The Energon Pub

I've been watching an anime called Chobits which involves computers that look like humans called persocoms and there are a special type called Chobits which are capable of sentient thought. It got me thinking about other scifi stuff that involved AI.

*Melfina from Outlaw Star
*The movie AI
*Terminator (to an extent)
*Bioroids from Appleseed

This really got me thinking that with the rate technology is growing, how soon will it be until we are able to create computers capable of free thought and even procreation? At what point will the difference between man and machine become so blurred that they could in fact become the same species? What kind of political and moral issues would we be facing?

As far as AI... I'm not sure if I believe it's possible. Yeah, we'll one day program a machine to mimic learning, but then it's just programmed to save information and interpret it how we told it to. A machine with AI would more precicely be a machine that can spontaneously learn if it doesn't have the capacity to, like a calculator.

Take a first-person-shooter: some of the more modern ones can learn a player's tendencies and respond, but that's just how we've programmed it. If the player does move #1 a few times, the game will respond by doing move #1b. If the player learns to counter move #1b, the computer will modify it into #1b 2.0. So take that a few steps and a few technological advancements further and we can have something that looks so much like AI and yet only be programmed to learn. If person A has said this, then interpret it, modify your save files how we've told you, and regurgitate some response. But it would be no different.

I remember an old 20 questions game that would "learn," but what it would really do is ask you yes or no questions, you'd respond, and when it narrowed an answer down, it would guess (say a sheep). If it was wrong (say you had in mind an orangutan), it would ask you what question it could use to differentiate between a sheep and an orangutan. But it wasn't learning; it was just adding a question to a database somewhere.

AI might just have to be something that can learn but originally had no mechanism to do so. It's not like Short Circuit, where something gets struck by lighting and suddenly it has the capacity to think in ways its coding can't account for.

If we do find a way and I'm wrong, that is going to be one seriously messed up Pandora's Box.

As for procreation, you'll have to further define it. If that just means reproducing, we already have that. An assembly line is a perfect example.

If you mean when will machines become "alive," we also have that, in a manner of speaking. Living things generally breathe, reproduce, produce waste, eat.... Well, as I said, assembly lines reproduce, cars and industrial plants produce waste, machines "eat" fuel and battery power. They're clearly not alive, but we can find each characteristic of a living thing in technology, just probably not all in the same thing. I don't think even scientists have been too successful in nailing a clear definition of life that fits the spirit of what life is.

When I talk about machines procreating, I'm not talking about an assembly line. I'm referring to the possibility that intercourse could eventually become a way for new machines to be made.

Take Melfina from Outlaw Star for example. She's an android that is actually a living breathing being capable of sentient thought and reproduction with either other androids or humans.

I'm not saying this is a for sure thing I'm worried about. I just got around to thinking about it and it kind of became one of those "what if" questions that interesting to discuss.

I know for a fact that Christian and political groups would be constantly deabting whether or not a machine could be considered a living being. I even wonder what would happen if machine could cross breed with humans. What kind of can of worms would we be opening if that ever happened?

I know the odds of something like this actually happening are like 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%, but it's an interesting topic to think about.

Does anyone remember that movie with Robin Williams? He played a robot who eventually made himself into a human. The movie questioned the same issues.

The movie was based on a 1976 Isaac Asimov short story, which did it better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bicentennial_Man

As for creating a sapient machine - the idea has been around for centuries, if not millennia. Based on current research levels in AI, it seems to me that we're not going to see anything approaching that level for at least another fifty years, if not longer. While I might live to see semisapient smart systems, I'm not betting on it.

The robot COG from the MIT has AI, but his creator said himself that it'll take COG another 50 years till he has the intelligence of a 6 month old baby.

but I do think that some where in the future we'll have AI like in science fiction books, comics and movies.
But to actually get that far I'm sure we'll take around 70-100 years.

I don't really think there are moral issues here, I mean if we create robotic "life" what have we done wrong? isn't giving life a good thing?

Geminii wrote:the idea has been around for centuries, if not millennia.

Millenia? I'd buy centuries--though even 100 years might be a stretch--but you'll have to provide a link to prove the idea's been around for millenia. I know mechanical things have been around since B.C., but they were operated by weights and pulleys or some other way. The idea of giving a robot real intelligence even 1,000 years ago seems preposterous, especially since robots the way we know them today have existed since... maybe the 1920s (the lines are a bit blurry to give a specific date). 1,000 years ago was 1009. I highly doubt we had anything like we have today, and even moreso that we were thinking of the possibility of AI.

Me, Grimlock! wrote:

Geminii wrote:the idea has been around for centuries, if not millennia.

Millenia? I'd buy centuries--though even 100 years might be a stretch--but you'll have to provide a link to prove the idea's been around for millenia. I know mechanical things have been around since B.C., but they were operated by weights and pulleys or some other way. The idea of giving a robot real intelligence even 1,000 years ago seems preposterous, especially since robots the way we know them today have existed since... maybe the 1920s (the lines are a bit blurry to give a specific date). 1,000 years ago was 1009. I highly doubt we had anything like we have today, and even moreso that we were thinking of the possibility of AI.

Well the oldest known robot was designed by Leonardo Da Vinci but that was nowhere near having intelligence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_robot
So yea it's more like hundreds of years then millennia.

Me, Grimlock! wrote:

Geminii wrote:the idea has been around for centuries, if not millennia.

Millenia? I'd buy centuries--though even 100 years might be a stretch--but you'll have to provide a link to prove the idea's been around for millenia.

Golems.

Yes, it is important to create life, but at what point would humans consider robots to be living?

Let's say there currently is robotic life right now. They look like us and can procreate either with themselves or create hybrid offspring with humans. How would living strutures be defined at that point?

At which point will technology actually become organic?

I'd say it's safe to assume that is this were to happen, some people would start to fear it and try to stop it. It would be another civil rights movement.

I know what might help this discussion. There will be no more talk about how something like this is still years away from happening. Let's assume that robots that are sentient and alsmot human are among us now and have been for the past couple years. Let's even say a couple of births have happened and the first marriage between a man a machine is soon approaching.

With this in mind, what do all of you think we'll be dealing with?