Sidney Perkowitz Quotes

Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men.

Through our evolution, we're so specialized for social interaction. So, if you can really design robots that can interact with people, in this very natural, interpersonal way, I think that would be great. You wouldn't have to have people read manuals, in order to operate them.

I see technology as being an extension of the human body.

I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans. And I am rooting for the machines.

In a few years the androids will be working for us. Let’s hope that we never have to work for them

R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)

I hope people can envision a future where we as humans have robots that are alongside us, assisting in our daily lives.

Someday in the distant cyborg future, when our internal and external memories fully merge, we may come to possess infinite knowledge. But that's not the same thing as wisdom.

Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings.

I just want the future to happen faster. I can't imagine the future without robots.

When you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.

Robots have gotten steadily more capable, but humans' expectations that robots should have minds keeps biting robot developers.

The concept of the robot encapsulates both aspects of technology. On one hand it's cool, it's fun, it's healthy, it's sexy, it's stylish. On the other hand it's terrifying, it's alienating, it's addictive, and it's scary. That has been the subject of much science-fiction literature.

I can't imagine that life can be replaced with a computer universe. I can't accept it.

We humans have a love-hate relationship with our technology. We love each new advance and we hate how fast our world is changing... The robots really embody that love-hate relationship we have with technology.

Looking ahead, future generations may learn their social skills from robots in the first place. The cute yellow Keepon robot from Carnegie Mellon University has shown the ability to facilitate social interactions with autistic children. Morphy at the University of Washington happily teaches gestures to children by demonstration.

Robots are interesting because they exist as a real technology that you can really study - you can get a degree in robotics - and they also have all this pop-culture real estate that they take up in people's minds.

Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first.

Artificial Intelligence is one of those areas where we should be proactive in controlling it rather than reactive. If we are reactive, by the time we will do the necessary things, it will be too late. Robots can do everything better than we [humans] can.

New technologies, however remarkable they might seem, are fundamentally just tools made by people for people.

I think the 'Terminator' idea is a reasonable one - that is that one day the Internet becomes self-aware and simply says that humans are in the way. After all, if you meet an ant hill and you're making a 10-lane super highway, you just pave over the ants. It's not that you don't like the ants, it's not that you hate ants; they are just in the way.

Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There's more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it's awfully close to human.

There will come a time when the human race and super intelligence will coexist to create a richer and happier life.

My obsession is with technology and how it can improve human life. In my view, what we have seen in the last 300 years is only a trailer.

I'm fascinated by the idea that a human connection can be triggered through inanimate devices.