quote: Original post by pentium3id
Im going to show you a living being, that has for all preactical pusposes conquered the planet, and he cant do anyhting on your list, ants:
- an ant cannot repair itself: less energy is spent on "building" a new ant
- 99.9999999999% of all ants on this planet have never heard of sex, or reproduction...
- an ant is quite incapable of adapting to situations she wasn''t pre-programmed to. Yes, at first glance everybody is going to argue that ants are super-adaptable, and i agree, ants are, a single ant isnt...

I don''t think your example of ants interferes at all with Zolcos ideas. You say an ant is intelligent but ants are. But Zolcos used the plural too I think the ant model fits well to the robot world - there won''t be a single robot type (like the generalised human) doing every task. It''s pointless and wasteful.

More likely there would be worker robots, robots what repaired/replaced worker robots, and then robots that controlled underlings (ie the "queen". Look at the Borg - it''s the way to go...

I reckon the scariest "robots taking over the world" scenario is where microscopic nano-bots (bacteria bots?) reproduce endlessly and cover the world in gray goo. No intelligence needed, no repairing needed, just cheap easy reproduction and evolution. Mind you, imagine all the cool things we could do with "good" nanobots. They could fly around my loungeroom and change the channel for me.

I think theres a better chance in the next 20 years or so getting miniature swarm robots to work well than indivual superintelligent humanoid ones.

Hmm...if you realy want to find out what is going to happpen to robotic socity in the next fiew years, I sugest reading a amazingly good book(yes, you will actualy have to do that think you learnd in schoool called ''read'') called Out of Control by Keven Kelly.

Even tho it was written in 1994, this book still contains lots of introsting informations about systems and robotics. And, many of his predictions 80% of them are happening right now as we speak.

The machine automotive system will be like a bee hive. However, dont mistake that the machines and programs will have a monarchy system. They will have a nural/democratic system. What that means is that each machine operates independently of its function, and only changes its functions when outside stimuly is imputed. Add a group of machines/programs, the machine world whould adapt like a super-organisum.

You see, even tho we call it the Queen Bee, this is just a name. A place holder, like our presidents. Her only job is to produce more babies, and make shure there genetics match there function for better success. The rest of the workers are actualy independet of each other, only adapting when certant information is suplyed. For example, if they run across a flower that is in polination, they will go over and sip its nector. The only time when they do socal status is when the vote on something. Yes, bees anctualy vote befor they go out of the hive. Thus, they retain there own induvidualty, while keeping the "super-organism" in balanced. Just like humans....

Anyway, just read Out of Control. Keven Kelly can explain it much better than I can! -.-;

Woah there sidepocket. Find yerself a spell checker...

On that comment about grey goo - That is an idea thought up by the same kinda ppl that think GM crops will grow legs and start running into ppls houses to kick their pets. It is a gross exageration of what could possibly happen.

And why should the robots take over the world? Why do you think that robots will think just like humans? S. Lem in his book "GOLEM XIV" (1981), writes about super computers, which becomed more inteligent than humans - but they don''t want to take over the world - they don''t care about humans, politics.

quote: Original post by Scrambles
I think theres a better chance in the next 20 years or so getting miniature swarm robots to work well than indivual superintelligent humanoid ones.

Then your government will insert this nanothings into your body when you are born and will monitor all you do. And if you do something against the law, the nanobots will automatically practice a lobotomy into you.

They will be able to make you stop when police shuts you to stop or even to die.

That will be the ultimate man-made freedom.

Machines will NEVER EVER NEVER think like humans. Why? Well, for one, the human brain is not accurate enough to warrant spending billions to reproduce one. We forget, lie, cheat, steal, mis-interpret, exaggerate, make unfounded leaps of logic. Basically, we do everthing wrong when out into a context of a ''robot'' or ''machine''. Another reason, for a machine to think like a human, it would require all the sensory inputs we have. A robot would not be able to make inferences about items in its world they way we do unless it could ''see'' it the way we do. More than likely, a robot will have some senses above and beyond our scope, and others not at all. Robots would prolly have IR or UV seeing ability, or be able to hear sound in frequencies impossible for us. So it will see its environment completely different than we do. Also, for it to be human-like, it would require a human life span to obtain and filter and process the information. Human brain is theorized to be able to make 1 quadrillion calculations per second. Perhaps our brains potential actually hinders us, as we try to maximize our knowledge capacity, but until we can make a robot brain with that computing power, it will take ungodly amounts of time to build up neural development the way a human can. Perhaps specialization is the key and can overcome the current limitations of time and technology. As this was all started from a Terminator 3 inspired question, look at the terminators. Yes autonomous and self sufficient, but extremely specialized.

pentium3id, ants do rule. I find it amazing that with all human technology we have now, we can put people on the moon, send probes to mars, know what a star 100billion light years away is made of, its size, its gravity, yet we cannot even come anywhere close to making a machine as efficient or small as the ant.

And I agree, if ants wanted to, they could annihilate mankind in a matter of days or weeks, but luckily for us, we are insignificant to them in their plan for universal domination... =)

Stonicus I made the exact same observation while I was at the park with my girlfriend. She asked what I was thinking about because I was sitting in the grass staring at the cement pad around a picnic table, (I was watching the ants react to the food dropped while we ate lunch). She thought I was nuts

I think that eventually we will develop more and more complex artificial intelligences, but once we develop one that has the ability to adapt itself (on an individual level, such as an android, or on a social level such as a robotic swarm) then it will be out of our hands. The builder-bots responsible for maintaining and building new robots will develop more specialized robots, and as the specialized functionality is reduced in size the trend will again shift towards generalization to create a more robust system.

The key I think will be promoting systems that can adapt. I also agree that we will never be able to create a functional AI that behaves like a human, however we will be able to simulate human functionality by mirroring all of the chemical reactions that the body goes through each section (there are projects to create this kind of system for individual cells, and I think that the simulated organism is an extension of this).

i HATE robots. they are freaky. i was watchin somethin on tv, and this robot in japan has human facial features and can move its face to certain emotions. and one robot could already move by itself and stuff. it was freaky! >.< i don''t want any robot in my house. unless its those toy ones. lol