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May 16, 2012 by $techgnoticOn March 1, 2012 the Nevada DMV issued the first license for a “Google Driverless Car.” The idea behind this innovation is that one day soon new technology will drive cars safer and more skillfully than humans, thus saving lives and billions of dollars in car crashes. How well this idea catches on is a bit questionable, given the powerful “romance” of driving one’s car, but it’s certainly an indicator of things to come in the daily intersection of human and artificial intelligence and mobility. There have always been those who have dreamed of stepping into a mechanical exo-skeletal-type “suit” and letting the engineering do the work, instantly increasing limited human speed, strength, endurance and accuracy.
Mech-suits like the ones that have become standard fare in sci-fi films and videogames may be getting closer to becoming a practical reality more than you might think. Already, tech innovations for leg braces helping people walk, back supports for the crippled and other futuristic light-weight prostheses have been developed as spin-off benefits of Honda’s work in building their robot “Asimo.”
Asimo is more than just a cool tribute to Isaac Asimov (the sci-fi writer who first “imagined” robot androids indistinguishable from humans in stories like “I, Robot”) – he (she?) walks and moves independently, utilizing a rudimentary “artificial intelligence.” Asimo may not be capable at this point of doing much more than carrying out a human master’s commands with programmed responses and actions, but this is definitely the very real beginning of a future portending some very fascinating, and possibly scary, questions...
At what point will our robots’ “artificial” (programmed) intelligence become all too real, arming them with “free will?”
Prometheus was punished for all eternity by the gods for giving the gift of fire to us mortals. Will we mortals be inadvertently hastening our own obsolescence and overthrow by giving the gift of “true A.I.” to the powerful machines we’ve built with our own hands?
Maybe we’ll keep innovating and strengthening our mighty mech-suits. Then if our robots, having attained free will via true A.I., choose to rebel against us, we will be ready to don our own armor for the final Battle Royale. And so it will be that the robots who have become virtually humans will fight it out with the future humans capable of transforming into virtual robots for dominion over all that’s left of “civilization.” (Or maybe by then Humans and Androids will have sufficiently evolved their intelligences to be able to live together peacefully as extensions of and helpers to one another.)
The world will be doomed. You hear me? DDDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMEEED!
This choise also refers to robots (and machines as general). Robots are nowodays evolving very fast. They are smart, intellignet, strong and whatever people want them to be. People can of course build themselves robotic (mech) suits to power up themselves, but they can also manufacture an independent machine that will do things on its own. And where's the point? The point is tha this machines can gain sentience.
And what is this sentience? Sentience is course life. When you can feel, think and dream it means you are alive. Humand are for example sentient (even self-sentient), other animals are sentient too on some levels. They can feel, they can want, they can dream and they have the sence of their own selves. They are just alive. Things don't do that, and that's why they aren't alive. So they are just things. And what about plants? Humans don't know yet if they gained any kind setience, but still a single organic cell isn't in fact alive, because it doesn't have any sentience. It of course can act like a living being, but this is just a kind of mechanism that it's programmed with its organic componnets like "if something, then do something". They can't think, but when you think you can do it flexible. Something that you did a while before wasn't programmed in any way, it was your conscious choice, something that you thought just because.
I personally think that life can grow and form in very many ways. Why? The answer is very easy. Universe is endless in each and every way. There are infinity possibilities of just everything. So why life should occur only in one form? And if it comes to life. I think that life isn't just our body. It's something inside of you that makes you alive. Why? Easy example: if you would lose your hand or leg you wouldn't be less alive. Even if you would lose a part of your brain you also wouldn't be less alive. It means that there is something more that makes you alive. Something that is immaterial. You can call it soul, you can call it spirit or whatever you want. Living beings have feelings, needs and dreams that aren't material in any way. So why something that makes it should be material? Of course there is a brain, but it's some kind of connection beetwen sould and body. And it's called a mind. Each and every living being has a soul. It's a key element for being alive. Soul is alvie. Body is just a slave of it.
So can robots be alive? I personally tink yes. Becasue as I said before life can occur in many forms. And when alive they can also have a soul. But will humans be able to undersatnd this? Robots and other machines are treaten today just like things. It's OK, because they aren't in fact alvie. But what will be if this will happen to living self-awared machine? People not always have to be so understandable and open-minded.
People can live with machines in harmony, but they have to understand many things. For example that life can occur not only in organic form. Today's people wouldn't be able to understand this and it can lead to many mistakes and misunderstandings. And when machines will feel threatened by humans they will of course try to defend themselves just like reguar living beings. And I personally think that apocaliptic stories including machines as the main can be just a great exampe of how to treat with the human race. But this don't have to happen. As I said everything can be good or bad and people still have their own free will to choose which way they want to go.
Answers to the questionary:
1. I would prefer to have a domestic robot (not alive of course) that would do for me most of the things.
2. Driveless car is a great idea. Can wait to see that.
3. Technology is more and more advanced from day to day. So I think that it is possible. Everything is possible.
4. If a robot is in every way as sentient (self-aware), intelligent and emotionally wired as a human it means it's just alive and it deserves to be treated justl like regular livng being. Owning such machine would be just slavery.
5. Each and every living being has a soul. It's a key element for being alive. And when alive, feeling are just a matter of time.
Then it's got to be affordable for everyone. I'll take a human girl over a cyborg any day of the week.
I doubt robots will become indistinguishable from humans in the near future (reguarding those qualities and and quirks of human beings). One aspect you did not mention....an all imersive virtual reality where doctors could interact and communicate with their comatose patients.
deviantART muro drawing
A person with a robotic limb or eye is still a cripple, but cyborg. A person is only truly both AI and organic when he has both a semblance of AI and human organic signals contributing to his cognitive functions. Changing the way a person interacts with a world, i.e. a human brain with a robot body doesn't change what they think via how they think. Essentially, they become Reapers.
So do those people require education as you and I do today? It's possible that their AI enhancements could maintain the information they gather and provide it on recall, eliminating the stress or failure in trying to remember something. They could learn anything, and hook up and store information on Clouds.