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October 2, 2007: Aren't We All Just Replicants on the Inside? By Nicolas Rapold. The New York Sun. "The 1982 science fiction film 'BladeRunner' may be among the youngest revivals at this year's New York Film Festival, screening in a remastered edition dubbed 'the final cut'.... 'Aren't we all replicants now?' Giuliana Bruno, a professor of film and visual culture at Harvard University, asked at the panel, titled 'The Future Is Now: Blade Runner at 25.' ... '"Blade Runner" reminds us of these questions that are no longer asked: the condition of being human, fitting in a society,' Mr. [Scott] Bukatman said. In today's science fiction, 'those questions are not being raised. And we have become far more comfortable with the technologies we were so suspicious of 25 years ago -- more comfortable but not more knowledgeable.' Much of this suspicion, about the nature of reality as much about technology, is traceable to the work of [Philip K.] Dick. Sadly, the novelist managed to view only about 20 minutes of rushes from the film before his death." August 25, 2007 [issue date]: Interview - In search of a grand unified theory of me - Jeanette Winterson about science's role in our future. By Liz Else and Eleanor Harris. New Scientist (Issue 2618: pages 50-51; subscription req'd). "[Q] What's your next book about? [A] It's called Robot Love and it's for kids. ... I'm fascinated by artificial intelligence and where it will lead. These robots couldn't build anything as bad as us - so why would they keep us?" August 23, 2007: A future of embedded chips, networks. By Dean Takahashi. San Jose Mercury News. "Sometimes technologists don't stretch enough when they make predictions. That's when it's time to bring in a science-fiction author. The organizers of the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University relied on this wisdom for their keynote speaker this week. And Vernor Vinge didn't disappoint the 600 chip designers at the conference. The author of sci-fi books 'Rainbow's End' and 'True Names' held the attention of the audience, partly because he is a retired computer science professor who spoke their language and has been writing sci-fi since 1965. Vinge thinks of the future in scenarios. Because microprocessors are built into everything from cars to toys, he says he can foresee a rosy scenario where everything around us has electronic awareness built into it. ... But he also sees four scenarios that can get in the way of such a world. ... The second failure would happen if software can't keep up with hardware. The slow progress of artificial intelligence, for instance, is due more to the failure to create the right software for it than hardware that lacks performance. .... The fourth scenario of failure comes about when we surrender to the government." August 14, 2007: Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch. By John Tierney. The New York Times. "[I]f you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. [Nick] Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation. This simulation would be similar to the one in 'The Matrix,' in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits. ... Dr. Bostrom [director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford] assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or 'posthumans,' could run 'ancestor simulations' of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems."
>>> Social Science, Agents, The Future, Science Fiction August 13, 2007: English teacher engages students with science fiction. By Kylene Kiang. The Daily Sentinel. "Ever since Fruita Monument High School English teacher James Van Pelt started teaching a course in science fiction literature, he’s been able to reach out and engage even the most reluctant of readers and writers. 'Science fiction is the literature of change. It says that the way things are now is not what they are going to be. Most literature doesn’t posit that,' Van Pelt said. ... Concepts of artificial intelligence, time travel and alternate realities are just some of the topics that get his students talking and asking questions in the classroom. 'Is it possible that a computer could become self-aware? … Would it be murder to kill such a robot? Well, gee. Maybe it could be.' The ideas can be so fascinating to kids that sometimes they forget they are in a literature class, Van Pelt said. But in all ways, the science fiction class is a literature class where students read texts and learn about the relatively new genre through history and thematic study."
>>> Science Fiction, Resources for Educators August 12, 2007: Space to think - Interview with William Gibson. By Tim Adams. The Observer. "The present has recently caught up with William Gibson. The great prophet of the digital future, who not only coined the word 'cyberspace' in his debut novel Neuromancer in 1984, but imagined its implications and went a long way to suggesting its YouTube and MySpace culture, has stopped looking forwards. 'The future is already here,' he is fond of suggesting. 'It is just not evenly distributed.' ... His latest novel, Spook Country, is a dystopian thriller set in presentday New York, LA and London. I ask him first why he has stopped prophesying and started simply observing. ... It's an obvious question, but where does he get his ideas from? 'Well, when I start a book, I just look for things to be interested in. Often, they don't have much to do with the final product and I am never quite sure how they have informed the process, but they are there at the beginning.' ... ' The beginning of a book is a good place, but when I am a little further in, I completely lose faith in the process. At that point, strange things start to emerge, things I would never have dreamed of.' One of the strangest of these things was the idea of cyberspace. Neuromancer was built around the story of an out-of-work computer hacker induced to commit an unlikely crime. It was, along the way, a meditation on artificial intelligence, virtual reality and genetic engineering, and the place these things might come to occupy in pop culture. 'Cyberspace' was the name Gibson gave to the novel's digital terrain. He can remember first writing the word. 'It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless. It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page.' He has subsequently argued that the creation of the internet is a human event comparable to the invention of cities. Even make-believe is, as a result, no longer quite the simple act it used to be."
>>> Science Fiction, Interviews August 2, 2007: Korn - No name for their pain. By Jason Nahrung. The Courier-Mail. "Korn have not named their new album, preferring to leave it to their fans to come up with a moniker. The record label is using Untitled. ... Speaking from the US on the eve of a headlining Family Values tour, [bandmember Jonathan] Davis says the band hasn't had any option but to keep changing their musical approach since they hit the scene with their self-titled debut album in 1994. ... Evolution is clearly a cry of disdain for the cycle of violence that ensnares humanity. 'Artificial intelligence could be the way to go, if the world was run by machines. It could bring in some peace and harmony. I don't know if humans can achieve that. We'd have to get rid of religion and wars and learn to look after the Earth. I want my kids to live in a clean, nice world. Maybe The Matrix movie makes sense, just using humans as batteries.'" July 25, 2007: The 50 best movie robots - To coincide with the release of Michael Bay's epic Transformers movie we rate the most celebrated 'artifical people' in movies. By Michael Moran. Times Online. July 24, 2007: Evil HAL 9000 or Benevolent R2D2 - The Future of A.I. [podcast]. Patt Morrison's live one-hour public affairs show with guest host, Jon Beaupre. 89.3 KPCC-FM , Southern California Public Radio. "Our most vivid images of artificially intelligent machines tends to come from science fiction movies, and they usually fall into two categories: evil robots run amok, bent on destroying mankind or wise androids assisting and saving humans. The reality of A.I. machines is a little more complex, but the advancements are coming in leaps and bounds with ever more intelligent and autonomous systems that are being designed for such tasks as caretakers for children and the elderly, independent transportation vehicles and war making. There are still many ethical and safety concerns that must be addressed. How long before we can all expect to have our own A.I. robot friend in our homes?" Jon's guests are:
>>> AI Overview, Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Science Fiction, Grand Challenges, Autonomous Vehicles, Filtering, Information Retrieval, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Poker, Checkers, Games & Puzzles, Applications July 19, 2007: Robotics. An In Depth report from CBC.ca News. Features include:
>>> Robots, Medicine, Manufacturing, Ethical & Social Implications, History, Science Fiction, Robots (@ Software & Hardware), Summer Camps - and - AI Courses - and - Competitions - and - Careers in AI (@ Resources for Students), Applications, Industry Statistics July 16, 2007: Dream machines - Surveying pop culture’s robotic fixation. By Martin Morrow. CBC.ca. "Transformers, those metamorphic toys from the ’80s that inspired this summer’s blockbuster movie, are among the coolest creations in the pantheon of fictional robots. But when you begin tallying up the memorable robots that have walked, wheeled and whirred their way through pop culture, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. A staple of sci-fi and fantasy since the 1920s, they’ve come in all forms, from little fireplug-shaped R2-D2 of Star Wars to the ultra-human androids of Steve Spielberg’s A.I. and the Terminator films. The following is a survey of some of the more famous (and quirky) robots in pop history, several of which have been inducted into Carnegie Mellon University’s Robot Hall of Fame. The original robot story: R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). ... The seminal robot book: I, Robot. ... The saddest robot: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. ... Robots in music: ... Among the most offbeat robot tunes: The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, ...." July 5, 2007 [issue date]: The biologists strike back - Time machines, spaceships, atomic blasters -- the icons of science fiction tend to come from the physical sciences. But science fiction has a biological side too, finding drama and pathos in everything from alien evolution to the paradoxes of consciousness. Nature brought together four science-fiction writers with a background in the biological sciences to talk about life-science fiction. Nature 448, 18-21 (subscription req'd). "[Q] Can science fiction work as a medium to put across important scientific ideas? ... [Q] Science fiction has always been interested in 'the other' -- and these days that other is as likely to be a computer program as an eight-legged alien. How does the interaction between biology, technology and artificial intelligence feature in your work? Joan [Slonczewski]: One of the things that fascinates me is how people react to ideas of aliens or of artificial intelligence, and it seems to me that the way we treat artificial intelligences has a lot in common with the way we treat immigrant labour and the lower classes, or slaves. ... Peter [Watts]: ... The way my ideas about marine biology fall by the wayside and my ideas about AI get taken up makes me think that our imaginations are hamstrung in our own area of expertise. ... Ken [Macleod]: In the novel I'm working on, one of the assumptions in it is that some AIs become self-aware because they're combat-robots and they're required to have ever more sophisticated theories of mind to work out what the guys they're about to shoot are going to do. ..." July 2, 2007: Interview - Need to stop a robot rebellion? Ask this man for help. By Jay Cridlin. St. Petersburg Times. "Yes, the robots are coming. They plan to enslave humanity. You'll be lucky to escape Earth alive. The Transformers movie is further proof of this chilling inevitability. The plot can be summed up in two words - 'Robots bad!'.... In times like these, we must turn to the experts who foresaw the robot wars. Specifically, we must turn to roboticist Daniel H. Wilson, a Popular Mechanics editor and author of How to Survive A Robot Uprising and the forthcoming How to Build a Robot Army, due this fall. ... [Q] Explain, if you can, exactly how the robots will eventually get us. [A] There are a lot of scenarios out there. I took on each of these scenarios and offered a guidebook to the human resistance. Basically, according to Hollywood, some sort of artificial intelligence is going to come online. It's going to immediately kill its creator, so you're going to want to look for newspaper articles in which scientists are mysteriously killed in their labs. And then this AI is going to seize control of the electrical grid...." June 29, 2007: 80 Years of Robots in Hollywood. By Malik Singleton, Steve Snyder, M.J. Stephey. TIME.com. "Forbidden Planet (1956). ROBOT: Robby the Robot ... Robby is not just a charmer, he also has heart, following the same robot morality introduced by writer Isaac Asimov in his 1940s and 50s I, Robot stories. Because he is programmed to follow three basic tenets: obey human orders, protect his own existence and never injure humans, Robby faces a philosophical dilemma when he is ordered by a human (Dr. Morbius) to kill a human (Dr. Morbius) in order to save his own life. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). ROBOT: HAL 9000 ... HAL's AI-gone-awry was just the beginning of the computer as villain. ... Alien (1979). ROBOT: Ash ... Alien revisited the fears of 2001 and further advanced the idea that the real nature of robots, if left to their own devices, is to destroy humankind. ... Hollywood's view of robots in this movie is that we don't yet know how to program something as unquantifiable as our humanity, and, no matter how advanced robotics gets, we probably never will. ... "
>>> Science Fiction, Robots, Ethical & Social Implications June 28, 2007: Hot 'Bots - To gear up for ''Transformers'' (opening July 3), we count down our 10 favorite mechanical men (and fembots) in movie history. By Gary Susman. Entertainment Weekly. June 21, 2007: Robot Invasion - A World Ruled By Robots May Not Be Far Off. By Ed Boyle. CBS News. "The British Government has just paid a great deal of human taxpayers' hard cash for a special report into the rights of tomorrow's robots. Rights? What conceivable rights would a tin can on wheels ever deserve, you may ask? Well, if it has some kind of built-in artificial intelligence then, according to the Government advisers, it might be entitled to social security benefits, free housing and even healthcare. This is not a joke, although it may sound like one. A robot with a big brain could be fifty years off but here in Britain, our scientists are already arguing the moral issues. In your country the Pentagon is designing an airborne robot hitman capable of tracking and killing."
>>> Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Science Fiction, Assisitive Technologies, Military, Applications June 7, 2007: Science-fiction writers aid Homeland Security. Opinion contribution from Arlan Andrews Sr.. Corpus Christi Caller-Times. "One week in May I accompanied a group of technically savvy science-fiction writers to Washington, D.C., to consult with the Science & Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. While working in the White House Science Office in 1992, I had organized the group named 'Sigma' as a creative resource to supply much-needed imagination to the federal government in its efforts to understand future science and technology. Late in 2006, a Department of Homeland Security executive who was also a science fiction fan requested the participation of professional science fiction writers in an upcoming conference. ... Adm. Jay Cohen, undersecretary for Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, told the attendees he was disappointed by the proposals he had received. He wanted more imaginative, riskier projects and countermeasures than the contractors had sent in. ... Some critics have grumbled that the government should not waste its time on science-fiction writers. After all, what has science fiction ever 'forecast,' other than atomic energy, atomic bombs, cloning, airplanes, aerial warfare, military tanks, rocket ships, laser beams, space travel, communications satellites, space probes, personal and business computers, the Net, virtual reality, data visualization, joysticks, cyberwar, invisibility, stealth technology, robots, automation, artificial intelligence, television, ...?" May 31, 2007: Robots advance, consumers stall - More robots are in the marketplace but a 'Frankenstein complex' prevents their wide acceptance, among other things. By Tom A. Peter. The Christian Science Monitor. "Fifty-one years after the first commercial robot went to work, the United States is approaching a tipping point: Within a decade, observers say, the average American household will include one or two simple robots. And though they may not look like the ones imagined in science fiction, these robots – some available now – will play pervasive roles in the lives of regular consumers, says Lee Gutkind, author of 'Almost Human: Making Robots Think.' Especially after the past decade's technological breakthroughs and continuing research, robots are primed to enter the consumer marketplace. 'There are still a number of hard problems to be solved, but we've solved some of the fundamental problems,' says Paolo Pirjanian, chief scientist at Evolution Robotics Inc., in Pasadena, Calif. But as roboticists prepare to unleash their creations, they're confronted with a hurdle perhaps more daunting than the technical ones they've already cleared: consumer readiness – which includes such factors as skepticism, unrealistic expectations, confusion about what makes a robot, and a 'Frankenstein complex,' or the fear of robots. ... 'From a psychological or emotional point of view,' says author Gutkind, American society is 'much further away' from the notion of most people owning a robot. 'People are not quite ready to turn over the daily chores of their lives -- and the important chores -- to machines.' ... 'If you look at Japan, the robot is a friend there,' explains Louis Ross, speaking about people's perceptions of robots. 'In the US, a robot kills someone,' says Mr. Ross, president of Virtus Advanced Sensors, a company that makes inertial sensors for robots in Pittsburgh." May 31, 2007: Museum Show Spotlights Artistry of Manga God Osamu Tezuka. By Lisa Katayama. Wired. "Many Americans have seen Astro Boy on TV, but this is the first time manga and anime fans in the United States are being exposed to the artistic genius of its creator [Osamu Tezuka]. It's not always easy for foreign audiences to understand why manga is so important to the Japanese, but the [the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco] hopes that the exhibit will provide a little perspective. Tezuka has been dead for over 18 years, but his vision of the modern world is still highly relevant. A quirky intellectual who had a near photographic memory, a medical degree and an obsession with classic Disney movies, Tezuka explored profound themes that were often way ahead of their time -- pacifism, civil rights, man versus machine, artificial intelligence and urban high-rise architecture. ... His iconic character from the '50s, Mighty Atom -- aka Astro Boy -- is a humanoid robot with a nuclear reactor for a heart, a 100,000-horsepower engine, searchlights for eyes and rocket-fueled jets installed in his feet for easy flight. Atom's mission in life was to be the intermediary between humans and robots in a future 50 years from now."
>>> Science Fiction, Exhibits (@ Resources for Students) May 25, 2007: Science of 'Star Wars' - How Scientists Use the 'Force' Pop Culture Icon Inspired a Generation of Curious Minds. By Ashley Phillips. ABC News. "As Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader pulled out their light sabers for a deadly battle 30 years ago today, "Stars Wars" movie-goers asked themselves one thing: Where can I get one of those? ... But in 1977, the groundbreaking fan favorite did more than just secure its place in Americana -- it also captured the hearts and minds of scientists of the '70s and a few younger, budding lab rats waiting in the wings. ... 'I think the influence is huge,' Michio Kaku, one of the world's most prominent physicists and the co-founder of string field theory, told ABCNEWS.com. 'Many people don't realize that science fiction has been an inspiration for the world's leading scientists.' The most prominent areas of research inspired by the film are 'hyper drive,' ... and robotics research inspired by Luke Skywalker's ever-reliable R2D2 and somewhat neurotic C3PO. ... Similarly, Kaku says, some people saw the movies' robots and started working in artificial intelligence theory to create robots of their own. While researching 'Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination,' a traveling museum exhibition ... exhibit developer Ed Rodley found similar phenomena. 'We interviewed roboticists all over the world … and they all said where they were, how old they were when they saw "Star Wars" and how that had an effect on their decision [to become roboticists],'" Rodley said. ... Kaku said the film was more than just a fairy tale. ... 'For us it's more than just fantasy. It's like, what if? What if we can become a scientist to prove this thing is possible? It's a challenge.'" May 24, 2007: Mr. Roboto. By Patrick Verel. Fairfield County Weekly / available from The Hartford Courant. "Fritz Lang’s Metropolis might be one of the most difficult films for contemporary film audiences to enjoy. It’s silent, for starters, which means you have to get used to actors’ overly expressive, almost cartoonish acting. It was filmed in 1927, when that whole communism vs. capitalism argument was burning out of control. It’s set in the year 2027, with all the amusingly wrong predictions about the future. ... But take away the movie, which is set in a dystopic urban environment where the upper class lives in gleaming Gothic skyscrapers connected by elevated highways and the lower class literally lives underground, and we might never have had Frankenstein , Brazil, Blade Runner , Star Wars or The Matrix series. Indeed, much of modern day SciFi owes its existence to Metropolis, which cost the equivalent of $200 million and introduced audiences to the first fully realized plot featuring a robot. Eighty years later, Kurt Coble, the University of Bridgeport’s resident mad genius, will give Lang’s robot, or 'machine man' the ultimate due. ... Coble will screen Metropolis , which was restored and re-released to great fanfare in 2002. His P.A.M. (Partially Artificial Musicians) band, a quirky mélange of about a dozen automated guitars, pianos, drums and violins, will provide the music. ... 'The creation of music is one of the purest forms of artificial intelligence; it’s the invention of a medium that serves no real purpose other than to affect people,' Coble says. 'For me, there’s a philosophical connection between artificial intelligence and music.'" May 15, 2007: Science beats fiction in Robot Hall of Fame. By Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com. "Real science is finally beating out science fiction when it comes to the Robot Hall of Fame. ... 'For the first time, the jury selected more robots from science in fact than science fiction,' said Matt Mason, the director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon."
>>> Robots, History, Science Fiction May 15, 2007: Newsmaker interview with Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's CSAIL and CTO of iRobot - Sizing up the coming robotics revolution. By Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com. "When it comes to robots, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab is one of the places in the world where the magic happens. Rodney Brooks is the Panasonic professor of robotics at MIT and the director of CSAIL. He is also the co-founder and chief technology officer of iRobot and one of the principal architects of iRobot's Roomba vacuum. On Tuesday, RoboBusiness 2007, an international conference showcasing consumer, commercial and military robots, will convene in Boston. To gain insight on what's in the pipeline, CNET News.com sat down with Brooks, one of the leading experts on robots and artificial intelligence. From his office at CSAIL, Brooks shared his thoughts on the best AI readily available today and the four things it will take for the magicians of science to match science fiction fantasies. ... [Q] MIT's Domo and iRobot's Roomba are vastly different, yet both are considered robots. What makes a robot a robot? Brooks: To me what makes a robot a robot, and as with every definition you can poke it enough until it breaks, but for me it's something that senses the world in some way, does some sort of computation, deciding what to do, and then acts on the world outside itself as a result. ... [Q] How close are you to each of these four objectives? How many years away do you think? Brooks: Ah. You must be a reporter. I'll never answer that, because, you know, in 1966 they thought it was going to be three months for the object recognition. ... [Q] What do you think are the greatest achievements in AI right now? Brooks: I think our whole lives are surrounded by artificial intelligence, but we don't think of it that way. Google--you know, all the techniques that Google uses. ... [Q] From your years of study of AI, what have you learned about humanity? ... [Q] You've said that "the coming robotics revolution will change the fundamental nature of society." Generally, in what ways will it change? ... [Q] Any truth behind the rumor that you're a robot? ..."
>>> AI Overview, Robots, Science Fiction, The AI Effect, Applications, Ethical & Social Implications, Interviews, Careers in AI -and - Academic Departments (@ Resources for Students), The Future April 28, 2007: Korea devises "Robot Ethics Charter." By Kim Yoon-mi. The Korea Herald. "To literally live with robots, that are highly likely to become more intelligent and physically closer to humans in the future, Koreans are devising the world's first robot ethics charter that will prevent robots from doing harm to people, and block humans from taking advantage of robots for unscrupulous purposes, according to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy. Under the civil-government partnership, the Robot Ethics Charter is being drafted by 12 Korean professionals including a government official, robotics professors, psychology experts and medical doctors. The charter will be mainly about drawing ethical lines on how far robotic technologies can go, and setting rules for robot manufacturers and robot users, the ministry said. To science fiction fans, the move to produce a robot ethics charter might remind them of the 'Three Laws of Robotics' presented by U.S. author Isaac Asimov in his book 'Runaround' originally published in 1942. ... However, the Korean robot ethics charter will not introduce regulations like Asimov's book, which offers practical laws for robots, centered more on robot manufacturers and users, according to a member of the charter drafting panel." April 25, 2007: We have the technology - Bionic eyes, robot soldiers and kryptonite were once just film fantasy. But now science fiction is fast becoming fact. So how will it change our lives? By Gwyneth Jones. The Guardian. "After decades of stalling, it seems that science fiction is finally, rapidly, becoming fact - just as the first pulp writers and movie-makers were convinced it would, back in the 1920s. Robbie the Robot is no longer a figure of fun, or a novelty toy. The robot maid and butler of classic sci-fi may be a few years off, but nobody regards them as daft make-believe any more. ... A long time ago, back in the 1980s, a new kind of science fiction burst on to the scene. For progressive fans of the genre it was like a supernova, blasting the old finned space ships, streamlined Metropolis robots and tentacled aliens right out of the sky. It was called 'cyberpunk', and if you want to know what it looked like, you can see the cyberpunk future in Ridley Scott's dark, elegaic Bladerunner. ... Much of the science-fiction establishment hated the cyberpunks. Science fiction was supposed to be about progress, and how advances in technology will inevitably create a better world. ... Our gadgets are just like our children. They have the potential to be marvellous, to surpass all expectations. ... The technology, however fantastic, is neutral. It's up to us to decide whether that dazzling new robot brain powers a caring hand, or a speedy fist highly accurate at throwing grenades." April 25, 2007: Should the human race be worried by the rise of robots? By Paul Vallely. Belfast Telegraph / also available from The Independent Online Edition. "What is meant by a robot? Haven't we long had machines that appear to be alive? ... Why do you ask? A group of scientists raised concerns in a debate at the Science Museum this week about the growing use of autonomous, decision-making robots. These could have malign effects in hospitals, the care of the elderly and, most obviously, in military use, they warned. What is meant by a robot? ... What kind of robots exist today? ... What else is about to be invented? ... What's all this about 'robot rights'? ... So are these machines a threat? ..." April 24, 2007: Human rights for robots? We’re getting carried away. By Mark Henderson. TimesOnline. "A study commissioned by the Government that suggests robots could one day have rights was attacked by leading scientists yesterday as a red herring that has diverted attention from more pressing ethical issues. Researchers studying robotics said that the Robo-rights document, published in December and sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry, amounted to pointless philosophical speculation founded on poor science. ... The three scientists will debate the issue this evening at the Dana Centre, part of the Science Museum in London."
>>> Ethical & Social Implications, Robots, Science Fiction, Events (@ Resources for Students), Military, Applications; also see these related articles April 6, 2007: The robots are running riot! Quick, bring out the red tape. By Leo Lewis. TimesOnline. "When the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov envisioned a future shared by human beings and robots, he predicted that the mechanical servants of tomorrow would be safely controlled by only three simple laws. But when Japan’s notoriously zealous bureaucracy looks into the future, it sees robots enmeshed in miles of red tape. Three laws, the robotics experts say, are nowhere near sufficient to ensure human safety in a world where cleaning, carrying and even cooking could one day be performed by machines. So the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has drafted a hugely complex set of proposals for keeping robots in check. The document, entitled Draft Guidelines to Secure the Safe Performance of Next Generation Robots, was obtained by The Times yesterday. ... After a yet more convoluted process of public consultation, the ministry will draft, as early as May, a set of principles to which all robots must conform. As a rapidly ageing country with a shrinking population of youngsters, Japan imagines robots playing a variety of roles."
>>> Robots, Ethical & Social Implications, Science Fiction, Assisitive Technologies, Applications April 1, 2007: Bill of Rights for abused robots - Experts draw up an ethical charter to prevent humans exploiting machines. By Jonathan Owen and Richard Osley. The Independent. "A robot rights movement is taking shape and preparing the world's first ethical guidelines for human/robot relationships. The 'Robot Ethics Charter', which will be unveiled later this year, will insist that humans should not exploit robots and should use them responsibly. It is expected to be a version of the classic three laws of robotics developed by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov. ... With artificial intelligence becoming ever more advanced, there is growing concern about how interaction between robots and humans can be regulated. The issue will be addressed at a robotics conference in Rome next week.... High on the Rome agenda will be the issue of sexual relations between humans and machines.... But it is the ethics around military robots that is causing most concern among scientists." THERE'S MORE ! |
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