The Future Of Robots And Androids
Android For hundreds of years people have had a dream that they could create mechanical helpers for man. Indeed, some of these creations have been quite bizarre, though basically they were just machines. An example of one of these machines was Steam Man. Steam Man became famous when he was written about in 1865 by Edward S. Ellis. Ellis was a teacher and an American author and he also knew the person that patented the invention that came to be known as the Steam Man. While The Steam Man had what appeared to be two arms and two legs and a head, that is where its resemblance to us ended. It had no intelligence of any kind and was more or less just a repackaged steam engine. Years later another similar machine called Boiler Plate was constructed. It was constructed in 1893 by Prof. Campion. It was just another strange steam engine. If we consider spring action figures as being robotic, then we have to go back even further into history to find the first robots. Leonardo da Vinci created a spring action lion that was capable of traveling a short distance and executing a few different actions. If we go back to waterpower we find that the ancient Greeks were capable of making figurines spin and dance and even do several other things. I think we have to admit that none of these objects were really robots, in the sense of what we think of today. The first thing we should do is clarify the difference between a robot and an android in our minds. When we talk about androids, we are talking about a synthetic organism, or a robot that is designed to mimic a human. There are many other robots around that were designed just to perform certain tasks. An example of a task performing robot might be the robot that one would find on an assembly line building cars. This robot would look nothing like a human being, and perform the same task over and over. It probably would look more like one large mechanical arm. Another type of robot might be a machine mounted on treads that is used by police departments all over the world to retrieve bombs. These types of robots have truly helped humans avoid some of the dangers associated with police work. Not all robots have had safe histories however. One of the problems with human and robot interactions is accidents. While it may not be murder on the part of the robot as is sometimes depicted in science fiction, the human is nevertheless just as dead. It is claimed that the very first person to be killed by a robot was a Mr. Robert Williams. He was working in a factory in 1971 and somehow died from an interaction between himself and presumably an assembly line robot. There are not many details about his death. The second person to be killed by a robot, had a much more detailed description about how it happened. The name of the second person to die at the hands of a robot was Kenji Urada, he was a 37 year old maintenance engineer at a Kawasaki factory. One of the robots on the assembly line failed and Mr. Urada was fixing it. Unfortunately he forgot to turn the power off and when the robot came back online, he was pushed into a grinding machine and died. This certainly was not a calculated act as these robots possess no intelligence whatsoever, it was more like a person and a robot trying to occupy the same space at the same time.
Medical Robot When you look at the early days of robotics, you have to say to your self what has really changed? The answer to that has to be that several things have changed and maybe the most important thing of all is that we have now taught robots how to kill people. Some of you might say that they do not know of any cases where robots are killing people. To these people I have to say that they are forgetting about the robot drones that we have been employing for several years now. We send these robot planes out to targets and dispatched them, killing everyone in that area. It is very easy to forget that these drones are just flying robots. The military is also employing robotic gun stands mounted on treads that they can send into buildings to kill who is in them. Right now these robots possess little or no knowledge of their own, but will this be true in the future? There is much experimentation going on that would allow robots to make decisions on their own. One event that I have talked about before, was a close call that a few soldiers had while testing a robot. While the robot was being walked out into a field for testing it aimed its gun at the soldiers that were bringing it to the field and it was about to fire. Quick thinking by one of the soldiers avoided a disaster. That soldier moved the gun with his hand. Will we have a trial someday where an intelligent robot is accused of killing a man and given the same rights to defend himself as we are? Sure this sounds crazy, what if some lawyer argues that a robot of the future is a sentient being and therefore should be given the same rights as a human being? This may not be as far-fetched as many people imagine. Another question might turn out to be when does a human being stop being a human being? Could there be some point where so many parts of a human's body have been replaced that the person is no longer considered a human? Would this type of person be an android, a robot, or still be considered human? This type of question may be one of the stickiest legal questions of all in the future. Many scientists believe that it will be impossible to know if a robot, or android has truly become sentient. To put this in clear terms the scientists believe that they may not be able to tell whether a robot only looks alive because of clever programming, or is actually thinking for itself. Part of this debate is starting to be answered and that answer is a surprising one. Several scientists have decided that the way to go with robots is to give them a biological brain. So far these brains are only composed of about 10,000 rat neurons, but these morons are actually able to learn. An example of this, as incredible as it sounds, is a type of robot that has been used to fly an advanced military aircraft simulator. It had a tiny rat brain and yet it was able to learn how to control the plane after several tries, where it crashed the plane into the ground. As it learned, it was then able to fly the plane through the worst kind of weather, which was a feat that an experienced pilot would have a hard time performing. As the neurons and cells in this home grown rat brain increase, will scientists move on to the brains of more advanced creatures? Will they try and somehow culture part of a human brain in the future? Let's admit it, it certainly does seem to be the logical step somewhere along this line, doesn't it? If you have a biological brain, then it is much harder to deny the fact that the brain is living. It might even turn out that these brains will be able to assess a situation and take action based upon different options. Another point might be that when you have a biological brain, eventually it becomes much harder to control than a computer brain. Could these biological brains turn on us sometime in the future?
Predator Some human beings become addicted to certain things. These things are not always things that are taken into the body. An example of this might be somebody that is addicted to gambling. For some reason these types of people cannot resist that type of behavior. Could a biological brain succumb to an addiction and what would this addiction cause? We do not know how to prevent these addictions in humans, so how could we possibly prevent them in other biological brains? What if a machine with a biological brain started to enjoy killing people? Would it just stop when we told it to, or would it decide for itself that it needed more targets? If this were the case and it did decide it needed more targets, would it turn on its masters? There is also another very big question that has to be answered. There are certain situations in which humans could be driven to madness. An example of this might be a situation where they are deprived of other human contact for extended periods of time. Could our artificial biological brain suffer from these types of situations. Imagine if we launched a group of biological brained drones at a target and some of them have gone mad. What would the result be? There might also be moral implications to creating these types of brains, especially if we create ones that are on a par with humans. There is no doubt that the future is going to bring the great merger between man and machine and we can already see the beginning of it now. As I said before, will there ever be a time when so much of a human is replaced with biological parts that the human loses his or her humanity? Most scientists believe that as long as a human retains their brain, they are still entirely human. There are a few however that believe that replacing too much of a human will lead to some sort of madness, because of the trauma and the huge difference between that person and the rest of society. There might even be some sort of segregation by normal humans that effects bionic humans. One unfortunate side to the human race is that they do not like difference. If some people perceive that a person is no longer a human, even though it really isn't true, they may start to perform intolerable acts against this person. We can only hope that we will never reach this stage again. We do not know if artificial biological brains will even be feasible in the long run, but I had to discuss this possibility since much of the research that is going on right now pertains to this type of brain. It could turn out that this type of brain would not be dependable, or on the other hand it could also turn out that this type of brain would be far more dependable than an electronic one. I think that the next 10 years or so are going to be the most important years in robotics. By the end of that time we should know if we can build more advanced bionic brains that will be practical. |
