Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.
You are currently browsing the archive for the AI/Robotics category.
A couple more robot links to go with a robot girlfriend link from a day or two back.
The first, Robotic Navi-Bear as Annoying as It Is Cute | Autopia from Wired.com, is the fusion of a talking teddy bear with a navigation system for drivers.
The second, Tartalo the robot is knocking on your door, is about a robot being built in Spain the can navigate around the wider community by recognising people’s homes.
Another step in the direction of virtual companions? See Japan makes robot girlfriend for lonely men
Related links: Greenflame · Computer companions: Are they possible?
Clearing out old web links I’d saved over the past few months I came across this one.
John La Grou’s reflections, microclesia >> AI Jesus, on interacting the AI Jesus over at www.godsbot.org.
I went to hear Prof Maggie Boden speak tonight on Computer companions: Are they possible?. The main thrust of the talk was that computer systems (robotic and simulations) are being created to serve three main types of roles:
Boden argued that these sort of systems are in various stages of development now (particularly for commercial deployment), and that they raise a whole range of questions that go beyond the purely technical ones of whether or not functional ’sociable’ robots/system are possible.
These are similar questions to some that have come up in my own research so they weren’t a surprise to me, but given the discussion after the talk they were new to some there.
Update: Radio New Zealand’s Sunday Morning programme had an interview with Margaret Boden at the weekend which covered some of this material. You can listen for a while here (MP3).
Related material - a quick selection of papers, essays and books by Boden that I’ve found interesting:
Boden, Margaret A. 1985. Wonder and Understanding. Zygon 20 (4):391-400.
______. 1987. Artificial intelligence and natural man. 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books.
______, ed. 1990. The philosophy of artificial intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
______. 1995. Artificial intelligence and human dignity. In Nature’s Imagination: The frontiers of scientific vision, edited by J. Cornwell. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
______. 1998. Creativity and Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence 103 (1-2):347-356.
______. 2005. Ethical Issues of AI and Biotechnology. In Creative Creatures: Values and Ethical Issues in Theology, Science and Technology, edited by U. Görman, W. B. Drees and H. Meisinger. London: T & T Clark.
Margaret Boden is also speaking on What is creativity? : Wednesday 20 February 5.30pm, at the Gus Fisher Gallery as part of her time at the University of Auckland.
See also: Exploring Our Matrix: Robots in the News
A new user-driven blog relating to transhumanist ideas, and in particular, the technological singularity. See On Singularity:
The “People Power for the Third Millennium: Technology, Democracy and Human Rights” symposia from The Centre for Bioethics & Public Policy in the UK looks interesting, though being held in London means I’m hoping they’ll be something published out of them for a wider audience.
The first symposium, “Robots & Rights: Will artificial intelligence change the meaning of human rights?”, was a couple of days ago, and other upcoming topics include:
iRobot have produced a new household robot (’ConnectR’) that allows you to partake in family life when you can’t be there in person. The small round robot allows you to see, hear and follow your loved ones around, as well as allowing you yo talk to them, all via wireless connectivity at home and an internet connection wherever you are.
More details on the product at iRobot Corporation: About ConnectR.
Hat tip to TidBITS Tech News: CES 2008 Day 3: Robots and Wrap-up.
Oh, and there’s a video of it in action over at Geekanerd - Video Games, Comic Books, Movies, and All Things Geek!: Digital Life: Two Minutes With the iRobot ConnectR.
Incarnational or excarnational living - the choice is yours. But somehow it doesn’t beat tucking the kids into bed in person, nor sharing the evening meal together.
In his post Exploring Our Matrix: Robots in the News, James McGrath points to not only the new Star Wars developments but also a couple of articles/books about robots and how we perceive them in terms of possible consciousness and relationality.
Reminds me of this quote from Ray Kurzweil’s article “The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine” (from Scientific American) where he says,
Sometime early in the next century, the intelligence of machines will exceed that of humans. Within several decades, machines will exhibit the full range of human intellect, emotions and skills, ranging from musical and other creative aptitudes to physical movement. They will claim to have feelings and, unlike today’s virtual personalities, will be very convincing when they tell us so.
As McGrath says, the issue will not be whether or not we can definitively assign agreed concepts of consciousness or personhood to synthetic systems, but whether our conscious and unconscious interactions with such systems will have already forced us to decide how we will treat them.
Well, not quite the insect robots of the movie in the title, but definitely in a similar area. A cheap humanoid robot being developed in Bangladesh. See Bangladeshi develops humanoid robot from scrap | Technology | Reuters.
One of the perennial questions that comes up when people think about robots and artificial intelligence is the ‘does it have a soul?’ question. A more significant question might be ‘can the robot dance?’ That, in itself, might be a sign the that robot has ’soul’ 
Japanese Robot Keepon Dances to Spoon Hit, “Don’t You Evah” (YouTube link of the music video at this site).
In spite of all the hype around robots and the ‘eschatological’ dreams connected to things like the transhumanist singularity, this robotic application actually looks useful. See Using a Robot to Teach Human Social Skills.
Related link: MIT - Robotic Life - The Huggable: A Robotic Companion for Therapeudic Applications
Interview with Rodney Brooks, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab on where he thinks robotics will go in the future. See Sizing up the coming robotics revolution | Newsmakers | CNET News.com.
Various links related to convergent technologies (nano-, bio-, information technologies and cognitive science):
Just erased and reinstalled everything on the iBook to get over the wobbles it was developing at the end of the thesis writing. In the process found these links I’d saved earlier.
Ashley X links:
Other links
Living on Earth: The Future of Robotics has both the audio and a transcript from the radio episode about humanoid robotics. Useful introductory piece for discussion.
A good example of some of the current research that is leading towards “augmented intelligence”. Ultimately, the robotic system will pick up the human user’s intentions and then use its own artificial intelligence to achieve that goal. I like the non-invasive approach which differs from other approaches such as BrainGate. More at ScienceDaily: Researchers Demonstrate Direct Brain Control Of Humanoid Robot.
This article talks about how intelligent software agents might transfer between various “bodies” in order to achieve certain tasks. So you own “personal assistant” software might follow you around the house, making itself available as it incarnates itself in different technological artifacts. Spooky, possums.
See Wired News: The Seoul of a New Machine.
Resonates with the idea of a “familiar” or personal spirit that accompanies you through the day, assisting you when needed. Though, I guess, “guardian angel” might also be another analogous term.
Vernor Vinge’s presentation of the technological singularity back in 1993 (PDF here) talked about the scenario where human intellect is augmented through better communications networks and human-computer interfaces. Here’s a recent article in the Boston Globe that picks up on the “intelligence augmentation” (IA) within contemporary settings. See Souls of a new machine - The Boston Globe.
Brief article on CNet about robots that are aware of their own bodies. See Researchers unveil a self-aware robot | CNET News.com.
Related to an article published this month in Science.
Abstract at: Resilient Machines Through Continuous Self-Modeling — Bongard et al. 314 (5802): 1118 — Science
Auxiliary files: Resilient Machines Through Continuous Self-Modeling — Bongard et al. 314 (5802): 1118 Data Supplement - Supporting Online Material — Science.
I’ve found Cynthia Breazeal’s robotics research both interesting and theologically provocative, and I’ve referred to her book “Designing Sociable Robots (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents)” in several places in the thesis.
PBS is running a profile on her on their scienceNOW web site (including video later this week). Links there to various slideshows, articles etc. See NOVA | scienceNOW | Profile: Cynthia Breazeal | PBS.
Related links:
Cynthia Breazeal’s home page at MIT Media Lab.
Greenflame: God In The Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity And God
Robotic Life - sociable robots
Kismet (robot)
Article on recent developments of humanoid robotics in Japan - including the possibility of robot avatars allowing spatial interaction providing things like presence and share objects of attention. See globeandmail.com: Say hello to your robot self.
Related links:
Related books:
Article I found today in a footnote in a book. If you kick a robotic dog, is it wrong? | csmonitor.com
What do you think?
Mark over at Reflections… wanted some more details about last Friday’s talk. So here are some links to related things:
All these things contribute to the sense the traditional boundaries are being lost. Human life is now found in the borderlands between what used to be clearly separated categories in the world.
I’ve been skimming through cognitive scientist/philosopher Andy Clark’s book “Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence” over the past couple of days and came across this bit near the end of the book.
The drive toward biotechnological merger is deep within us—it is the direct expression of what is most characteristic of the human species. The task is to merge gracefully, to merge in ways that are virtuous, that bring us closer to one another, make us more tolerant, enhance understanding, celebrate embodiment, and encourage mutual respect. If we are to succeed in this important task, we must first understand ourselves and our complex relations with the technologies that surround us. We must recognize that, in a very deep sense, we were always hybrid beings, joint products of our biological nature and multilayered linguistic, cultural, and technological webs. Only then can we confront, without fear or prejudice, the specific demons in our cyborg closets. Only then can we actively structure the kinds of world, technology, and culture that will build the kinds of people we choose to be.
Clark’s ideas about the hybridity of human beings bears striking similarity to Philip Hefner’s metaphor of humans as ‘created co-creators’. For Clark, it is human beings existing in a symbiotic relationship between human and technology, whereas for Hefner it is the human being as the fusion of biological conditionedness and cultural freedom. Clark’s definition of a cyborg goes beyond the typical Star Trek or Bionic Woman visions:
For we shall be cyborgs not in the merely superficial sense of combining flesh and wires but in the more profound sense of being human-technology symbionts: thinking and reasoning systems whose minds and selves are spread across biological brain and nonbiological circuitry.
And this is coupled with the drive to create (seen also in Hefner’s idea of the drive toward self-transcendence being part of nature) where Clark asserts:
By contrast it is our special character, as human beings, to be forever driven to create, co-opt, annex, and exploit nonbiological props and scaffoldings. We have be designed, by Mother Nature, to exploit deep neural plasticity in order to become one with our best and most reliable tools. Minds like ours were made for mergers. Tools-R-Us, and always have been.
Clark’s approach is techno-optimistic, where the benefits of technology outweight the problems. However, he does dedicate a chapter to the perceived downsides of living in a world of where technology is ‘the air that we breathe’. This serves as a useful, albeit brief, starting point for such discussions.
Chapter 1 of the book is available at the OUP web site on the like above. Some interesting ideas, and I like how he clearly reaffirms the place of the body in a technological society.
Forbes Magazine has an article online about robots cropping up in real life - from vacuum cleaners to Lego. Associated with it are a couple of slideshows. See The Robots Are Coming! - Forbes.com
For an example of how mainstream they are becoming, the NZ Listener is offering the prize of the robotic vacuum cleaner to a lucky subscriber. We just renewed our subscription and it’d be nice to get a robot to play with.
Continuing the process of organizing reference material I’ve generated a non-exhaustive bibliography for the engagement of religion with artificial intelligence. It’s available here (PDF), and also from the sidebar on the front page.
Some material got culled from the more extensive collection, including a range of articles from Christianity Today in the 1980s about robots, but what’s there should be a helpful for someone wanting get started in this area. Of course, this should be supplemented with a bibliography on contemporary and traditional issues in Christian anthropology. (This is left as an exercise for the reader)
After managing to find this week’s NZ Listener (it gets delivered 7 days before the week it’s for, and often gets misplaced) I see the lead article is on the accelerating pace of technological change. A quick skim though highlights that it picks up on genetics, robotics and nanotechnology in the typical popular fashion. I’ll go back and read it in depth later today. Still, maybe an accessible article on those technologies. See New Zealand Listener | Issue 3454 | July 22-28 2006.
I was struck by the cover this week too. Very like Herzfeld’s book cover below, and you can find similar images at most online stock photo sites by searching for things like “robot” and “cyborg”.
Report on the American Association for Artificial Intelligence celebrating 50 years of AI research. See Wired News: The Wisdom of Robots.
Article here on the BrainGate, a device the integrates the human brain with computer systems.
Using an array of hair-thin electrodes implanted in his brain, a 25-year-old quadriplegic man was able to operate a computer, open and close a prosthetic hand, and manipulate a robotic arm just by thinking about it, according to a new study. Such a brain-computer interface may one day help restore movement and communication to people paralyzed from spinal cord injuries, strokes, and disorders such as muscular dystrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
See Mind Over Matter — Wickelgren 2006 (712): 1 — ScienceNOW.
Well, I still can’t do it - but this robot can. In about 36 seconds. Watch the video at TechEBlog » Rubik’s Cube Solving Robot.
A couple of links relating to ethical considerations of emerging technologies.
No sex please, robot, just clean the floor - Sunday Times - Times Online notes the call by some for ethical guidelines to be developed with respect to robot/AI research. Ethical guidelines for both developers and users.
BetterHumans.com : An uplifting evening with James Hughes. Simon Smith ponders whether you should make your pet (or other animals) more intelligent if you had the power to do so. Again some interesting reflections here (though Deep Blue Sea did come to mind seeing as dogs and cats are carnivores).
Article I missed when it came out a few months back, but directly connected to the thesis edits for next week.
See Science & Theology News - I, robot? Ethical considerations of cyborgs
Crittenden said cyborgs may provoke humanity to engage in what he calls “self-deselection†— the idea that in replacing parts of our bodies with mechanical devices we will essentially be replacing ourselves with another species. Our technologically based culture is the first step in the descent toward self-deselection, he said.
“Although many scholars see positive uses of the cyborg imagery,†he writes, “I argue that they downplay, or in many cases entirely ignore, the dangers. Dangers that, if they come to pass, are apocalyptic.â€
Wow. Maybe the commercial spinoff will be a TV you can change channels on without having to move any muscles. See Wired News: Brain Waves Make Robot Move
In a video demonstration in Tokyo, patterns of the changes in the brain taken by an MRI machine, like those used in hospitals, were relayed to a robotic hand.A person in the MRI machine made a fist, spread his fingers and then made a V sign. Several seconds later, the robotic hand made the same movements. Further research would be needed to decode more complex movements.
Picked up a copy of Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids by Sidney Perkowitz this week from the university bookshop. It looks quite interesting and I admit that once I saw the blurb on the back about science fiction movies - just after I’d edited some similar ideas in my introduction - I was keen to get it. From the back,
Robots, androids, and bionic people pervade popular culture, from classics like Frankenstein and R.U.R. to modern tales such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator, and A.I. Our fascination is obvious and the technology is quickly moving from books and films to real life.
…
Digital People examines the ways in which technology is inexorably driving us to a new and different level of humanity. As scientists draw on nanotechnology, molecular biology, artificial intelligence, and materials science, they are learning how to create beings that move, think, and look like people. Others are routinely using sophisticated surgical techniques to implant computer chips and drug-dispensing devices into our bodies, designing fully functional man-made body parts, and linking human brains with computers to make people healthier, smarter, and stronger.
Anyway, what is interesting in another way about this book is how it’s published. If you go to the publisher’s web site you can order a paper copy, buy a PDF (they have paper + PDF combos), buy a PDF of a chapter, sample a PDF, and search or browse the full text of the book.
Your book, delivered how you want it. Cool.
Short video clip at EVTV1 of a humanoid robot - She´s A Robot. Not quite Commander Data but more realistic than some other attempts.
A couple of links. The first to a robot that is controlled by the behaviour of a slime mould that has been integrated with control circuitry, and the second link a robot (EcoBot II) that is powered by a Microbial Fuel Cell that produces energy from dead flies and rotten fruit. See New Scientist Breaking News - Robot moved by a slime mould’s fears and Energy Autonomy: Towards a truly Autonomous Robot.
Radio documentary from Radio Netherlands that was broadcast in the “Windows on the World” slot on National Radio last night. There’s a Real Audio stream on the following page RNW: Man and machine, part 1. Here’s the blurb from that page,
From the myth of Pygmalion down to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to films such as Metropolis, Blade Runner and I Robot, we can see a rich vein of creativity sparked by our fascination and our horror at the idea of artificial life.
Just finished re-reading this paper as I tidy some things up.
Rosenfeld, Azriel. “Religion and the Robot: Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Religious Anthropologies.” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought 8 (1966): 15-26.
It’s forty years old, written when AI hype was greater than today, but it still raises some good questions. For example, “What is a ‘human being’ for the purposes of religion?”
Rosenfeld approaches the topic looking for halakhic precedents, including reflection on material written about golems, which makes interesting reading.
Article here from The Korea Times about government efforts to implement various robotic solutions for policing, security and military purposes in the near future. See The Korea Times : Police, Army Robots to Debut in 10 Years.
Brings back memories of Knight Rider, Short Circuit (No. 5 is alive!), K-9 and Robocop (of course).
Article on the Economist web site observing the love for robots in Japan. Has a few religious points of contact too. See Japan’s humanoid robots | Better than people | Economist.com.
Related to this is the Robotic Life group at MIT. Head over and have a look at their site. On their publications page they have some papers you can download that would fit with the article above, especially the ones about robots as collaborative partners.
Another interesting article is Wired News: Monsters of Photorealism which comments on the ideas of Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. Mori asserts that the more real you try to make a simulacrum of the human being - a robot or in VR/video games/films - the less convincing they become, to the point of becoming disconcerting or even repulsive. (See also Uncanny Valley - Wikipedia.)
Anyway, that’s enough random thesis connections falling out of my head for today.
This week’s BBC Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’ programme is on artificial intelligence. More information at BBC - Radio 4 In Our Time - Artificial Intelligence including links to the MP3 file (podcast is only up until the next one replaces it on Thursday).
‘In Our Time’ is one of my favourite podcast programmes. It’s long enough to get some good discussion from the panel and has a good range of topics over the course of a season.
Saw this a while back in my copy of Robo Sapiens but there some interesting comments here on robot-assisted surgery. See : American Heart Association: Robotic surgery-stenting combo opens coronary arteries, speeds recovery.
Robo Sapiens robot surgery photo by Peter Menzel here.
IST Results - Robo-rodent gets ‘touchy-feely’ with artificial whiskers.
Robots that ‘feel’ objects and their texture could soon become a reality thanks to the innovative and interdisciplinary research of the AMouse, or artificial mouse, project.
See also IST Results - Embodying artificial intelligence for some general discussion on A.I.
Off on Friday night to hear this public lecture at BCNZ by biblical scholar Joel Green. I’ve referred to some of his work in my thesis so it’ll be nice to put a voice to the articles. More details at Bible College of New Zealand - Events - Joel Green - What are They Saying About the Soul?
Green’s got an article online over at Catalyst that touches on some of what I’m expecting him to talk about. It’s available at Catalyst: Body and Soul, Mind and Brain: Pressing Questions. From that article he raises some of the following questions:
Some good questions, especially the ones about mission. One of the good things about teaching the course “Humanity and Hope” last year was the space to ponder how the combination of our understandings of eschatology and of Christian anthropology shapes our activism.
In his introduction to the collection of essays in the book “Understanding Artificial Intelligence” Rodney Brooks raises the following five questions relating to A.I. Having noted that much of the inspiration for A.I. research (and the related fields of A-life etc.) comes from people - that they walk, talk, see, think and do, he asks,
More in his books and interviews,
Wow - this could make a lot of difference in developing robots (not just humanoid ones) that respond/react to the environment in ways that mimic humans. The sociable robotics crowd who see intelligence emerging out of human-like interaction with the world will be happy, I imagine. See: Humanlike robot skin developed | Betterhumans > News
A flexible artificial skin has been developed that could give robots the ability to sense touch and temperature.
…
“It will be possible in the near future to make an electronic skin that has functions that human skin lacks,” they write.
I guess you could make clothing out of it too. Imaging gardening gloves that told you the temperature of the soil while you worked it - or something linked back into a human-worn haptic interface.
Article on the use of robots for the care of the elderly in Japan. One of the systems talked about here, the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL), is effectively an exoskeleton that augments the person’s muscle strength. In effect it creates another form of cyborg, not dissimilar to those seen in the cinema, video games and comic books.
See: STUFF : Japan looks to robots for elderly care.
A researcher at Japan’s University of Tsukuba, Sankai has developed a robotic suit designed to make it easier for elderly people with weak muscles to move around or for care-givers to lift them.The sleek, high-tech get-up looks like a white suit of armour. It straps onto a person’s arms, legs and back and is equipped with a computer, motors and sensors that detect electric nerve signals transmitted from the brain when a person tries to move his limbs.
When the sensors detect the nerve signals, the computer starts up the relevant motors to assist the person’s motions.
See also:
Science & Theology News : NASA developing human-like robots.
The goal of the Ames Research Center is to create a robot that acts, responds and interacts naturally with humans. In order for this to occur, robots must possess traits such as self-awareness and human-awareness.
The Buzz Report: Enter the robots - CNET.com is a brief survey of robots seen at the International Expo in Japan.
Ordered God In The Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity And God today. Always good to find a book directly related to your thesis topic.
Hollywood to the halls of NASA, robots loom large in the popular imagination. But what feelings do these lifelike machines really provoke in us? In God in the Machine, Dr. Anne Foerst draws on her expertise as both a theologian and computer scientist to address the profound questions that robots such as Cog and Kismet raise for us all: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have a soul? And what do robots teach us about our relationship with God?
I’ve read Anne Foerst’s material over the past few years and it’s been helpful in seeing how someone set out to establish a dialogue between theology and artificial intelligence, and weaves in her interpretation of what the image of God is and how that relates to AI.
There’s a very brief article here (KurzweilAI.net - Robot : Child of God) written by her with general responses posted below it for those of you who are interested.
Meanwhile, over at MIT…
Robotic Life - sociable robots
The Sociable Robots project aims to build capable and appealing robots that can physically interact, communicate with, and learn from people in familiar human-oriented terms.
My fieldtrips for my research often tend to be to the movies. Movies such as the Matrix trilogy, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Star Trek: Nemesis and today I, Robot serve as a source for thinking about human nature in relation to technology.
In her book on technoculture Lelia Green comments on the increasing number of contemporary narratives that are being told about machine-human interaction.
Cyborgs and science fiction form an area of popular culture which seems to have increased in importance as technology has become more integral to our cultures and our communities. This burgeoning interest in narratives about the future, and about parallel universes, may indicate a desire to understand and explore the present. In speculating about others we are also speculating about ourselves.
Furthermore she says,
Through films such as Blade Runner and The Matrix, our society tells itself stories about what it is to be human in a world where humans are increasingly influenced by, and dependent upon, technology and technocultures. Here the myths of loss and longing are played out in the context of technologically driven futures, where machines can feel feelings and have roles with more humanity in them than the �people� characters do.
I’d definitely put “I, Robot” in this category.
Issues to do with dehumanization, human-machine fusion, technological dependence, the essence of humaness, the relationships between the concepts of body, mind and soul, and the place of love all come out in this film. More so, I think, than did in the slower-paced and “deeper” “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (though there are moments in that film that are equally provoking).
I enjoyed “I, Robot”, both as an intellectual vehicle for my research and as a story. The ending of the movie with it’s “what next?” questions leaves it open for continuing discussion. Hopefully, they don’t make a sequel.
Wired Magazine Issue 12.07 (July 2004) was themed around “Human Being 2.0″ with lots of interesting articles related to “I, Robot”.
Interesting essay by Roz Picard at MIT on Does HAL Cry Digital Tears?
Are emotions a desirable property for computers to have? It’s hard to imagine someday walking into a computer store and saying, “Give me the most emotional machine you’ve got.” After all, isn’t possessing the highest form of rationality one of the hallmarks of computers? Aren’t Mr. Spock and Data the unemotional patron saints of computer scientists? Imagine how a computer with emotion might work — perhaps it would have to feel interested before it would listen to what you have to tell it. On the face of it, emotions in computers sound absurd. After all, didn’t emotion cause HAL to malfunction?
Spent an hour and a half this afternoon watching the documentary Synthetic Pleasures (1996) by Iara Lee as part of my research and also to get some discussion questions for Monday’s lecture on being or becoming human in Western technoculture. Couldn’t get hold of a copy in NZ so ordered it in from overseas post-haste.
IMDB’s plot summary says
Conceived as an electronic road movie, this documentary investigates cut