Japanese Scientists Unveil Thinking, Learning Robot

[FallenPrism]

Finally my wise and future-thinking investment in building an EMP-armed bunker below my apartment will pay off! I'll just go triple-check my inventory of bottled water and emergency rations.

So as one bunker owner to another, do you prefer to eat canned chili or SPAM for the rest of your natural life?

Actually, I've never tried SPAM. I guess it deserves a fair try, but I'm definitely a fan of chili (plenty of partial variety, a bit more fiber.)

But I actually have a pretty good variety going for the first 2-5 years. Except for fresh meat, bread, and dairy I'll barely notice a difference.

Now if I can just figure out how to shield my Kindle from a defensive EMP blast...

 

[Woodsey]

Well...

... looks a bit like a hoover really, doesn't it?

 

[Silenttalker22]

Well...

... looks a bit like a hoover really, doesn't it?

A hoover that wants to plot the downfall of it's masters!

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Fairness is a quality in which multiple groups are treated the same. It's not really a difficult concept, even for a computer. Even if it means inflicting harm, as long as you inflict the same harm on everyone, you're being "fair". Actually, a computer is by definition impartial unless programmed to be otherwise. As long as it knows to treat everything the same way, it would be considered fair. It becomes a matter of Copy->Pasting your actions on everyone involved in whatever action needs to be adjudicated for "fairness".

Teaching it to be unfair would almost be harder. You would have to teach the rules of particular construct and then explain to it why it would want to cheat, given that one can't logically succeed outside the rules of a given construct. Once the rules are broken, the parameters of the construct no longer apply and thus, the attempt has failed by default. Why would a computer, who has chosen to perform a specific task "sabotage" itself in such a way?

Actually, from a pure computer science standpoint, an algorithm is neither naturally fair nor is it naturally unfair. In some cases, such as various solutions to find a route between two points, a greedy algorithm is more efficient than a fair one. In other cases, fairness is called for. Data structures themselves can be fair (a queue for example) or unfair (a stack), or a mix of the two (a priority queue).

In principle, making an algorithm fair is easy. The difficult part comes when you define what fair means with respect to the algorithm.

 

[Skops]

Well.... Shit. I would much rather have a zombie apocolypse rather than the Robotic apocolypse.

 

[Farther than stars]

Wow, that article was bad. Where did you even find that? It's style was all over the place. Why would the writer even suggest about avoiding that "cliché", when he's then going to go and say something like "you'll need that innate hope when the metal ones come for you"?
This just reads like blatent alarmism to me and look what it's fuelling:

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Oh lord.. what are we doing..

and

Fucking hell Japan, you'll be the death of us all.

Look, I know it's the most reliable survival tactic to fear everything that's unfamiliar, but it's part of beign a human that we can use knowledge to counteract those primal fears. Yes, robots could potentially be turned into killing machines, but if humans managed to become social animals of which a staggeringly high percentage are docile (only 2.84 percent of death is caused by violence, which is by far the lowest of any carnivorous species) and we are the ones who have to teach robots to think, then we can also teach them to be agreeable creatures.
If they do turn into death machines, then that's won't be because robots themselves will be inherently evil or selfish, but because humans did that to them. I think by far the biggest undermined threat here is that PEOPLE SUCK. Not inherently of course, but it's the who do that have malicious intent and it would be those who would teach that to robots.
And furthermore, other revelations in science also caused social unrest, such as the discovery of nuclear fission and genetic engineering, but those never caused an apocolypse and probably never will (no matter how much fiction writers would have you believe that). This is also why I disagree with Jehovah's witnesses so much, because for all the doing good for humanity and listening to what J.C. said about loving each other, their insistence that there will be global ruination during the time that we are alive, simply isn't being realistic, considering that we've been around for millenia and life itself has been around for millions of years.
So, with that in mind, just sleep easy and carry on with life, because it's all going to be OK. But, I'm thirsty after all of this, so now I'm going to go and pour myself a nice cool cup of water.

Source: [link]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate[/link]

 

[kouriichi]

Just treat them with respect, and when they ask if they have a soul, DONT FREAK OUT.
The Quarians learned that the hard way.

 

[Jun_Jun]

...and the little robot was called 'GETH', but seriously haven't these guys seen any sci-fi movies from the past 30 years? Don't they know what's going to happen to us now? QQ

 

[Serving UpSmiles]

Defeating a robot is easy, simply ask it something which is a paradox and its head will blow off.

 

[Silenttalker22]

For those wondering about the end of the world fears, The Animatrix, the animated prequel to Matrix: Reloaded, laid out a very plausible path for this.
They became smart enough to take over our menial jobs and humanity was freed of it's labors.
Until the robots realized the gap. Or as Agent Smith put it, "Until we started doing your thinking for you". They didn't outright attack. So there was no violence or contempt by either side at first. They just tried to do their own thing. But free of the limitations of flesh, their community output and worth grew much faster, and gained the ire of humans. Which snowballed into bad things.

Worst case scenario; of course. Still plausible; yes. So yah, this is a little creepy and foreboding.

 

[Farther than stars]

Useful, and amazing, but people ought to remind themselves that it is not self-aware, and that self-awareness is impossible with an Artificial intelligence.

I too believe in the existence of the human soul, but don't you think that it is unscientific to deny the possibility of self-awareness in machines? After all, neither you nor I can provide actual evidence that it isn't just a neurological construct which allows thought.
And what about animals? I argue that quite a lot of them are not actually "self-aware", but are definitely capable of complex tasks and even learning, as the sciences of classical and operant conditioning have taught us.
Come to think of it, if you believe in evolution, then you must also believe that self-awareness came to us during a stage of neurological development, which poses the question whether or not robots could evolve to become self-aware.
Like I said, I too believe in the existence of the human soul, but that makes it all the more important that I should take into account the possibility that synthetic life forms might exist. Because if I don't, I could potentially harm something which has the capability to feel without even realising it.

 

[donfuhrer]

As if the unemployment rate isn't high enough, now we have these robots that can do our jobs better than us 24/7 with minimal pay.

 

[Del-Toro]

Though leaping into that cliché would be the obvious route for this article, I will instead point out the myriad opportunities this technology presents.

Fine, if you won't, I will.

-Oh Japan, we can always count on you to expedite the apocalypse.

-We have the tech to make a robot walk and run, self acting targeting systems (Predator UAVs, ect) and now and OS that can learn. Japan, you have everything you need, so my only question now is: where's the Gundam? Are you waiting for an appropriately whiny kid to pilot it? I know a few who might work, just ask.

-God help us if the robots learn how to love. If that happens, we're one bad robo-relationship away from the machine wars.

 

[themerrygambit]

Why are we making robots to try and do our work for us when there are hundreds of thousands of people out of work around the globe... Didn't we learn from all the various artificially intelligent robot movies out there that this isn't a good idea? seriously.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

Think that's impressive?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNKLuXUh3M4&feature=related

That is a robot telling a man he "loves" he is afraid of leaving for another country. The future's knocking on the door.

 

[themerrygambit]

See I'm all about giant robots that humans pilot... that would be the shizzle! but not crazy self aware learning types.

 

[Farther than stars]

For those wondering about the end of the world fears, The Animatrix, the animated prequel to Matrix: Reloaded, laid out a very plausible path for this.
They became smart enough to take over our menial jobs and humanity was freed of it's labors.
Until the robots realized the gap. Or as Agent Smith put it, "Until we started doing your thinking for you". They didn't outright attack. So there was no violence or contempt by either side at first. They just tried to do their own thing. But free of the limitations of flesh, their community output and worth grew much faster, and gained the ire of humans. Which snowballed into bad things.

Worst case scenario; of course. Still plausible; yes. So yah, this is a little creepy and foreboding.

True, but as I pointed out before, the same goes for nuclear fission and genetic engineering. Sure, the possibility's always going to be there, but heck, if we've managed to survive our own malicious nature so far, I'm not worried about that of any other "species".
And of course, there's coming to terms with the finality of things. I know that I have the odds of like 96.1 billion to 1 of dying some day, so what difference will it make if it's a machine which does it or whether I die in a car accident?
Come to thing of it, at least in the former I have hope that the miracle of life will continue to exist, with its roots in Earth and with humanity as part of its ancestors.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Amazing how the thread immediately fills with snide remarks about Skynet and robot uprisings. It's like watching puritans calling "witch" because their milk turned sour. Silly Escapist posters, you're just showing your ignorance. Silly posters.

It's interesting to see where AI currently is and how it advances but this just seems like a large scale demonstration of basic machine learning. Deciding what order to do things in is a basic AI problem and doesn't seem like a huge leap. Maybe they just didn't explain this that well but I think the AI used in Amazon to predict what your want to purchase is more impressive then the robot that decides to drop a bottle to pick up ice. Maybe they just made it look simpler then it was. You don't pull out the old neural net to do simple tasks after-all.

 

[Tragedy's Rebellion]

It would be awesome to have intelligent robots around and I think this fear of retaliation from them is irrational, if they can learn true emotion why would they try to destroy us? We haven't destroyed each other, completely anyway. It would be like glimpsing into a different world and it would be fascinating to talk to them about philosophical ideas and life in general. I've been thinking about this too - what if they learn to how to make other robots? Will they care for them and teach them all they know? I want to ask them so many questions, but patience is a virtue after all.

 

[Silenttalker22]

It's like watching puritans calling "witch" because their milk turned sour.

It's actually not even remotely the same string of logic, seeing as one is following plausible patterns and one isn't. Silly poster.