6 ms·

Ancient dreams of intelligent machines: 3,000 years of robots

38 points by Hooke 8y ago

al_ramich 8y ago
3,000 years of imagination and it falls on this generation and our kids to define how it will all play out.
- rhaps0dy 8y ago
  Born too late to explore the world Born too early to explore space But born just in time to explore the consequences of strong AI!
  - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
    >> But born just in time to explore the consequences of strong AI! There's nothing to suggest we know how to create strong AI, or that we will have any idea any time soon. It will most probably take several human generations before we can even get close to anything resembling human intelligence implemented in software or hardware.
    - al_ramich 8y ago
      True, but you could argue that this generation will define what that path to general AI will look like... ethics, laws, regulation, warfare... certainly in this generation we will see a huge impact on the society which doesn't require human-level intelligence in AI.
    - emiliobumachar 8y ago
      What signals do you expect will be in place in the world five years before the creation of human-level general AI? Dog-level general AIs barking around?
      - arethuza 8y ago
        Just so long as nobody decides to build an AI by uploading a cat mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando
      - al_ramich 8y ago
        Think there are a few of those around already. Guys at Boston D seem to have a keen interest in creating dog-level general AIs with some pretty impressive robotics HW.
        simonh 8y ago
        The Boston Dynamics robots don’t have the computational AI equivalence of even a fruit fly - and not even that by many orders of magnitude. Dogs use their intelligence for an awful lot more than just walking around objects. Dogs have complex social hierarchies and social behaviour, a wide range of emotional responses, they communicate, participate in group tactical hunting activities requiring planning and executing coordinated attacks, they exhibit sexual behaviour, they can learn to respond to audible and visual commands. They are also vastly more agile than the Boston dynamics robots, able to climb three dimensional environments, jump through gaps and swim, and they can practice and independently choose to learn to do these things entirely autonomously.
        al_ramich 8y ago
        Not sure I implied that Boston Robotics dogs have dog level intelligence but you have to admit that they are making fascinating progress around HW and robotics. SW/AI side is definitely still at the basic, single function type of intelligent level and will take much longer to achieve. But progress both on HW and SW side and the pace at which the progress is happening is pretty impressive. Clearly, the AI side and the current approaches with the focus on machine learning and neural networks will need to evolve to be much more multifunctional/general. Who knows maybe it will be Machine Learning 2.0... or it might be a completely new approach to AI more aligned to biotech/human brain or maybe something completely else. Time will tell.
      - 8y ago
    - tim333 8y ago
      >There's nothing to suggest we know how to create strong AI, or that we will have any idea any time soon. There's the advance of hardware such that it may be possible to run a simulation of a human brain for example. Also as hardware reaches human levels, things like self driving cars start working which leads lots of bright researchers to pile into AI which leads to advances in the algorithms. That stuff is happening now, not in several human generations.
      - mannykannot 8y ago
        The hardware for a whole-brain human simulation is not the limiting factor - if we had the hardware right now, we wouldn't know how to program that simulation. Of course, the Agile Manifesto says you can develop systems without having a requirements specification or detailed design beforehand, but it also says that questions about when it will be done are off-topic.
  - al_ramich 8y ago
    Spot on. Although in our retirement age we might get to explore the moon or mars at least. But not too happy about not being born a couple of centuries later to see what warp 9 feels like.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    If you believe in strong AI during our lifetimes, that should increase your expected likelihood for exploring space.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
a_d 8y ago
The article’s final paragraph: >”Every robot rebel has its benevolent counterpart, such as C-3PO in the Star Wars franchise or the android child David in Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Both kinds of stories, the hopeful and the fearful, reveal to us our complex emotional responses to AI. Understanding these and their deep history is crucial to making the most of life with intelligent machines.” The authors interchangeably use robots, automata, AI (meaning AGI, I am guessing) — that makes for a confusing read. If they mean AGI, then nothing about how humans dealt with robots will likely prepare us for how to deal with an exponentially fast learning, super smart, intelligence. I would argue that learning from history would be anchoring ourselves to wrong ideas (ideas of incrementalism). To prepare for AGI, we need to think quite differently and radically, in some sense.
- leoreeves 8y ago
  Indeed, I recommend Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom, which explores this topic in great depth, including the control problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_control_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_control_problem
  - Isamu 8y ago
    Thanks, I will read this. I think in general the reasoning I see in this area is very poor. I think, since people have a hard time understanding their own intelligence, let alone sub- or super-intelligence, that they just project all kinds of human foibles onto it.
AndrewOMartin 8y ago
The oldest actual automata mentioned in the article is explored (including mechanics and a demonstration) in this YT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LBlusUD3Kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LBlusUD3Kg Note that Hero is credited, and the date is 10-70 AD, but Hero's contribution was to posit the mechanism by which the theatre worked, which was first described by Philon of Byzantium in the late third century BC! [Source: My thesis, submission deadline 28 September 2018 ;)]

38 points by Hooke 8y ago

al_ramich 8y ago

3,000 years of imagination and it falls on this generation and our kids to define how it will all play out.

rhaps0dy 8y ago
Born too late to explore the world Born too early to explore space But born just in time to explore the consequences of strong AI!
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  >> But born just in time to explore the consequences of strong AI! There's nothing to suggest we know how to create strong AI, or that we will have any idea any time soon. It will most probably take several human generations before we can even get close to anything resembling human intelligence implemented in software or hardware.
  - al_ramich 8y ago
    True, but you could argue that this generation will define what that path to general AI will look like... ethics, laws, regulation, warfare... certainly in this generation we will see a huge impact on the society which doesn't require human-level intelligence in AI.
  - emiliobumachar 8y ago
    What signals do you expect will be in place in the world five years before the creation of human-level general AI? Dog-level general AIs barking around?
    - arethuza 8y ago
      Just so long as nobody decides to build an AI by uploading a cat mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando
    - al_ramich 8y ago
      Think there are a few of those around already. Guys at Boston D seem to have a keen interest in creating dog-level general AIs with some pretty impressive robotics HW.
      - simonh 8y ago
        The Boston Dynamics robots don’t have the computational AI equivalence of even a fruit fly - and not even that by many orders of magnitude. Dogs use their intelligence for an awful lot more than just walking around objects. Dogs have complex social hierarchies and social behaviour, a wide range of emotional responses, they communicate, participate in group tactical hunting activities requiring planning and executing coordinated attacks, they exhibit sexual behaviour, they can learn to respond to audible and visual commands. They are also vastly more agile than the Boston dynamics robots, able to climb three dimensional environments, jump through gaps and swim, and they can practice and independently choose to learn to do these things entirely autonomously.
        al_ramich 8y ago
        Not sure I implied that Boston Robotics dogs have dog level intelligence but you have to admit that they are making fascinating progress around HW and robotics. SW/AI side is definitely still at the basic, single function type of intelligent level and will take much longer to achieve. But progress both on HW and SW side and the pace at which the progress is happening is pretty impressive. Clearly, the AI side and the current approaches with the focus on machine learning and neural networks will need to evolve to be much more multifunctional/general. Who knows maybe it will be Machine Learning 2.0... or it might be a completely new approach to AI more aligned to biotech/human brain or maybe something completely else. Time will tell.
    - 8y ago
  - tim333 8y ago
    >There's nothing to suggest we know how to create strong AI, or that we will have any idea any time soon. There's the advance of hardware such that it may be possible to run a simulation of a human brain for example. Also as hardware reaches human levels, things like self driving cars start working which leads lots of bright researchers to pile into AI which leads to advances in the algorithms. That stuff is happening now, not in several human generations.
    - mannykannot 8y ago
      The hardware for a whole-brain human simulation is not the limiting factor - if we had the hardware right now, we wouldn't know how to program that simulation. Of course, the Agile Manifesto says you can develop systems without having a requirements specification or detailed design beforehand, but it also says that questions about when it will be done are off-topic.
- al_ramich 8y ago
  Spot on. Although in our retirement age we might get to explore the moon or mars at least. But not too happy about not being born a couple of centuries later to see what warp 9 feels like.
- adrianN 8y ago
  If you believe in strong AI during our lifetimes, that should increase your expected likelihood for exploring space.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

a_d 8y ago

The article’s final paragraph: >”Every robot rebel has its benevolent counterpart, such as C-3PO in the Star Wars franchise or the android child David in Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Both kinds of stories, the hopeful and the fearful, reveal to us our complex emotional responses to AI. Understanding these and their deep history is crucial to making the most of life with intelligent machines.” The authors interchangeably use robots, automata, AI (meaning AGI, I am guessing) — that makes for a confusing read. If they mean AGI, then nothing about how humans dealt with robots will likely prepare us for how to deal with an exponentially fast learning, super smart, intelligence. I would argue that learning from history would be anchoring ourselves to wrong ideas (ideas of incrementalism). To prepare for AGI, we need to think quite differently and radically, in some sense.

leoreeves 8y ago
Indeed, I recommend Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom, which explores this topic in great depth, including the control problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_control_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_control_problem
- Isamu 8y ago
  Thanks, I will read this. I think in general the reasoning I see in this area is very poor. I think, since people have a hard time understanding their own intelligence, let alone sub- or super-intelligence, that they just project all kinds of human foibles onto it.

AndrewOMartin 8y ago

The oldest actual automata mentioned in the article is explored (including mechanics and a demonstration) in this YT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LBlusUD3Kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LBlusUD3Kg Note that Hero is credited, and the date is 10-70 AD, but Hero's contribution was to posit the mechanism by which the theatre worked, which was first described by Philon of Byzantium in the late third century BC! [Source: My thesis, submission deadline 28 September 2018 ;)]