A.I. will make it possible for the Internet to directly engage people in the real world, through robotics and drones and little machines that will do smart things by themselves.
Above all, I would not expect a wise race, at great expense, to set loose an army of self-replicating robots.
If you look at the field of robotics today, you can say robots have been in the deepest oceans, they've been to Mars, you know? They've been all these places, but they're just now starting to come into your living room. Your living room is the final frontier for robots.
The automatic machine, whatever we thinkof any feelings it may or may not have, is the precise economic equivalent of the slave.
Most of the robots being developed for home use are functional in design - Gecko's homecare robot looks rather like the Star Wars robot R2-D2. Honda and Sony are designing robots that look more like the same movie's 'android' C-3PO.
It is easy to make a simple machine which will run toward the light or run away from it, and if such machines also contain lights of their own, a number of them together will show complicated forms of social behavior.
Robots are great. I am saying that now so that when a future civilization of robots takes us captive, they will search through the 'Guardian' web archive and realise I said, 'Robots are great,' and then they'll choose to save me.
We could have human intelligence in orbit around Mars, building things there.
Generally, people's fear and hesitancy regarding greater computerization comes from a George Orwell/'1984'-based metaphor of a single computer or data base where all your information is stored, knows everything about you, and can use this information at will and for evil purposes.
People are fascinated by robots because they're machines that can mimic life.
As a geek, I take umbrage at the notion that chips are not sexy. But yes, robots, drones, satellites and self-driving cars are the kinds of things that excite me.
No one knows when a robot will approach human intelligence, but I suspect it will be late in the 21st century. Will they be dangerous? Possibly. So I suggest we put a chip in their brain to shut them off if they have murderous thoughts.
Being a sci-fi geek myself and going to movies all my life, I came to the conclusion that there were really two camps of how robots have been designed. It's either the tin man, which is a human with metal skin, or it's an R2D2.
Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I'll stay down here and get the data. But nobody's ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody's ever named a high school after a robot. So when I don my public-educator hat, I have to recognize the elements of exploration that excite people. It's not only the discoveries and the beautiful photos that come down from the heavens; it's the vicarious participation in discovery itself.
The further a device is removed from human control, the more authentically mechanical it seems, and the whole trend in technology has been to devise machines that are less and less under direct human control and more and more under their own apparent will.
Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few simple instructions such as 'go left', 'go right', and 'build car'.
Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.
The name iRobot comes from 'Internet-connected robot.'
I would much rather we concentrated on the immediate, still-potent dangers, such as nuclear weapons, runaway climate change, and so on. Sort those out, then worry about Hal 9000.
We're seeing the arrival of conversational robots that can walk in our world. It's a golden age of invention.
One of the concepts essential to molecular manufacturing is that of a self-replicating manufacturing system. That concept has lagged behind in its acceptance.
If you replace a soldier with a machine, you take away the possibility of the soldier or the policeman to not do something the state asks of him. He may think it's unethical to do it. A machine doesn't have that critical perspective.
A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but our own.
In the Age of the Almighty Computer, drones are the perfect warriors. They kill without remorse, obey without kidding around, and they never reveal the names of their masters.
Robots... I think that is a hot topic.
