Frankenstein Complex

Mar 20, 2008 11:20

I have a friend with what I see as an irrational fear of Robots.
Everytime I remind him of the three laws of robotics he insists that if programmers of Artificial Intelligence have done their job right then the Robots should theoretically be able to ignore those laws.

I thought about this, and he has a point. Humans have the capacity to ignore life-preserving compulsions such as sleeping, eating, and/or hygiene to the point where they’ll end up sitting on a toilet for two years with no problem at all, so why not Robots?

Personally I like to think that the inevitable AI driven Robots of the future will have greater reasoning skills and abilities beyond humans. For instance, Stanford has developed a 3-D camera with 12,616 lenses, which would be one very impressive “eye” with which to view the world.

But a camera is hardware and it’s easy to argue that robots will have better vision since nobody would make a flawed camera.
So then why would one create a flawed AI?

Take Phobot for example:
“When first exposed to a fear-inspiring object - in this case, a menacing larger robot - the Phobot retreats and then spins in circles. It overcomes its "fear" by getting comfortable with small robots and working its way up to large ones - mimicking the psychological principle of ‘graded exposure.’” -The Associated Press

I suppose the question that should be asked is whether or not fear is a flaw.
Batman sure thinks so.

INSERT: Just found this video which supplements the entry rather well.

robot, batman, phobot, ai, onion, fear

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