Comments on: Divining AI, and the future of consumer robotics

Sebastian Thrun led his Stanford team to victory in the DARPA robot-car race. How long will it be till we see such cars on the street?

[Blito]

"That's the replacement vision."?

This could maybe solve the illegal immigration issue but people need to work. Why are people so lazy that they can't clean up after a party? I think the autonomous robotic industry should be limited to computer screens and minor things. You're willing to relinquish control of your life and family because you don't want to clean or do basic tasks? Very brave but stupid. I can understand for some safety stuff though. Still. I guess you could say that it's more dangerous to have many people crossing your borders back and forth to do simple work then to have robots at home.

Two major points:

1. We need to become more sturdy:
because there will be 2 major safety hazards. Poking an eye out (we cant replace an eye yet) and self learning robots malfunctioning because of malware. The ramifications can be a 1000 times more dangerous then any web virus. And whet happens when Apple, Microsoft and Sony want to make robots with their token DRM in them. Will they want to 'arrest' you or damage your home if you trade a song or video in a way they deem illegal, or you have the robot preform 'trade secret' activities like helping a neighbor's robot? How much DRM power will the robot have over you? Will they be able to spy on you with DRM management. We won't even know what they are doing if the hardware and the software in the robot is closed source and non-free.

2. Why don't we become the robot:
in a sense of sturdiness and robustness. I'm afraid if we become to fragile in old age or remain fragile that there will develop a movement to have the robot replace us. Humans need to become more sturdy and not age to compete or the robots will take over and machines will just kill themselves off because of no real intelligent life or invention. So I want to become the robot but retain my humanity and looks.
There will be too many lawsuits because of accident and then disaster in the industry.

Robot cars and other minor things could be dangerous too but I have read that the self braking mechanism that costs about a few hundred to install on any car has been saving allot of lives like 25 percent or something. So I would like to see a very automated future too with flying cars ships etc. but analogous preventive robotics cannot replace a full upgrade of the human body and it's not how we read it in the Sci Books all the time either.

A Star Wars scenario is just too out of touch without full cloning or anti-aging and perpetual health. All that angst and death with robots running around is too cartoony pop. People would never cozy up to robots that much without extreme Helthcare. There is way too much hype in this industry right now.

Robots can be useful now in:
Self replicating on another planet to prepare the way for humans. Even that could be dangerous as we don't want them evolve a virus or weapon.
Maybe useful in setting up manufacturing plants but already we can set hundreds of Wal-Marts with humans very fast like in 3 months. We are building things to quickly already.

We should focus less on the robot and more on Open Source Medicine and Real Estate that's cheap and effective or the robot will end up a maid and myth because were too afraid to have it do effective things.

[bgtal74]

What about the DARPA agenda?

I enjoyed reading the interview, but I think you should have at least mentioned in passing that DARPA's goal in sponsoring the robot race is to develop robots that will eventually replace human infantry on the battlefield. Are you afraid your readers might have Star Wars-like visions of invading armies of robots? In accepting the prize, Dr. Thrun handed his technology over to DARPA, right?

Probably because

CNET probably didnt go into it because it assumed its readers werent all idiots who couldnt figure out that an agency connected to the dept of defense had military uses in mind.

That being said, I like the idea of having robots we can send into battle. That saves American lives. As for the people on the receiving end of our military robots ... well, maybe this will be a deterrant from them wanting to get into a war with us.