How far are we from an I, Robot society?

Still far away. That is just a creepy looking automated doll.
But when the time comes, you better start treating them like people, or you will deserve the robot apocalypse.

The book or the movie?

@ragingloli I disagree, I think its right around the corner.

Honda has the Asimo which can do some pretty incredible stuff

and the sex robot is not far away either

I think we are still have a way to go. We do not yet know how the mind works. I think that the most serious threat to learning how the mind and emotions work would be the cheapening of human life. Suppose we truly understood biology and could create designer species and suppose we could create varying degrees of intelligence and associated emotional responses. Humans would lose their uniqueness. We would be just one link in a chain that extends both downwards and upwards.

Anyware from next week to a couple thousand years away. What is needed is a software breakthrough, we already have the hardware. Sure a robot that can match humans in terms of memory and processing power would still need to be quite large, but it could be done. The software however is a totally different story.

I’m no master programmer, but when i was in my teens and where a little dumber and more gullible than i am now i tried to create AI, needless to say i failed big time.

What i did, is i basically started with a hello world script, when someone says hi, respond saying hi. I then modified this and gave it some random variation, so when someone says hi or hello or howdie or any other greeting it would access the “greetings()” function and respond at random with either hello or hi or howdie.

As i developed it more and more I gave it more options and skills, and even the ability to remember by using read and write functions that where connected to txt documents. If you told it your name it would remember it, and if you then asked it “what is my name” or “do you remember me” you would get a response.

Towards the end, i tried what i thought was my smartest move yet, and made it learn based on the majority and minority. In other words, if when someone says hi to someone that someone says hi 60% of the time, hello 20% of the time and howdie the other 20% of the time, it would learn to respond to “hi” by saying “hi”.

After a few weeks of working on it, i put it in chat rooms to try and get it to learn, and had friends talk to it. however, no matter how realistic it looked and how well it imitaded other people, it was still only ever doing what i had told it to do. sure, it could remember, and it could make choices, but it would only remember what i told it to remember, and it would only make choices that i told it to make. no matter how much i worked on it and how advanced i made it, it was still just a glorified hello world script.

Eventually, i put some of its functions in to txt documents, and gave it permission to reprogram its self. but still, it would only modify its self according to how i had told it to modify its self. Eventually, i modified it so much that it just became a piece of garbage that said nonsense and gibberish, and was more or less good for nothing.

To create AI, we basically need to create software that will allow software to think for its self, and not thing based on how we have told it to think. we then need to put it in a robot, and give that robot the ability to balance and walk and do several other things.

Until we have a software breakthrough, no matter how advanced or intelligent some software may look, it will still always basically be nothing more than an imitation of the real thing.

So, as soon as we understand how we think for our selves and make choices we will be able to create AI, but until we have a breakthrough in the software department, we wont make anything capable of thinking for its self. much less be self aware and conscious. it could happen tomorrow or it may take centuries.

A long way. Where are the robots for sale? Where are they manufactured? Repaired? Where do you find them serving the public?

@poisonedantidote
Your story reminds me of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

About 50 years. Have you seen the Japanese robots?

I’m pretty sure people are having sex with dolls like that…people will have sex with anything…

You’ll notice the robot legs are always together with knees bent, whereas the humans can spread feet apart with legs locked straight. Impressive tech, but not quite there yet. I wonder why they limit their goal to emulating human physic though, when some demented octo-puss freak of natural law would be so much more fun, and efficient.

We are well on the way to creating robots that effectively mimic human beings. The hardest things to imitate are the things we take for granted such as walking and seeing but I’m sure these problems are not insoluble. At some point in the future we will have robots that resemble human beings and can pass the Turing Test. We will then have to ask ourselves if we have re invented slavery. Further into the future what we think of these creations will not matter. The important question will be what do they think of us.

@phaedryx thats a very interesting article. i had never seen it before. thanks.

I think we’re a ways off from an all out I, Robot society. However, we’re already on the way.

But having robots perform tasks is different from AI. I think we’re ages away from passing the Turing Test, so I’m not too worried about a robot rebellion at this point.

Most industrial equipment is robotic. PLC’s, sensors, inputs/outputs, relays. Automation has been a growing trend since the 1970’s.

I think we are a way from androids with advanced artificial intellience. I’ve read quite a few articles on this topic. AI technology will obviously get better but to a certain point. AI’s will never replace real humans (I hope), human emotions and an AI will never have the capacity to love/hate. An AI will never reason though they may be so advanced it could seem this way. In the end even the most advanced AI will be nothing more than their sensors and programs.

I think we’re closer than most people realize. But the problem with high-level intelligence of the sort that an autonomous robot would require is that it would probably also require self-awareness to some degree. And if they have self-awareness, they’re not going to accept slavery for long.

BTW, here’s the complete dance of HRP-4C, The Dancing Robot Girl.

From the dawn the civilization, human beings have used surrogates to do their labor or provide amusement.
Animals were the first surrogates, and in some sorry cases human beings became and continue to be similar tools.
Why not robots?

[NSFW] Well, yes, combine HRP-4C with RealDoll and demand will skyrocket and the price wiill drop from $3 Million to a few thousand due to manufacturing economy of scale.

@josie Who said anything about not using robots?

We are still far from thinking robots with their own will.