[BRIEF NOTE] Advances in Robotics
May. 12th, 2005 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldSony's QRIO robot, apparently quite skilled at walking, is now attending a California nursery school.
This is a rather cool news item (robots are going to day care!), and certainly the Matrix and Terminator movies' vision of an apocalyptic future marked by conflict between artificial intelligences and human beings is something to be avoided. Still, I can't help but be reminded of California writer and psychologist Theodore Roszak and his argument in his excellent book The Cult of Information that, too often, theorists of artificial intelligence confuse the appearance of intelligence with the existence of intelligence.
QRIO robots might be able to walk like human beings; subsequent generations of post-QRIO robots may be able to master more complex tasks yet. The robots of the early 21st century don't think like human beings, though, indeed they don't think at all. Whatever role they might play in contemporary popular culture, humanoid robots are far from being our equals in reality. When they are--when they can actually think--the crunch will come. Does anything protect the civil rights of artificial intelligences?
Qrio, a humanoid robot developed by a Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratories Inc has been attending a nursery school in California since March to play with children up to 2 years of age in an experiment to help develop a robot that can "live in harmony with humans in the future."
Qrio spends time each day with more than 10 toddlers at the nursery school located in San Diego. Qrio is always accompanied by a researcher, who is in charge of making sure everything goes smoothly. While the children were at first apprehensive about Qrio, they now dance with it and help it get up when it falls. "The children think of Qrio as a feeble younger brother," researcher Fumihide Tanaka said.
This is a rather cool news item (robots are going to day care!), and certainly the Matrix and Terminator movies' vision of an apocalyptic future marked by conflict between artificial intelligences and human beings is something to be avoided. Still, I can't help but be reminded of California writer and psychologist Theodore Roszak and his argument in his excellent book The Cult of Information that, too often, theorists of artificial intelligence confuse the appearance of intelligence with the existence of intelligence.
QRIO robots might be able to walk like human beings; subsequent generations of post-QRIO robots may be able to master more complex tasks yet. The robots of the early 21st century don't think like human beings, though, indeed they don't think at all. Whatever role they might play in contemporary popular culture, humanoid robots are far from being our equals in reality. When they are--when they can actually think--the crunch will come. Does anything protect the civil rights of artificial intelligences?
