I just read a good sci-fi book exploring how that might start to
happen, Zendegi, by Greg Egan.
The end up with the maxim:
> If you want to make it human, make it whole.
Apparently there really is a "Human Connectome Project" trying to make
a digital map of the brian.
On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 5:22 PM, Bill! <[email protected]> wrote:
> Edgar,
>
> No, not 'enlightened' robots - finite-state (digital) processing robots who
> are 'self-aware'.
>
> When they start seriously working again with analog processing to emulate
> human thinking I'll start taking more notice.
>
> ...Bill!
>
> --- In [email protected], Edgar Owen <edgarowen@...> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Permanent Address:
>> > http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=automaton-robots-become-self-aware
>> > Automaton, Know Thyself: Robots Become Self-Aware
>> >
>> > Droids met the challenge of perceiving their self-image and reflecting on
>> > their own thoughts as part an effort to develop robots that are more
>> > adaptable in unpredictable situations
>> >
>> > By Charles Q. Choi | Thursday, February 24, 2011 |
>> >
>> > BOTTY IMAGE: An artist's depiction of a robot reflecting on itself. Image:
>> > Victor Zykov, Cornell University
>> >
>> > Robots might one day trace the origin of their consciousness to recent
>> > experiments aimed at instilling them with the ability to reflect on their
>> > own thinking.
>> >
>> > Although granting machines self-awareness might seem more like the stuff
>> > of science fiction than science, there are solid practical reasons for
>> > doing so, explains roboticist Hod Lipson at Cornell University's
>> > Computational Synthesis Laboratory.
>> >
>> > "The greatest challenge for robots today is figuring out how to adapt to
>> > new situations," he says. "There are millions of robots out there, mostly
>> > in factories, and if everything is in the right place at the right time
>> > for them, they are superhuman in their precision, in their power, in their
>> > speed, in their ability to work repetitively 24/7 in hazardous
>> > environments—but if a bolt falls out of place, game over."
>> >
>> > This lack of adaptability "is the reason we don't have many robots in the
>> > home, which is much more unstructured than the factory," Lipson adds. "The
>> > key is for robots to create a model of themselves to figure out what is
>> > working and not working in order to adapt."
>> >
>> > So, Lipson and his colleagues developed a robot shaped like a four-legged
>> > starfish whose brain, or controller, developed a model of what its body
>> > was like. The researchers started the droid off with an idea of what
>> > motors and other parts it had, but not how they were arranged, and gave it
>> > a directive to move. By trial and error, receiving feedback from its
>> > sensors with each motion, the machine used repeated simulations to figure
>> > out how its body was put together and evolved an ungainly but effective
>> > form of movement all on its own. Then "we removed a leg," and over time
>> > the robot's self-image changed and learned how to move without it, Lipson
>> > says.
>> >
>> > Now, instead of having robots modeling their own bodies Lipson and Juan
>> > Zagal, now at the University of Chile in Santiago , have developed ones
>> > that essentially reflect on their own thoughts. They achieve such thinking
>> > about thinking, or metacognition, by placing two minds in one bot. One
>> > controller was rewarded for chasing dots of blue light moving in random
>> > circular patterns and avoiding red dots as if they were poison, whereas a
>> > second controller modeled how the first behaved and whether it was
>> > successful or not.
>> >
>> > So why might two brains be better than one? The researchers changed the
>> > rules so that chasing red dots and avoiding blue dots were rewarded
>> > instead. By reflecting on the first controller's actions, the second one
>> > could make changes to adapt to failures—for instance, it filtered sensory
>> > data to make red dots seem blue and blue dots seem red, Lipson says. In
>> > this way the robot could adapt after just four to 10 physical experiments
>> > instead of the thousands it would take using traditional evolutionary
>> > robotic techniques.
>> >
>> > "This could lead to a way to identify dangerous situations, learning from
>> > them without having to physically go through them—that's something that's
>> > been missing in robotics," says computer scientist Josh Bongard at the
>> > University of Vermont, a past collaborator of Lipson's who did not take
>> > part in this study.
>> >
>> > Beyond robots that think about what they are thinking, Lipson and his
>> > colleagues are also exploring if robots can model what others are
>> > thinking, a property that psychologists call "theory of mind". For
>> > instance, the team had one robot observe another wheeling about in an
>> > erratic spiraling manner toward a light. Over time, the observer could
>> > predict the other's movements well enough to know where to lay a "trap"
>> > for it on the ground. "It's basically mind reading," Lipson says.
>> >
>> > "Our holy grail is to give machines the same kind of self-awareness
>> > capabilities that humans have," Lipson says. "This research might also
>> > shed new light on the very difficult topic of our self-awareness from a
>> > new angle—how it works, why and how it developed."
>> >
>> > One potential application they have tested for self-aware machines is with
>> > a model bridge, with sensors continuously monitoring vibrations across its
>> > frame to develop a self-image of its "body". "In simulations we've shown
>> > that it could identify weakened joints a lot sooner than via traditional
>> > civil engineering methods," Lipson says. "The bridge isn't going to
>> > suddenly wake up one day and say hello, but in a primitive sense you can
>> > say it has self-image, enough to turn on a red light if something's wrong."
>> >
>> > A key question for this research concerns how far it can actually go.
>> > "These are very simple robots, maybe eight or a dozen moving parts, so
>> > it's relatively easy to construct models of everything. But if you scale
>> > it up, will it still be able to make a good model of self?" Bongard asks.
>> > "That question also extends to social robots observing a human or
>> > something else complex. The question of scalability is what research is
>> > examining at the moment."
>> >
>> > Intriguingly, the research also revealed what mental illness robots might
>> > develop. For instance, the starfishlike robot that developed a body image
>> > "spontaneously developed 'phantom limb' syndrome, thinking it had arms and
>> > legs where it didn't," Lipson says. "As robots become more complex and
>> > evolve themselves, we could see the same kinds of disorders we [humans
>> > can] have appear in machines."
>> >
>> > Lipson detailed his team's research February 19 at the annual meeting of
>> > the American Association for Advancement of Science conference in
>> > Washington, D.C.
>> >
>> > Source: Scientific American
>> > http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=automaton-robots-become-self-aware&print=true
>> >
>>
>
>
>
>
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>
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