So, I’ve just embarked on my usual morning peruse of the BBC News headlines. I skimmed over the best April Fools pranks, news of the economy recovering (sure we’ve heard that already) and pictures of snow in Scotland (sure we’ve seen that already) to stumble across a story that could have been out of a sci-fi story. It was titled ‘Man VS Machine’.
Now I can reassure you that this was not a story similar to the plots of The Terminator or I, Robot but it certainly reminded me of them. I scrolled down to the link and two eyes stared back at me; one human, one robotic. I clicked.
What loaded was an article about the scientific progression in developing artificial intelligence. This is basically the theory and development of computer systems to perform tasks that would usually require human intelligence, like visual perception.
The first thing on this article was a video, so I clicked play and allowed myself to be impressed. The video showed a reporter meeting Professor Owen Holland from the University of Sussex, and the world’s first anthropomimetic robot. (Don’t worry, I didn’t know what that meant either…)
For all the non-scientists reading this, anthropomimetic means simply that this robot mimics the human body. Professor Owen Holland believes that without a body, artificial intelligence cannot exist because the human form helps shape the way the brain works.
The reporter, somewhat apprehensive looking, attempted to squeeze and shake hands with this robot…which squeezed and shook hands back. Yes. The robot responded to the human contact. Ok, it only mimicked it, but it’s a massive progression from things like Poo-chi or Furby that responded to human words because it had been programmed to. (I remember getting annoyed that my robotic dog could only bark so many songs…)
Is this an impressive development?
Well, yes. But it’s not the only impressive robot we’ve seen….remember the Honda robot? I’m sure you know what I’m talking about; that little thing must be famous now. Well in 2008, I went to the British Motor Show with my Dad and brother and remember this little robot walking on stage at the end of a stunt show. It walked on and shook hands with the guy with the microphone. And unless I’m very much mistaken, it did a little dance before walking off. Is that not amazing?!
So…if science progresses at the current rate and the world doesn’t end this year, will the future see robots being a commonality amongst our society? Will we have personal robots, one for each household? Admit it…having your own personal robot would shift that ironing pile a hell of a lot quicker!
Maybe I’ll have my own robot and call it Sonny…
What’s that you say? Beware of what you wish for?
Quite right too. As much as I admired Will Smith in I, Robot I don’t know how well I’d cope if robots turned around on the human race. And if every household had a personal robot that could do everything humans can do, what would be the point in us? Except for producing more robots? We’d be robot-producing humans churning this technology out like cogs in a factory...we’d be like robots.
Yes, I’m getting very H.G.Wells here, predicting a devastating future of technology…but is there not an old saying, something like ‘curiosity killed the cat’?
Of course, we have more intelligence (supposedly) than our feline friends to be able to better handle our curiosity, but I’m just saying…what if our future became artificial?
