On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 10:44 AM, Philip Hunt <cabala...@googlemail.com>wrote:
> 2008/12/20 Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org>: > > > > Well, it's completely obvious to me, based on my knowledge of virtual > worlds > > and robotics, that building a high quality virtual world is orders of > > magnitude easier than making a workable humanoid robot. > > I guess that depends on what you mean by "high quality" and > "workable". Why does a robot have to be humanoid, BTW? I'd like a > robot that can make me a cup of tea, I don't particularly care if it > looks humanoid (in fact I suspect many humans would have less > emotional resistance to a robot that didn't look humanoid, since it's > more obviously a machine). It doesn't have to be humanoid ... but apart from rolling instead of walking, I don't see any really significant simplifications obtainable from making it non-humanoid. Grasping and manipulating general objects with robot manipulators is very much an unsolved research problem. So is object recognition in realistic conditions. So, to make an AGI robot preschool, one has to solve these hard research problems first. That is a viable way to go if one's not in a hurry -- but anyway in the robotics context any talk of preschools is drastically premature... > > > > On the other hand, making a virtual world such as I envision, is more > than a > > spare-time project, but not more than the project of making a single > > high-quality video game. > > GTA IV cost $5 million, so we're not talking about peanuts here. Right, but that is way cheaper than making a high-quality humanoid robot Actually, $$ aside, we don't even **know how** to make a decent humanoid robot. Or, a decently functional mobile robot **of any kind** Whereas making a software based AGI Preschool of the type I described is clearly feasible using current technology, w/o any research breakthroughs And I'm sure it could be done for $300K not $5M using OSS and non-US outsourced labor... ben g ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
