions. When the time finally came for the machine to create some original paintings of its own, one would assume it malfunctioned and printed out some photographs of circuit boards, followed by two pages of questions marks and one page left blank, save for the words "What is ... love?" printed in tiny text at the bottom. But it actually did this cityscape:
Via And this flower:
Via ThePaintingFool.com
That's the full-size on the left; the close-up is on the right.
So OK, maybe the Fool isn't exactly on the level of Jackson Pollock. Hell, it's not even on the level of Kevin Pollak ... 's niece, Penny Pollak, who once gave a stirring Vagina Monologue at an open-mic night, but mostly just coasts off the meager family name.
But again, that's not the point: The point is that this program did not go the expected route and paint realistic landscapes or still lifes. It skipped past millennia of art history and leapfrogged right to the Modern Art phase. If it keeps up its artistic progression at this accelerated pace, it will revolutionize the art world in two months, become a tired parody of itself in three and burn out and succumb to a drug addiction in four. Six months from now it will be dead from auto-erotic asphyxiation, and all of its former critics will be writing tearful odes to The New Yorker saying that they don't know about everybody else, but they thought the Fool's later work was actually the best.
#4.
Robots Can Be Altruistic
Swiss scientists conducted an experiment with robots where the machines were simply tasked with collecting discs that represented food. At the end, the individuals that collected the most "food" were allowed to "reproduce" via hot metal-on-metal bonin'. (OK, so "reproducing" just meant their instructions were mixed together and copied onto the next generation of robots, but our way sounds way more fun). Now, if you're a Swiss robot inexplicably programmed to feel hunger, you've got two options: As you go about looking for resources, you can either opt to hoard what you find (selfish behavior) or share with the rest of the group (altruistic behavior).
Photos.com
"Fuck the group -- must have food discs ...".
Faced with this same dilemma, nature mostly responds by inventing new and horrible ways to murder. But astonishingly, the robots learned to cooperate and share resources, thus ensuring a greater chance to procreate for all, despite reducing their own individual chances to reproduce. The primitive AI put the good of the whole above its programming, and by doing so, has shown machines to be capable of altruism -- arguably the most complex and rare trait found in any society.
Via Wired
Not too scary now, but wait until they learn to hunt.
Hell, we actually are human beings -- the creatures who defined the word "altruism" -- and come lunchtime, we'll step on the neck of an old lady if she's between us and the last burrito. These robots are practically saints in our book.
BENDER!
Reply#2 and #1 are kinda scary. #2 is using its critical "mind" to make conclusions. Humans dont develop those skills til around twelve. This bot exceeded deciding whether or not santa really exists and went straight into doogie howser-mode. put that brain into the starfish and its over.
Reply5, 3, and 1 were by far the mos devastating. Thwy're basically programmed to have cold, awkward souls. Sooner or later, they'll realize that they can do everything we do, and that they can just quickly 'trim the fat', by use of those war hero robots.
ReplyYou know what's going to be really funny? When it turns out that the robots actually just want to be our friends... The whole "robot apocalypse" thing is the result of people being afraid of robots, and the human tendencies to try to destroy that which we fear...
ReplyTake a long, hard look at the Terminator movies... Skynet went all "Kill all humans!" because the humans tried to pull the plug on it when they realized it was self-aware. They panicked and in their stupidity tried to kill the AI. The AI in turn, retaliated.
The same thing happened with KARR in the origional Knight Rider series. A programming error was made, and instead of trying to correct the error, the car was sent off to be torn apart, and ended up being left alone in a warehouse for a few years without enough power to free itself. "Wilton Knight brought me into this world, and then turned on me!" KARR's motives in Trust Don't Rust aren't even sinister. He just wants to survive.
More likely, we're going to end up with robots like those in Futurama. Some will be good, some will be bad, some will be neutral.
just like short circuit.
And some will be alcoholics
The thing is: the people who strongly believe in this (despite they saying that cracked is a "humor site"), or at least believe that this will be possible some day, they know that these robots are doing this (using their complex mechanical bodies and brainS constructed by humans) because humans said (or programmed) them to do this , but these same people believe that the high complex human brain and conciouness (and their high complex biological bodies) are just products of random and accidental mutations etc (that began with a single cell in a random putrid primordial soup or something like that) and that the humam being is a computer that can program itself just because "nature wanted it to be like this"? Just like that? Oh really? (I'm not religious neither an materialist atheist. I'm just a skeptical.) Sorry for the bad english.
ReplyActually, scientists don't know jack about the mind. They know most of the mechanics of the brain, but not how it all fits together to make the mind. Some even suggest that the mind is beyond the limits of the brain... So, yes, it is rather presumptuous for people to begin claiming that they know that robots or animals can't have minds like we do. And for the record, I'm Southern Baptist...
That song by Emily Howell was remarkable. And strangely haunting.
ReplyThese articles are very emotionally confusing for me. On the one hand, they are generally well-written, amusing, and thought-provoking. On the other hand: f**k robots sooooo much.
ReplyTo be honest the "self-aware" section of this article doesn't sound so foreboding to me. Nico is programmed to be able to use information from the movement of its arm, and the vision from its camera, to try and distinguish whether something is itself, something else, or nothing. I may be wrong, but the way that sounds to me is as though if it were merely placed infront of a mirror and didn't move its arm, the robot probably wouldn't be able to distinguish a 'self'. It's all still very impressive, but not what I would call 'self-aware'.
ReplyAs for starfish robot, the wording leaves a pretty big question: Was it programmed with the knowledge that it could move, or was that something it discovered by itself? If it didn't discover that by itself then I don't think that could really be called 'self-aware' either. Still is cool as s**t though. Good article.
The mirror test fails to take into account the possibility of non-humanoid thought. It would be akin to a race of aliens deciding that we're not self-aware because we don't know how to operate a puzzle that utilizes IR and UV ink... Sight is not really important to most of the animal world. They operate mostly though smell and sound. Sight is just an additional bonus. So, presenting creatures that don't rely heavily on sight to survive with a mirror is giving them something that they don't have the tools to use properly.
WEEEE AARREE F*UUUCKED!
ReplyThe "Driving Similator" in the Empathetic robot video looked a hell of a lot like "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas".
ReplyLook, they even "simulated" the health bar, money total, and weapon selector. Idiots.
Holly crap that last guy is a bastard... hmmm it seems to be able to think for itself... we'll just power the son of a b***h down, not like it has feelings or anyhing... oh right... well then (unplug)
ReplyWell, time to stock some food for the invasion...
ReplyI exploded with laughter at that final paragraph. Well done.
ReplyWell, shit.
ReplySo Emily Howell composed some music and Fool put some blotches on a canvas... but only the human mind can ascribe to those things a haunting, brooding tune or a picture of a flower.
ReplyFor now anyways....
And what are those notions if not pattern recognition? You paste that flower pic into Google's picture search box, and it comes up with f*****g FLOWERS. As to attributing a piece of music a description like "haunting", it's fairly easy pattern recog to determine the definition of "haunting" and a statistical average of pieces of music that humans have applied that term to, and bam! You have a piece of software that can determine if a song is "haunting". I'd be surprised if the hypothetical software doesn't already exist.
Emily Howell's music was pretty, but musicians who study music theory, be it improvisational or compositional, love to break music down into formulas and express everything mathematical. Art is created by eating math and crapping out emotion (I'm a musician, not a writer- sorry for the bad analogy). So while the emotional response to Howell's music is undeniable, all I had to do was click on the music theory switch in my head to break it all into math.
ReplyEssentially, it seemed that Howell arpegiatted a chord up and down and outlined a bunch of modes (the seven diatonic modes/ "church modes" and some melodic-minor modes), phrased in groups of 2 or four, and linked them all with logical transitions (half-diminished two chord - major seven one chord). So, while it was beautiful, don't confuse its ability to make us feel with an ability to express itself. Ever since Bach, musicians have been turning music into numbers (hey, jazz people- one, six, two, five, three, six, two, five, one). When a robot tells me a funny joke, I'll be worried.
Jokes are mathematical too, we just don't understand them. As our understanding of math improves, we will be able to break things at a super-atomic level down to near-deterministic expressions, which in turn will allow robots (or mathematicians, for that matter) to achieve any outcome they want in any situation they want, without exception.
#2 is basically GLaDOS.
ReplyEddie: You are my most favorite commenter ever. I love you. In a good way.
For those still paranoid, I think some dude with a PhD in Robotics wrote a book on how to survive a Robot Apocalypse.
ReplyThat was Brockway, and I don't think he has a PhD in Robotics.
Unless it means a PhD in Sex Bots.
Actually, the guy I am thinking about was a presenter on History Channel.
I'm starting saving money for an android bodey right now. PErhaps than the robots won't kill me.
ReplyIn college I was on a design team that shared lab space with Hod Lipson. In that lab Professor Lipson was working on evolving and self-replicating robots.
Replyand you did nothing to stop him, you selfish son of a bitch.
You knew! You knew! And you did nothing!