Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #10668



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: BUDSCOTT@aol.com
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 16:10:19 EST
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Robotic philosophy (Tendency toward miniaturization)


i'm not going to touch on this too much. mostly because i have my own set of
religious beliefs (i'm a lutheran) that completely go against robots taking
over kind. but i think in order to define a robot, we need to define what
REAL life is. there is no good way to define life, therefore nobody could say
that our robots aren't alive. now i'm not going to go in depth on the whole
"living machines" issue, but i think that what we have is simply a mimic of
life. i strongly believe that robots will ever attain what i consider to be
life, just pretty darn close. as for Asimov, has anybody read the book "i,
robot", i'll have to borrow it from a friend sometime, i do believe it has
some interesting things about robotic "laws".anyway this is just way the hell
to deep for me! i think i'll get back to making my robots instead of trying
to catagorize them.

-Spencer



10669 Tue, 22 Feb 2000 13:13:44 -0800 (PST) [alt-beam] Re: Robotic philosophy beam@sgiblab.sgi.com BotDoc this e-mail might not be all that relevant to anything
but is here nonetheless for you to read:

Genetics:

I view that subject as genetics being the land, the
environment as water, and your personality as the
erosion of the land by water.

Smart bots:

Comparing a bot brain to a human brain is pretty
pointless, there are about 10^80 possible synaptic
connections in your brain (if you like numbers that is
the same number as the estimate of the number of
protons in the 15 billion light year radius universe
that we can see). I have been working on a 5 motor
walker, pretty complex as far as beam goes. But
compared to complexity of the human brain, this bot is
only about a molecule of water worth of protons
compared to the entire observable universe....(think
about it, a 100000000000000000000000 mile diameter is
pretty big compared to a molecule of water.) Maybe we
will be able to make some realitively complex bots
around 2020-2050 when silicon is obsolete (allowing
miniaturization, via. bio-chips or whatever, to the
scale where some intelligence is possible with the
size of our bots now), until then I'll be happy
building some small, entertaining zombie bots,
gradually increasing their world representation.

Humans vs. Machines:

Science fiction is great for telling stories (i.e the
terminator) but is the future of humanity/technology
going to be a war between the 2? I doubt it, more
than likely the 2 will merge into something that will
be called homo superior (the Bionic man). this is
somewhat apparent with the increase in portable
computing for business people, they are more powerful
if they can access their e-mail from the car... they
would be even more powerful yet if they can access
their e-mail from their own brain. Yes information is
becoming power, the ones that have the easiest access
to the most will be the most powerful. (just
evolution).
well that is about it
Justin


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10670 Sun, 20 Feb 2000 16:47:04 -0500 [alt-beam] Re: Robotic philosophy (Tendency toward miniaturization) "Jim Taylor"
I think we have a long way to go in order to ask such a morally grounded
question. Of course my photopopper is a robot :)



> In light of the discussion one may think to ask the question: what is the
> definition of a robot?


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James Taylor
URL: http://fly.to/springmeadows

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