HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
PREVIOUS PAGE: TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
YOU. ROBOT
grandson, Mark” — or carry
an older person up the stairs
and into bed. One robot recently tested in Japan was
able to leave a building and go
get someone a sandwich from
the store. It handed the money
over to the guy behind
the counter, grabbed
the sandwich, and
then took an elevator
to bring it back.
All of these robots
are already in some
stage of existence today. If you took the
body of Boston Dynamics’ “PETMAN” robot,
used for military research, which walks so
realistically on a treadmill that recent footage caused an audience
to audibly gasp, and
combined it with one of David
Hanson’s heads, and gave it
the body and the mechanical
brain of ASIMO, you’d likely
have a self-guiding robot that
almost looks like a real human being.
It just doesn’t think like one
yet. Not even close. What is still
impossible right now is making
these robot brains independently
intelligent — making them care,
for example. That’s the big step,
Hanson said, the major algorithm
everyone wants to figure out, but
WE’RE NOT LOOKING AT
IT AS ROBOT VS. HUMAN
ANYMORE. IT’S MORE
ABOUT WHAT CAN WE
LEARN FROM HUMAN
INTERACTION, AND THEN
ALLOW TECHNOLOGY TO
OFFER THOSE QUALITIES.
one that could still be years away.