With the advent of more advanced neural networks, and earlier animatronic robots (such as featured at Epcot Center in Walt Disney World), the stage now appears to be set for the creation of female robots- at least according to Arturo Arsenio, a Ph.D. candidate working in the Humanoid Group of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT.
While an "amorous" robot is still a ways off, Arsenio asserts that at his initial phase, creating mathematical frameworks for tuning networks of neural oscillators - the control of rhythmic motions in head or other parts is on the horizon. More subtle degrees of motion (not so jerky) would confer the equivalent of a socialization personality. According to Arsenio, though such a robot would not have the capability of facial expressions, it would express emotions via its varying postures.
Within several generations, of likely quantum dot neural interfaces, we may see robotics merged with the biological organism itself. This is already an emergent field: The potential already exists for emotions emanating from the brain’s amygdala, or hippocampus to be regulated by appropriately installed, advanced computer chips such as quantum dots.
Indeed, ordinary people may also be willing to seek the advantages of installed quantum or other mini-electronic components in their brains. Perhaps to regulate or ameliorate anger (such as some frothing at the mouth teepees require who are unable to post temperate comments on this blog), or addiction, depression or other misfiring of the natural, non-computered brain. And if these can be incorporated within 4-5 years, then their interfacing with advanced AI robotics in an amorous robot is fully within the scope of possibility.
But would this be a good thing? My take is emphatically 'No!'. Arsenio appears to agree as he was quoted in a recent newspaper article as averring:
"Personally, I won't work on such a technology. I don't think benefiting humanity will be in that direction. My direction will be in developing robots that could improve human situations...such as for amputees..."
So, Arsenio is prepared to work within his specialty up toward refining a specific motor capability but no farther, and I commend him for that.
I believe that already over attachment to technology has exacted a fearsome price in human relations, and actually caused the social fabric to degenerate to hitherto inconceivable levels. People who post online comments, without being face to face, have no compunction in using any sort of intemperate language - that they'd never use if face to face with the actual person. Others, using Facebook technology, employ that venue to attempt to bully their peers.
Meanwhile, political blogs (which btw, this one isn't - it only occasionally delves into that arena) sometimes go off half -cocked and exact a price, such as Andrew Breitbart's blog which impetuously attacked a black government worker with wild claims of racism, costing her a job she loved. (Well, let me correct that, the Administration reacted without getting all the facts, expediting her firing, when they ought to have been much more cautious about right wing blog claims)
Other commentators (e.g. Mark Bauerlein, in The Dumbest Generation) have noted the decline of even basic communication skills, logic and language mastery, much of it attributable to over use of computers, Facebook lingo and the like, and concomitant lack of reading (and not only e-books, since as a recent Scientific American article pointed out, there's no chance any ancient books like Aristotles' 'Nichomachean Ethics' will be found on Kindle even in the next 200 years, if that!)
So the last thing we need now is an amorous robot, female or other, to further de-humanize us. What we do need is to get away from the technology every now and then and remind ourselves there's a real world out there with real people in it, and we should be doing more than connecting in an ersatz way with blips, words and numbers flashing on computer monitors.
While an "amorous" robot is still a ways off, Arsenio asserts that at his initial phase, creating mathematical frameworks for tuning networks of neural oscillators - the control of rhythmic motions in head or other parts is on the horizon. More subtle degrees of motion (not so jerky) would confer the equivalent of a socialization personality. According to Arsenio, though such a robot would not have the capability of facial expressions, it would express emotions via its varying postures.
Within several generations, of likely quantum dot neural interfaces, we may see robotics merged with the biological organism itself. This is already an emergent field: The potential already exists for emotions emanating from the brain’s amygdala, or hippocampus to be regulated by appropriately installed, advanced computer chips such as quantum dots.
Indeed, ordinary people may also be willing to seek the advantages of installed quantum or other mini-electronic components in their brains. Perhaps to regulate or ameliorate anger (such as some frothing at the mouth teepees require who are unable to post temperate comments on this blog), or addiction, depression or other misfiring of the natural, non-computered brain. And if these can be incorporated within 4-5 years, then their interfacing with advanced AI robotics in an amorous robot is fully within the scope of possibility.
But would this be a good thing? My take is emphatically 'No!'. Arsenio appears to agree as he was quoted in a recent newspaper article as averring:
"Personally, I won't work on such a technology. I don't think benefiting humanity will be in that direction. My direction will be in developing robots that could improve human situations...such as for amputees..."
So, Arsenio is prepared to work within his specialty up toward refining a specific motor capability but no farther, and I commend him for that.
I believe that already over attachment to technology has exacted a fearsome price in human relations, and actually caused the social fabric to degenerate to hitherto inconceivable levels. People who post online comments, without being face to face, have no compunction in using any sort of intemperate language - that they'd never use if face to face with the actual person. Others, using Facebook technology, employ that venue to attempt to bully their peers.
Meanwhile, political blogs (which btw, this one isn't - it only occasionally delves into that arena) sometimes go off half -cocked and exact a price, such as Andrew Breitbart's blog which impetuously attacked a black government worker with wild claims of racism, costing her a job she loved. (Well, let me correct that, the Administration reacted without getting all the facts, expediting her firing, when they ought to have been much more cautious about right wing blog claims)
Other commentators (e.g. Mark Bauerlein, in The Dumbest Generation) have noted the decline of even basic communication skills, logic and language mastery, much of it attributable to over use of computers, Facebook lingo and the like, and concomitant lack of reading (and not only e-books, since as a recent Scientific American article pointed out, there's no chance any ancient books like Aristotles' 'Nichomachean Ethics' will be found on Kindle even in the next 200 years, if that!)
So the last thing we need now is an amorous robot, female or other, to further de-humanize us. What we do need is to get away from the technology every now and then and remind ourselves there's a real world out there with real people in it, and we should be doing more than connecting in an ersatz way with blips, words and numbers flashing on computer monitors.
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