ROBOTS io9
quantum theory. The human brain, he claims, is so far beyond any
possible creation of the laboratory that creating humanlike robots is an
experiment that is doomed to fail. (He argues that in the same way that
Gôdel's incompleteness theorem proved that arithmetic is incomplete,
the Heisenberg uncertainty principle will prove that machines are incapable of human thought.)
Many physicists and engineers, however, believe that there is nothing in the laws of physics that would prevent the creation of a true
robot. For example, Claude Shannon, often called the father of information theory, was once asked the question "Can machines think?"
His reply was "Sure." When he was asked to clarify that comment, he
said, "I think, don't I?" In other words, it was obvious to him that machines can think because humans are machines (albeit ones made of
wetware rather than hardware).
Because we see robots depicted in the movies, we may think the
development of sophisticated robots with artificial intelligence is just
around the corner. The reality is much different. When you see a robot
act like a human, usually there is a trick involved, that is, a man hidden in the shadows who talks through the robot via a microphone, like
the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. In fact, our most advanced robots,
such as the robot rovers on the planet Mars, have the intelligence of an
insect. At MIT's famed Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, experimental
robots have difficulty duplicating feats that even cockroaches can perform, such as maneuvering around a room full of furniture, finding
hiding places, and recognizing danger. No robot on Earth can understand a simple children's story that is read to it.
In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, it was incorrectly assumed
that by 2001 we would have HAL, the super-robot that can pilot a
spaceship to Jupiter, chat with crew members, repair problems, and
act almost human.
quantum theory. The human brain, he claims, is so far beyond any
possible creation of the laboratory that creating humanlike robots is an
experiment that is doomed to fail. (He argues that in the same way that
Gôdel's incompleteness theorem proved that arithmetic is incomplete,
the Heisenberg uncertainty principle will prove that machines are incapable of human thought.)
Many physicists and engineers, however, believe that there is nothing in the laws of physics that would prevent the creation of a true
robot. For example, Claude Shannon, often called the father of information theory, was once asked the question "Can machines think?"
His reply was "Sure." When he was asked to clarify that comment, he
said, "I think, don't I?" In other words, it was obvious to him that machines can think because humans are machines (albeit ones made of
wetware rather than hardware).
Because we see robots depicted in the movies, we may think the
development of sophisticated robots with artificial intelligence is just
around the corner. The reality is much different. When you see a robot
act like a human, usually there is a trick involved, that is, a man hidden in the shadows who talks through the robot via a microphone, like
the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. In fact, our most advanced robots,
such as the robot rovers on the planet Mars, have the intelligence of an
insect. At MIT's famed Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, experimental
robots have difficulty duplicating feats that even cockroaches can perform, such as maneuvering around a room full of furniture, finding
hiding places, and recognizing danger. No robot on Earth can understand a simple children's story that is read to it.
In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, it was incorrectly assumed
that by 2001 we would have HAL, the super-robot that can pilot a
spaceship to Jupiter, chat with crew members, repair problems, and
act almost human.