Slashdot Log In
Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us
from the but-are-they-cute dept.
In a way, robots are portraits of humans. Machines are just machines and assembly lines are just assembly lines. The buckets of bolts don't become robots until they start to take on some of the characteristics and a few of the jobs of humans. A drill for tightening a bolt may replace a biceps, but it's just a motor until it's on the end of a fancy mechanical arm that positions it automatically. Then it's a robot ready for a call from central casting.
Defining just what is and is not a robot is not an easy job for technologists because the replicants and androids are a touchstone and a benchmark for measuring our progress toward the future. It's 2002 and everyone is asking: Where's mad Hal steering a space craft to oblivion? Or more importantly: Why am I still vacuuming the floors and mowing the lawn by myself?
If you are asking these questions, then you might want to read the answers Rod Brooks, the director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, offers in his charming book, Flesh and Machines: How Robots will Change Us. The book is half a thoughtful biography of the various robots created by his graduate students and half a philosophical explanation of what to expect from the gradual emergence of robot butlers.
The biographical part is probably the most enjoyable. He and his students have produced more than a dozen memorable robots who've crawled, rolled and paced their way around MIT. One searched for Coke cans to recycle, one tried to give tours to visitors, and another just tried to hold a conversation. Brooks spends time outlining how and why each machine can into being. The successes and more importantly the failures become the basis for creating a new benchmark for what machines can and can't do.
An ideal version of this book should include a DVD or a video cassette with pictures of the robots in action because the movement is surprisingly lifelike. Brooks is something of a celebrity because a film maker named Errol Morris made a droll, deadpan documentary that cut between four eccentric geniuses talking about their work. One guy sculpted topiary, one tamed lions, one studied naked mole rats, and the fourth was Rod Brooks, the man who made robots. Brooks minted the title for the film, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, a phrase he uses to describe his philosophy for creating robots. The movie tried to suss out the essence of genius, but it makes a perfect counterpoint for the book by providing some visual evidence of Brooks' success.
One of the stars of the movie was a six-legged robot called Genghis, a collection of high-torque RC airplane servo motors that Brooks feels is the best or most fully-realized embodiment of this fast and cheap approach. The robot marches along with a surprisingly life-like gait chasing after the right kind of radiation to tickle the IR and pyro-electric sensors mounted on whiskers. If you've seen the film, it's hard to forget his gait.
Brooks says that the secret to the success of Genghis is that there is no secret. The book's appendix provides an essential exploration of the design, which is short and very simple. The soul of the machine has 57 neuron-like subroutines, or "augmented finite state machines" in academic speak. For instance, one of the AFSMs responsible for balance constantly checks the force on a motor. If it is less than 7, the AFSM does nothing and if it is greater than 11, the AFSM reduces the force by three. That's doesn't seem like very much intelligence be it artificial or real, but 57 neuron-like subroutines like this are all it takes to create a fairly good imitation of a cockroach.
Brooks calls this a "subsumption architecture" and the book is most successful describing the days that he spent with his graduate students building robots and seeing what the architecture and a handful of AFSMs could do. He half mocks the roboticists who load up their machines with big computers trying to compute complex models of the world and all that is in it. In his eyes, the lumbering old-school machines just move a few inches and then devote a gazillion cycles to creating a detailed, digital description of every plant, brick or wayward child in the field of view. After a few more gazillion cycles, the machine chooses a path and moves a few more inches. Even when they find their way, time passes them by.
There are no complex control mechanisms sucking down cycles on the machines from Brooks' lab, the source of the claim that they're "out of control". It's just AFSMs wired together. One of the robots fakes human interaction by tracking fast motion and flesh colored pixels. Brooks marvels at how a few simple rules can produce a machine that is remarkably life-like. If you're not sure, they have video tapes of lab visitors holding conversations with the machine, who apparently takes part in the conversation with the patient interest of a well-bred host. As if by magic, the AFSMs are creating enough human-like movement and visitor in the tape begins treating the robot like a human!
If you're still not sure, you might buy a "My Real Baby" doll designed by Brooks with the help of the adept mechanical geniuses in Taiwan. The story of taking a highbrow concept from MIT to the local toy store is a great part of the book. The so-called toy is filled with AFSMs that tell it when to gurgle, when to pout, when to sleep, and when to demand sustenance. Alas, the toy makers tell Brooks that the market can't stomach so much innovation. One new thing at a time.
So are these machines truly successful simulacra? Are they infused with enough of the human condition to qualify as the science-fiction-grade robots or are they just cute parlor tricks? Some readers will probably point to the AFSMs and scoff. Seeing the code is like learning the secret to a magic trick.
Brooks, on the other hand, is sure that these machines are on the right track. In a sense, he makes it easier for his robots to catch up with humans by lowering the bar. On the back of the book, Brooks ladles out the schmaltz and proclaims, "We are machines, as are our spouses, our children and our dogs... I believe myself and my children all to be mere machines." That is, we're all just a slightly more involved collection of simple neurons that don't do much more than the balance mechanism of Genghis. You may think that you're deeply in love with the City of Florence, the ideal of democratic discourse, that raven-haired beauty three rows up, puppy dogs, or rainy nights cuddled under warm blankets, but according to the Brooks paradigm, you're just a bunch of AFSMs passing numbers back and forth.
If you think this extreme position means he's a few AFSMs short of a robot professor though, don't worry. Brooks backs away from this characterization when he takes on some of the bigger questions of what it means to be a human and what it means to be a machine. The latter part of the book focuses on what we can and can't do with artificial intelligence. He is very much a realist with the ability to admit what is working and what is failing. His machines definitely capture a spark, he notes, but they also fall short.
He notes with some chagrin that his robot lawnmower leaves behind tufts of uncut grass. Why? It uses a subsumption-like algorithm that doesn't bother creating a model of the yard. The robot just bounces around until the battery runs out. Eventually the laws of random chance mean that every blade should be snipped, but the batteries aren't strong enough to reach that point at infinity. A model might help prevent random lapses, but that still won't solve the problem. Alas, the machines themselves are limited by the lack of precision. One degree of error quickly turns into several feet by the other end of the yard. A robot wouldn't be able to follow a plan, even if it could compute one.
What's missing, Brooks decides, is some secret sauce he calls "the juice". Computation and AFSMs may work with cockroaches, but we need something more to get to the next level. Faster computers can do much more, but eventually we see through the mechanism. Genghis looks cool, but learning about the 57 AFSMs spoils the trick.
The standard criticism of Brooks' machines is that they don't scale. There is no superglue juice that can save a scaffolding built of toothpicks. The AFSM may produce good cockroaches, but that's just the beginning of the game. Humans are more than that. Eventually, the AFSMs become too unwieldy to be a stable programming paradigm. In fact, Brooks sort of agrees with this premise when he suggests that Genghis is his "most satisfying robot." It was also one of the first. The later models with more AFSMs just don't rank.
But humans and other living creatures don't scale either. We may be able to run 20 miles per hour, but only for 100 yards. We may be able to troll for flames on five bulletin boards, but eventually we get our pseudonyms confused. Limits are part of life and we only survive by forgiving them. To some extent, the lifelike qualities of his robots are direct results of the self-imposed limits of the AFSMs.
Your reaction to these machines will largely depend upon how many of the limits you are willing to forgive. Stern taskmasters may never be happy with a so-called robot, but a relaxed fellow traveller may ignore enough of the glitches to interface successfully. Some will see enough of themselves to be happy with the whirring gizmos as a portrait of human and others may never find what they're looking for. That's just the nature of portraits. For me, this book is an excellent portrait of a research program and the collection of questions it tried to answer. You may look in the mirror and want something different, but it's worth taking a look at these machines.
Peter Wayner is the author of two books appearing this spring: the second edition of Disappearing Cryptography , a book about steganography, and Translucent Databases , a book about adding extra security to databases. You can purchase Flesh and Machines from Barnes & Noble. Want to see your own review here? Just read the book review guidelines, then use Slashdot's handy submission form.
Cost is WAAAAYY to high. (Score:5, Insightful)
A Washer/Dryer IS a robot.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead you drop your clothes and soap into a box and give some instructions (turn indicator knob). No human labor involved. Sounds like just as much of a robot as the other items mentioned above
Re:A Washer/Dryer IS a robot.... (Score:3, Insightful)
A robot washer/dryer would grab my clothes from the hamper (We'll assume the hamper is on top of the robot, I won't require it to walk around the house.), empty the pockets, sort the whites and colored, wash, dry, and fold. And removing any clothes that I've indicated require decisions on my part from the process, and keep the load balanced.
Only then will I call it a robot. Until then, it's just two tools sitting next to each other.
There are things out there I would almost call a robot. Some of the high-end copiers, the ones that can fold, staple, sort, etc. That's the cheapest thing I can think of that I would call a robot. And it still can't handle documents that start stapled.
In other words, the main difference between a robot and a simple tool is that a robot doesn't need you to hold its hand. You give it a task and it can do it without you needing to make sure everything is set up correctly every step of the way, just like a person. And if it can't handle something, it has to be able to realize that and stop. Otherwise it's a complicated hammer.
Re:A Washer/Dryer IS a robot.... (Score:3, Funny)
Basically, you're saying that if you can teach it to make and serve coffee you can marry it and call yourself lucky...:)
...with sharp appendages and weaponry (Score:4, Funny)
Technically, he's right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and humans run the single most complicated OS ever.
LV
Re:Technically, he's right. (Score:2)
I'll believe that when somebody can upgrade or replace it.
Re:Technically, he's right. (Score:3, Insightful)
That we can't just remove it as a whole & take apart it's raw code yet to rewrite portions directly doesn't mean it isn't true. We've just gone around our limitation (of lack of source code) by interaction...
Robots in the future (Score:2)
the little cockroach and fly robots with tiny cameras that peek in on people.
The time to really worry is when these show up as radio shack kits in about 10 to 20 years.
No one get all paranoid now.
You are Late. (Score:2)
Maybe not at the insect size range, but perhaps at the dog/dolphin/avian level.
Re:Robots in the future (Score:3, Interesting)
Not so fast.
There are some cockroaches, you step on the, and all they do is get mad. You have to splat them with a hammer [aol.com]. Of course, you could always get some as pets [angelfire.com]. Nevermind the ones in Florida that fly [mit.edu] imported from Asia [pestproducts.com].
Beautiful... This is what I've been thinking about (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, biological creatures don't scale well at all, right? We have access to the code that Rod Brooks made, right? Well, using other technology, lets evolove the code. If for some reason that doesn't work, we have most (all?) of the human genome done. How about other dna strings?
We either "evolove" the creature or we model it after the dna it came from. Anyways, score 1 for robotics.
Why Human? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why Human? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a pretty damn big "pro". I don't care if the robot is a freakin genius...if it can't open a door or walk up stairs it's not going to be able to do much.
AI Hopes Killed by Recursion Issues (Score:2, Interesting)
Biological neurons have been shown in the laboratory to grow new connections based on information learned. In a robot, what possible mechanism could guide such growth? Programming is the only answer, but keep in mind that "programming" is just shorthand for "the intelligence of the programmer". In other words, the AI itself isn't self-contained, as it were.
There is no other way for "mental" activity to be guided, thus AI will always be as unattainable as the Philosopher's Stone.
Crawl before we walk... (Score:2)
I'll bet it's possible to create a cybernetic "animal" that functions on 95% instinct and 5% learning. The recursion problem could therefore be contained and studied.
Such a thing won't be "HAL" or "C3PO" by any stretch of the imagination, but it'll be a start.
Re:AI Hopes Killed by Recursion Issues (Score:5, Interesting)
Crikey, you figured that out after two semesters. I guess I wasted 4 years of my life doing a degree in it all then... I must never have cottoned on to how well expert systems such as Mycin [surrey.ac.uk] and Dendral [mit.edu] actually perform.
You think programming is just the "intelligence of the programmer"? Guess again -- many people have AI systems running which program themselves, coming out with emergent behaviour which the programmer never expected.
Do you really think that a person can simplify circuit boards to their simplest form by themselves? I thought not. I know that Julian Miller [bham.ac.uk] can't, but that using his Cartesian Genetic Programming [bham.ac.uk] he's managed to wirte programs that do just that. Thus proved that a computer program can ultimetaly be more than the sum of its external inputs.
Parent
Re:AI Hopes Killed by Recursion Issues (Score:2)
Self-reprogramming FPGAa perhaps? Dedicated genetic algorithm circuits which evaluate the behavior of the rest of a chip and reprogram it? Why do think this is so impossible? We may end up actually using biological processes for this "growth" anyway if/when we arrive at biological computing (DNA/molecular computing) etc. I fail to see what is so darn impossible about the process. It took evolution billions of years to produce us through random change...knowing this, I think we can definately speed that process up a bit to create AI.
Re:AI Hopes Killed by Recursion Issues (Score:2)
There are people who use this as an argument to prove that intelligent biological life must have been designed. So all we need for working AI is to play god.
Alternatively, we just accept that the programmers' guiding is a more effective equivalent of the natural selection that led to biological life, and that the AI will be just as self-contained as biological life.
After all, your brain wouldn't exist without your parents, and wouldn't work the same way without years of training. That doesn't make human intelligence unattainable.
Re:AI Hopes Killed by Recursion Issues (Score:5, Interesting)
Problems:
O(n^2)-structure
Learning (Growing)
Current learning algorithms include (among others):
Various backpropagation algorithms, AFAIK not observed in biological systems. A fairly mathematical approach.
Self Organising Maps (SOM), especially Kohonen-networks: a similar strucure has been observed in the visual cortex.
Both algorithm do not include a temporal component although biological neurons rely heavily on temporal information, but IRC there are some neuronal networks out there that employ a temporal encoding.
Of course, all existing networks rely heavily on the knowledge of the programmer, who tailors the system to the problems (and partly the other way around). Partly, this is due to the prohibitivly expensive costs of large neuronal networks and partly nature does the same.
Humans are pre-wired, so may AIs.
Furthermore, it is quite interesting that an "AI", programmed to learn articulating words, made similar errors to those of a baby learning speaking.
Have a look at Ghengis, AFAIK the only programmed knowledge is: "contact with ground -> bad", "moving forward -> good", and how to learn.
> In other words, the AI itself isn't self-contained, as it were.
This reminds me somehow at an AI Koan:
Parent
Help me out here. (Score:3, Interesting)
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
I may seem a bit foolish here for asking, but what does this mean? I don't understand. Is it that Sussman learned to start with all 0s instead of random inputs? Or that cutting out all preconceptions is only counterproductive?
Re:Help me out here. (Score:3, Informative)
That is, it is impossible to free a system of preconceptions. By making parameters random rather than hand-picked, I am simply trading one set of preconceptions for another.
Of course, if it is a true koan, it will probably evoke as many different thought-paths as it has readers. Hope the above helped, though.
Re:Don't forget about the random issue (Score:2)
If a computer cycled through numbers and chose one of them the next time disc I/O was requested, this would be as random as anything you like. Sure, it can be repeated, but so can anything that goes on in my head.
What I'm saying is just because you don't understand why you choose a seemingly random number doesn't mean it's actually random. You know all those tricks about people being made to pick a random number (David Blaine style) and it's known to other people -- well, they would have though their choice is random.
Re:Don't forget about the random issue (Score:2)
The problem with this statement is there is more than one definition of random. Human-generated numbers would be non-random in that they are compressible: if you ran a perfect WinZip on a 1000 sequence generated by a human, it would find repeating patterns and uneven distributions, and it would reduce the data size by a statistically significant amount, on average. But because humans receive a rich input from the world around them, including indirect inputs from truely random sources such as cosmic rays, their numbers are completely unpredictable, on average.
Most computers are non-random in that they have an invariant algorithm they use to generate their random data. Their data is irreducible and statistically random, yet predictable. If you made a computer like a human, giving it input that comes from truely random sources, then they would give you truely random numbers. And of course, people have done this, but it is simpler just to use a truely random source as directly as possible.
Machines, random numbers (Score:2)
There's no machine I've ever heard of nor seen that could generate a truely random number
It's true that no computational algorithm can generate truly random numbers, without input from some random physical process. The real test would be whether you could look at the history of numbers generated and predict the next number. This would mean inferring the state bits of the algorithm and deducing its inputs, if any. Cryptographic hashes are algorithms specifically designed to make that difficult.
In physics, you don't get real randomness without quantum effects, but statistical processes can give you highly unpredictable numbers, unless you're prepared to do faster-than-real-time molecular dynamics on 10^23 particles.
Here's a random bit generator suitable for use with a crypto hash algorithm to make good random bits: http://willware.net:8080/hw-rng.html [willware.net]
Wondering about the scope (Score:3, Insightful)
The human element can't be ignored in favor of fully robotic solutions. People enjoy feeling involved in what it is they're doing. Personally I'm all for having an entire race of robot slaves that do all the work for everyone, leaving people free to create Art, Science, and Music (and giving *me* time to finish Final Fantasy 10).. but I don't see it happening any time soon.
Flying cars would rock. Talking cars that remember your favorite radio stations, seat settings, A/C settings, and possibly directions to drive to your parent's house are far more likely.
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (Score:2, Funny)
Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!
sometimes words just aren't enough (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the 'non-scaling' criticism: to quote Dogbert, 'Pah!' They do what they're supposed to do. I never criticised my Spectrum because it didn't have dolby sound; I wouldn't criticise my roaches because they don't write operas.
Re:sometimes words just aren't enough (Score:2)
It is not a critism of the robots in themselves, but of the methodology. Humans become capable of manipulating new ideas when they develop a symbology for modeling those ideas mentally. The various finite state automata that Rod Brooks has developed are useful in themselves, but unless the reviewer failed to mention it, they do not portend a new way of designing complex life-like systems. This is not because there is no merit to his ideas, but because his ideas are not new, FSA's are widely recognized as an excellent way of implementing real-time limited-adaptability behavior. I used multiple software-implemented FSA's to control my easter-egg-hunting robot back in college years ago, and I definitely wasn't breaking any ground. He has simply applied them (very!) well to the tasks for which they are best suited: simple machines with limited behaviors.
If he had provided a set of equations or even just a pseudo-algorithm for breaking down complex, adaptive behaviors into multiple interlinked AFSA's, he would have significantly advanced AI, but I saw no such evidence in this book review.
nun (Score:2)
Slashdot and Pr0n in one easy to swallow pill.
I drove to work on autopilot... (Score:4, Insightful)
Much of what you do each and every day occurs in spite of the ability I just asked of you. Your brain is not responsible for thinking about how to walk (at least not after you learn how). You peripheral nervous system handles such actions.
When humans create a robot in the fashion of Rod Brook, they are training a system analogous to our own peripheral nervous system. Why force the machine to learn to walk when we can tell it how to walk from our own experience (knowledge of physics, etc).
The exact implementation Brook uses may not scale, but analogous programming options exist that could scale, and IMHO, approaches addressing immediate actions/reactions should be built into robots as described.
From the interview it seems Brook admits the need for serious processing power to reach the "next level", but shrewdly points to the fact that spending all of your time thinking and not doing is not a good way to get anything done.
If you can't walk and chew gum at the same time...
Why Humanoid Robots? (Score:2, Insightful)
robots? nay we are the borg. (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe the robots are going to be us, except for advanced machinery in manufacturing the "happening" thing will be integration and interfacing of electronics and biocircuitry with ourselves. You will think and your interface will retrieve data from storage attached to you.
Electronics can monitor your bloodstream for diseases, lack of resources, and the like, and synthesize whatever is required. Good for anyone with a genetic defect or an illness. Good for your general health & wellbeing.
The advantages are so enormous these technologies will be used in that manner. You will probably want to have it. But you'll also realize that at that moment you are not only vulnerable to hackers that try to access your biosystems, also those that create the hardware and software within you are potentially able to upgrade software and firmware that has essentially become a part of your being.
So who will controls that, us, intimately? Open Source at least insures that we will have insight into if not control over who we are developing into...
why is it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Intelligence:
The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.
The faculty of thought and reason.
According to the above AFSM's are the exact principle behind intelligence. Think about how any analysis of the world happens. We don't consider the entire world when we try to catch a ball, we consider the position of the ball and where it will be. We don't take the position of a bird in relation to the ball, or something far away, all that matters is the ball.
Slightly more complex would be hit detection, is there anything close to me? Yes or no...that easy, you'd have a range that it's ok for an object to be in, a range where we should slow down and a range where we fire thrusters to stop.
Simple actions put together equal complex life form.
What are you supposed to do.... (Score:2, Insightful)
What are you supposed to do if you ARE a manically depressed robot?
Brooks... (Score:2)
Sure, life is unfair. Wah wah wah. I just always go nuts when I hear anything by this guy. "One day we'll sell millions of tiny robots in a jar, and they'll clean your TV screen." "Robots are going to change the world." I don't see it, Rod, much as I'd genuinely love to. We need to stay grounded at least a little bit.
Thanks for putting up with my whining. ;) Let the flaming begin.
Re:Brooks... (Score:2)
Should robots control things like lawn mowing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether or not the book actually discusses that, it's a point kind of disturbs me. Honestly, vacuuming floors and mowing the lawn are not that hard. Having to look after yourself also gives you a sense of responsiblity, IMHO. I'm not sure I'd want a robot doing these things for me.
While tools have become more and more comprehensive in helping humans solve tasks (and humans have come to depend more on those tools), humans are still usually the ones directly in control. You push or steer the lawnmower, you move the vacuum where you want to clean, etc. If I had a robot do these things, all of a sudden it's the robot deciding when and how these things are done, and not me. On the other hand, there are also people who may not have the time or ability to take care of chores like these themselves, and having a robot do them might mean the difference between still being able to live at home, and having to live in a nursing home.
Notes from his talk at Duke (Score:2, Interesting)
I listened to Brooks present the semi-academic version of his talk at Duke. The really fascinating thing about this robot/experiment is that making the robot react to simple cues from the human makes the robot act much more intelligent than it actually is. It may be easier to make a robot that behaves intelligently around humans than it is to make one that intelligently explores mars.
By giving the robot the ability to recognize eyes and where the human is looking, it can pick up cues as to what aspects of the environment are important. By making it maintain a proper conversational distance from the human, it prevents collisions and makes talking to it much more comfortable.
Because the robot responds to its environment, the environment shapes the robot's behavior. If that enviroment is alive and intelligent, the robot's behavior becomes more intelligent than it would normally be. We give off hundreds of little cues that allow us to respond intelligently to each other, and Brooks' work has opened the door to letting robots bootstrap themselves to a higher level of interaction.
Learning Lawnmowers, Robotman! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously! To properly want something, you need a means to know that that desire is or is not satisfied, and a means to move closer to achieving your desire - just like Genghis' leg muscles.
His mower robot needs a laser scanner to light up stalks that stick up too high, a sensor to detect stalks being lit up within maybe 10 feet, a desire to go to spots where that light is seen, and a desire to wander and seek out lit spots if it doesn't see any nearby.
A bit more is needed to handle edge conditions (literally the edges of the lawn and objects in it). It needs the ability to learn where it can't go, and the ability to slowly forget that learning so if it makes a mistake about not being able to get somewhere it can eventually correct itself.
Not PORTRAITS of humans... (Score:2, Interesting)
Take an assembly-line robot, for example. It so happens that a human configuration for an arm (A fairly mobile shoulder, a somewhat limited elbow, a fully-functional wrist, and some sort of manipulator at the end) is very useful. With a system like that you can reach any part of a design. Could you add another joint and achieve more flexibility? Or perhaps give the elbow more degrees of freedom? Naturally, and people have in fact done these things. However, there are a number of good reasons to mimic human design.
First of all, we are innately familiar with the operation of an arm. We have no trouble visualizing just how an arm like our own would move around something - For those who are good with math, this can translate into an easy understanding of the math involved.
Second, lots more work has gone into human-similar models. This means you can draw upon the accumulated design experience of hundreds and thousands of other people even inside the field of robotics.
Finally: Adding more joints/making more capable joints costs more money. In most systems which need to be versatile, the human-mimic system is the most efficient from a cost:capability standpoint.
Robots are like humans where they need to be. When we can make them identical to humans, no doubt some will, while others will feel that that is some sort of travesty. We all know that the big application in robots is the self-mobile realdoll, though, and that's an attempt to make something as much like a person as possible.
You might as well argue that giving birth is creating a portrait, since there is such variation in humanity - And there is still MORE variation between robots.
The world is its own best model (Score:4, Informative)
I have the feeling that this notion works well for simple robots, including lower life forms such as insects. Like Genghis, they simple do "simple" stuff based on simple neural computers that hardly warrant the name. But where Brooks' work falls short, as you can see in the review, is where neurons are clumped into serious computers that do model the world. The worst offenders, of course, are humans. The problem is that have no idea how to wire a robot to do that, and a lot of the behaviors we really want from robots rely on it.
AI still has a long, hard road ahead of it. But we will succeed, eventually, simply by virtue of reverse engineering if nothing else.
Robots and AI, very humbling (Score:2, Interesting)
Its pretty striking to me how different an engineer's life can be depending on his area of interest. There are some topics where we are essentially on the "right track". Some genius has made the initial breakthrough in thinking. Steady progress can be made by moderately intelligent people such as myself by following the premise to its logical conclusions. While I was studying robotics, the Web was really taking off. Ideas spread like wild fire and advances are still being made fairly rapidly.
Other areas of study stagnate for years with random dispersed periods of growth and euphoria followed by periods of disappointment and disillusionment. In AI/machine intelligence, we have had several small breakthroughs that allow us to progress a little before hitting the brick wall again. We're all waiting for someone to make the leap in thought that will allow us to progress.
My opinion now is that we have some fairly specialized approaches that work well in specific circumstances but we are all essentially still on the wrong track.
Rodney Brooks caused quite a bit of excitement in the early '90's with Ghengis and some of his other robots but it wasn't that breakthrough that
we are all waiting for.
From what I understand, if you have read his papers and publications through the years then this book doesn't offer much new information. If you aren't familiar with his work and are interested in the subject then definitely read the book. Even if Brooks doesn't turn out to be the genius who makes the breakthrough, his work has definitely contributed to the field and brings us a little closer.
In the mean time I guess I'll just have to wait for the big breakthrough by building some more little robots to keep me busy. I've been thinking about a little robot with a single board Linux computer for a controller and a WIFI adapter. That way I can sit at my desk or laptop and watch what is going on a tune code and develop behaviors from the comfort of my couch instead of having to track the little bugger down and stick a serial cable in its ass to upload new programs and download data. I was also thinking that I could then give real time performance feedback and let some genetic algorithms and/or neural networks tune the parameters. That should keep me preoccupied for a while while the geniuses work on the really heady stuff.
If you are one of those geniuses, quit screwing around reading
Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (Score:3, Informative)
A great movie! I was the web designer who made the official website [sonyclassics.com] for the movie (hey, be nice, it was done a LONG time ago) and so got to see the movie before it came out. I watched it 3 times, and made others come watch it. It's so very random and disconnected, and then you start to just see it all coming together.
Very good movie, and Rodney Brooks is fun to watch. I highly suggest you rent it...just be prepared to be barraged with non-sequitor scene after non-sequitor scene, without a plot but four intermixed lives revealed.
Re:What would Roger Penrose say! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What would Roger Penrose say! (Score:2)
I think humans are capable of something fundamentally impossible for deterministic computers, but at the same time I think that most of us barely use these facilities. Most of what we do is mundane, and perfectly possible to mimic on a computer. We may not be able to mimic consciousness life, but we may be able to prove that most of us spend most of our lives in a zombified state.
Two things to emphasis: all turing machines are equivalent; speed and intelligence are independent. If it is ever possible to produce consciousness on a deterministic computer, then it is possible on today's hardware. If you had a radio onversation with an intelligent alien who lived 100 light years away, it would take 200 years to get each response - that doesn't mean he is stupid. Similarly, if it is possible to mimic humanity on tommorow's hardware, we should be able to do it, slowly, on today's.
Re:What would Roger Penrose say! (Score:3, Insightful)
Aah, the old paradox. It's based on a false premise though.
To climb a pole, the monkey must move. To move, it must displace molecules of one substance (say air) with that of another (say a monkey hair molecule). In other words, although movement appears to be constant, it is actually a series of discrete steps.
The monkey will reach the top of the pole when its next step cannot be broken down any further - ie. when it has only one molecule of another substance left to displace with its own.
Unless you're into nuclear monkey of course, where it could start splitting up the molecule, then the atoms underneath it and then have a crack at the sub-atomic particles beneath that...
Cheers,
Ian
Re:What would Roger Penrose say! (Score:2)
You know, that's a hell of a lot easier than the way I learnt.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:What would Roger Penrose say! (Score:2)
If I'm following the person who replied to me correctly, then the paradox can be disproved like this:
Suppose the pole is 10m high. Suppose the Monkey climbs at 1m/s (and starts from zero altitude relative to the base of the pole). How long before the monkey reaches the top?
time = distance/speed
time = 10m/1m/s
time = 10s
Following the paradox, the monkey climbs 5m of the pole in 5 seconds, leaving 5m more to climb in 5 further seconds. It then climbs 2.5m in 2.5s, then 1.25m in 1.25s etc.
In other words, no matter how little distance there is to move, there's always enough time left to do it in.
Cheers,
Ian
Asymptotes vs. the Turing Test (Score:3, Insightful)