> Yes I expect to see more narrow AI robotics in future, but as time > goes on there will be pressures to consolidate multiple abilities into > a single machine. Ergonomics dictates that people will only accept a > limited number of mobile robots in their homes or work spaces. > Physical space is at a premium, and you don't want multiple devices > getting in your way all the time. In a similar manner it's > inconvenient to have to carry around multiple electronic gadgets - > really you just want a single gadget which does lots of things.
My prediction is that, when robotics firms finally get around to working on multi-purpose robots that need to carry out multiple intersecting, interacting activities in messy real-world environments -- THEN they will all of a sudden become intensively interested in work on cognitive architecture and AGI. Work that is of very limited interest to them now since they are working on robots with very specialized functionalities. I don't think that a robot assembling parts in a factory has any more to do with AGI than Google's statistical NLP engine does -- probably less. Embodiment may be a very useful ingredient for AGI systems, but, it's quite possible to do "narrow robotics" and that is what nearly all roboticists are doing, for the same practical reasons that nearly all AI software researchers are doing narrow AI. I agree that the DARPA challenge robots are interesting and are pushing more in the AGI direction than nearly any commercial robotics. It's worthy of note that the most interesting robotics work, from an AGI view, seems to be either -- gov't funded research stuff like the DARPA challenge (most entrants are universities whose research projects live off gov't funding) -- blue-sky R&D projects by big companies with money to burn, such as Honda's Asimo project I.e. the "AGI meets robotics" meme is VERY far from affecting the commercial robotics industry, it would seem. Which is a shame. I would like to break past this barrier by taking Webkinz as an inspiration, and making intelligent robotic toys that do most of their thinking on a remote server farm (and interoperate with intelligent agents in virtual worlds). But this is going to be a number of years in coming, I'm sure.... The cost of really good robotics equipment remains high (from the perspective of a commercially viable robot toy), though decreasing rapidly. -- Ben ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=73963833-0c76f0
