"Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco yesterday, a panel of robotics experts said robots capable of multiple domestic tasks, that can also provide companionship for their owners, will be available within 10 years. And the scientists claim it is already possible to give robots feelings
If a robot feels happy after it has cleaned a dirty carpet particularly well, then it will apparently seek out more dirt to do the same. Similarly, if the robot feels guilt or sadness at having failed at a task, it will try harder next time.
For example, when shown a toy, the robot will become happy and smile, while when surprised it will show fear and cower."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/18/nrobot18.xml
Well that could be a bit of a minefield. Last thing you want is a paranoid android on your hands. Will such robots be capable of lust or love? Jealousy? Depression? Catholic robots would suffer from lots of guilt, Jewish ones from neurosis.
Sunday, 18 February 2007
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2 comments:
Oh fine, that's all right, brain the size of a planet and all they want me to do is keep little old ladies company. . .
Actually, All Aibo work this way, you reinforce character traits but patting them on the head with the "Good Dog" button. It's not that they feel good, per se, but they do learn to save some behaviors and not repeat others based on "Praise", much like a real dog only without the messes. .
Aibo are cool and vastly underestimated, IMHO, sigh. . .
It's like a Pavlov's dog kind of thing then, conditioning basically? Incentives are put in place to reward/discourage certain patterns of behaviour? This is quite a basic way of influencing behaviour, as far as I understand it, but effective nonetheless.
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