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PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
then we started to try to make machines that could answer questions
about the simple kinds of stories that are in a first-grade reader book.
There's no machine today that can do that."
Some believe that eventually there will be a grand synthesis between the two approaches, the top-down and bottom-up, which may
provide the key to artificial intelligence and humanlike robots. After
all, when a child learns, although he first relies mainly on the bottomup approach, bumping into his surroundings, eventually he receives
instruction from parents, books, and schoolteachers, and learns from
the top-down approach. As an adult, we constantly blend these two approaches. A cook, for example, reads from a recipe but also constantly
samples the dish as it is cooking.
Hans Moravec says, "Fully intelligent machines will result when
the mechanical golden spike is driven uniting the two efforts," probably within the next forty years.
EMOTIONAL
ROBOTS?
One consistent theme in literature and art is the mechanical being that
yearns to become human, to share in human emotions. Not content to
be made of wires and cold steel, it wishes to laugh, cry, and feel all the
emotional pleasures of a human being.
Pinocchio, for example, was the puppet that wanted to become a
real boy. The Tin Man in the The Wizard of Oz wanted to have a heart.
And Data, on Star Trek, is a robot that can outperform all humans in
strength and intelligence, yet still yearns to become human.
Some people have even suggested that our emotions represent the
highest quality of what it means to be human. No machine will ever be
able to thrill at a blazing sunset or laugh at a humorous joke, they
claim. Some say that it is impossible for machines ever to have emotions, since emotions represent the pinnacle of human development.
But the scientists working on AI and trying to break down emotions paint a different picture. To them emotions, far from being the
essence of humanity, are actually a by-product of evolution. Simply
PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
then we started to try to make machines that could answer questions
about the simple kinds of stories that are in a first-grade reader book.
There's no machine today that can do that."
Some believe that eventually there will be a grand synthesis between the two approaches, the top-down and bottom-up, which may
provide the key to artificial intelligence and humanlike robots. After
all, when a child learns, although he first relies mainly on the bottomup approach, bumping into his surroundings, eventually he receives
instruction from parents, books, and schoolteachers, and learns from
the top-down approach. As an adult, we constantly blend these two approaches. A cook, for example, reads from a recipe but also constantly
samples the dish as it is cooking.
Hans Moravec says, "Fully intelligent machines will result when
the mechanical golden spike is driven uniting the two efforts," probably within the next forty years.
EMOTIONAL
ROBOTS?
One consistent theme in literature and art is the mechanical being that
yearns to become human, to share in human emotions. Not content to
be made of wires and cold steel, it wishes to laugh, cry, and feel all the
emotional pleasures of a human being.
Pinocchio, for example, was the puppet that wanted to become a
real boy. The Tin Man in the The Wizard of Oz wanted to have a heart.
And Data, on Star Trek, is a robot that can outperform all humans in
strength and intelligence, yet still yearns to become human.
Some people have even suggested that our emotions represent the
highest quality of what it means to be human. No machine will ever be
able to thrill at a blazing sunset or laugh at a humorous joke, they
claim. Some say that it is impossible for machines ever to have emotions, since emotions represent the pinnacle of human development.
But the scientists working on AI and trying to break down emotions paint a different picture. To them emotions, far from being the
essence of humanity, are actually a by-product of evolution. Simply