ROBOTS m
ing dazzling loop-the-loop maneuvers, while these lumbering robots
get lost in two dimensions.)
The top-down approach soon hit a brick wall. Steve Grand, director
of the Cyberlife Institute, says that approaches like this "had fifty years
to prove themselves and haven't exactly lived up to their promise."
In the 1960s scientists did not fully appreciate the enormity of the
work involved in programming robots to accomplish even simple
tasks, such as programming a robot to identify objects such as keys,
shoes, and cups. As Rodney Brooks of MIT said, "Forty years ago the
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT appointed an undergraduate
to solve it over the summer. He failed, and I failed on the same problem in my 1981 Ph.D. thesis." In fact, AI researchers still cannot solve
this problem.
For example, when we enter a room, we immediately recognize
the floor, chairs, furniture, tables, and so forth. But when a robot scans
a room it sees nothing but a vast collection of straight and curved lines,
which it converts to pixels. It takes an enormous amount of computer
time to make sense out of this jumble of lines. It might take us a fraction of a second to recognize a table, but a computer sees only a collection of circles, ovals, spirals, straight lines, curly lines, corners, and so
forth. After an enormous amount of computing time, a robot might finally recognize the object as a table. But if you rotate the image, the
computer has to start all over again. In other words, robots can see,
and in fact they can see much better than humans, but they don't understand what they are seeing. Upon entering a room, a robot would
see only a jumble of lines and curves, not chairs, tables, and lamps.
Our brain unconsciously recognizes objects by performing trillions upon trillions of calculations when we walk into a room-an
activity that we are blissfully unaware of. The reason that we are unaware of all our brain is doing is evolution. If we were alone in the forest with a charging saber-toothed tiger, we would be paralyzed if we
were aware of all the computations necessary to recognize the danger
and escape. For the sake of survival, all we need to know is how to run.
When we lived in the jungle, it simply was not necessary for us to be
ing dazzling loop-the-loop maneuvers, while these lumbering robots
get lost in two dimensions.)
The top-down approach soon hit a brick wall. Steve Grand, director
of the Cyberlife Institute, says that approaches like this "had fifty years
to prove themselves and haven't exactly lived up to their promise."
In the 1960s scientists did not fully appreciate the enormity of the
work involved in programming robots to accomplish even simple
tasks, such as programming a robot to identify objects such as keys,
shoes, and cups. As Rodney Brooks of MIT said, "Forty years ago the
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT appointed an undergraduate
to solve it over the summer. He failed, and I failed on the same problem in my 1981 Ph.D. thesis." In fact, AI researchers still cannot solve
this problem.
For example, when we enter a room, we immediately recognize
the floor, chairs, furniture, tables, and so forth. But when a robot scans
a room it sees nothing but a vast collection of straight and curved lines,
which it converts to pixels. It takes an enormous amount of computer
time to make sense out of this jumble of lines. It might take us a fraction of a second to recognize a table, but a computer sees only a collection of circles, ovals, spirals, straight lines, curly lines, corners, and so
forth. After an enormous amount of computing time, a robot might finally recognize the object as a table. But if you rotate the image, the
computer has to start all over again. In other words, robots can see,
and in fact they can see much better than humans, but they don't understand what they are seeing. Upon entering a room, a robot would
see only a jumble of lines and curves, not chairs, tables, and lamps.
Our brain unconsciously recognizes objects by performing trillions upon trillions of calculations when we walk into a room-an
activity that we are blissfully unaware of. The reason that we are unaware of all our brain is doing is evolution. If we were alone in the forest with a charging saber-toothed tiger, we would be paralyzed if we
were aware of all the computations necessary to recognize the danger
and escape. For the sake of survival, all we need to know is how to run.
When we lived in the jungle, it simply was not necessary for us to be