Artificial Intelligence
At Imperial College London iCub, a robot toddler, is getting a makeover to make it/him/her even more like a real toddler. iCub will get tiny hands, new legs and a new brain. iCub was built to test theories on how children think, learn and develop. They are also planning to give iCub tactile sense, so iCub will be able to grasp objects, and to give iCub skin.
Here's a video and a short article:
NewScientist - Robot toddler gets an upgrade
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1975, ASD: Asperger's Syndrome (diagnosed: October 22, 2009)
Interests: science, experimental psychology, psychophysics, music (listening and playing (guitar)) and visual arts
Don't focus on your weaknesses, focus on your strengths
I don't believe in free will either. We are ultimately sub atomic automations just as the whole universe is.
Smile Nice to read that. I had a discussion with someone about it (free will) recently. I said about the same thing (I said we do what we do because our brains work that way).
We do, however, have (within the boundaries nature sets for us) the power to make adjustments to the ways our brains work.
We can read, speak, act. Make efforts to act in ways other than the ones we're practiced at.
Yes, we have aspergers. We're always going to be behind the eightball at knowing what's going on in our interactions with others. Doesn't mean we can't try.
Back to the original topic for a moment - machines that work well are a lot more fun than the ones that just do the job.
But no we don't. And I mean humans as a whole.
Say you are sitting on the couch watching TV. It is very comfortable and you are loathe to leave. In time however, you grow hungry. As no one else is present, you must either get up and prepare something, or do without.
Your body has endorphins encouraging you to remain sitting, while at the second time, a chemical reaction is urging you to eat. The acceptance of either of these influences is beyond your influence. The decision is made for you. The stronger chemical signal will win and you can do nothing but obey. Perhaps a third signal is one you chose to obey, and you go to empty your bladder.
You can take no discrete action unbound by the result of an earlier situation, stretching right back to your birth. Right back to the beginning of time.
It is akin to holding onto a branch on the side of a cliff and 'deciding' to let go. That you will fall is a forgone conclusion, and the timing of that fall is a measure of the balance between the lactic acid building up in your muscles, the serotonin inhibiting your despair, your attention lapsing, the secretion of sweat on your hands, or the ultimate failure of the branch.
Choosing what and when to eat is just a small cliff in its own right. You will fall all the same.
Your illusion of free will is a palimpsest cushioning you from the hard reality that you are a leaf buffeted in the hurricane of life. As are we all.
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davidred wrote...
I installed Ubuntu once and it completely destroyed my paying relationship with Microsoft.
Thanks Sittard-Scientist.
Nicely put
Thanks. I really like the word palimpsest.
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davidred wrote...
I installed Ubuntu once and it completely destroyed my paying relationship with Microsoft.
What happens when this becomes more sophisticated. Maybe one day they will grow real skin and sensory appratus and learn to link nerves, neurones, chemical messages etc into some kind of neural net.
I feel some kind of empathy here, especially if the get around to doing the above , when they start asking all sorts of dumb questions that "kid's" not hardwired to answer.
Think we might have a rights issue here, in the making. Keep an eye on them. This is horrible to think about.
I feel some kind of empathy here, especially if the get around to doing the above , when they start asking all sorts of dumb questions that "kid's" not hardwired to answer.
Think we might have a rights issue here, in the making. Keep an eye on them. This is horrible to think about.
I seriously doubt we will make organic Cylons any time soon.
ruveyn
ValMikeSmith
Veteran
Joined: 18 May 2008
Age: 54
Gender: Male
Posts: 977
Location: Stranger in a strange land
I guess I didn't comment here.
AI...
Has anyone played a game called 20Q, which looks like a yo-yo?
It is supposedly a neural net. Allegedly it gets to know you and
becomes increasingly accurate at guessing whatever you are
thinking about. I think that is true because it didn't seem to
know about my special interests when I first got it. Then I
didn't know it was an ANN, I thought it was an ancient game
called Animals which used binary trees and the fact that
one of a million things can be guessed by asking 20 questions
with yes or no answers.
How about Furby? (that was quite a few years ago I guess)
I think it almost passed the turing test, because I saw it recognize
another one over the phone and they talked to each other by name,
and since the phones did not carry inaudible frequencies I couldn't
guess how that worked. (No dog-whistle modem) They were
banned from some places because they were believed to remember
what people said in meetings.
AI is used for what enemies do in video games.
Machines will never be human because brains use more chemistry
than electricity. They will need globs of brain cells floating in a
solution of neurotransmitters. Brains are more sensitive to chemistry
than electricity. Otherwise people would be addicted to shocking
themselves in the head with a lamp cord to "get high". That never
happens. I mean, people don't like the feeling of conducting electricity.
I know of a way to create a functioning AI, I just need a supercomputer capable of calculating 2^1099511627776 different files in a size of 1TB, and a place to store the versions.
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You're unique, just like everybody else.
Not sure if I have it or not, + to lazy to get a diagnosis. (Nope not kidding.)
It would also behoove us to stop calling flexibly programmable humans Real Intelligence. No matter how cleverly we get out babies to do things, they are not intelligent. They are simply executing rules specified by physics.
The universe is what it is. Humans write the laws of physics to describe how the universe is. Laws are man-made artifacts, even the laws of physics.
Humans are no programmed by an intelligent entity. They are physical entities that operate in the manner of physical entities and whose operation is partially described by the man-made laws of physics.
Laws are not causes, they are descriptions.
ruveyn
I didnt say squat about human laws. I did not say squat about descriptions or perceptions of physics. I said that humans operate based purely on the interactions that are factors of the universe. Reason or perception has nothing to do with that. Our actions are fully based on the workings of the universe, regardless of how correctly we codify it. I dont believe in free will either. We are ultimately sub atomic automations just as the whole universe is.
I also didnt suggest that humans were created by an intelligence. That which we create is a secondary function of our existence. In that sense, our inventions are no more created by an intelligence than we were.
The logical conclusion is that anything we create has the potential to achieve exactly that which we can and have achieved. "no matter how cleverly we get our babies..."
Lately your posts have sounded suspiciously like several old guys that should have known better.
You know Lord Kelvin? It was said for the first half of his life he was never wrong. For the second half, he was never right.
"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
"Radio has no future."
"Trust you will avoid the gigantic mistake of alternating current."
- Simon Newcomb (1835-1909)
Lately you seem to be dulling in your arguments, dismissive of potentialities that disrupt your world view.
Are you getting feeble rigid, unable to grasp a future that you will not see?
It is said that in the beginning of life, we can see the future, but only vaguely. In the middle years, we have some vision both ways. But in the autumn of our years, life is primarily about hindsight. About life already lived.
Lately you sound like "There is nothing new to be discovered". How ridiculous is that?
I'd like to close with this:
- Peter Ustinov
Don't generalize from ruveyn. I am 11 years older than him and he sounds like a conservative jerk to me too.
Artifical as mechanical, a total alien. Starting from the known, with a large application of lack of ethics, the human brain can be re-engineered.
An early test I heard of was placing a vacuum bubble over the belly of a pregnant woman. Expanding the area for growth took less energy than pushing it out from the inside, and the test babies were said to have IQs 15% higher than would be expected.
Another easy gain would come from their soft skulls, which could be expanded with a vacuum cap.
Optimising brain growth would work best in space, and also be a program for learning about the space born who would be needed for any extended programs. The Hubble was brought up in one piece, there have been a few launches with cargo not declared. There is something being tracked that has the same orbit as Earth. They say spent rocket booster, but those things fall back to Earth, they do not take up an Earth orbit around the Sun. Something is, it is manmade.
There are several directions artificial intelligence could take.
PlatedDrake
Veteran
Joined: 25 Aug 2009
Age: 43
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,365
Location: Piedmont Region, NC, USA
Which one(s)? I recall a robot giving its arm to someone, only to have that person beat another to death and its logic gets fried . . . or are you talking about the reference to the "Zeroth Law" - A robot must protect "humanity." Granted, i havent read that series in over 9 years now . . .
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