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Robotic Scorpions?

Posted by timothy on from the seed-of-a-bad-sci-fi-plot dept.

Mike Wilson writes: "New Scientist has an article about a 'dim-witted' robot which may survive in circumstances where smarter devices would fail." Hope you're not paranoid about a 50cm metal scorpion sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. I know I'm not, those are good folks with good intentions and robot slaves.

3 of 19 comments (clear)

  1. wouldn't it be nice... by jeffsenter · · Score: 3

    This would be much nicer if it was NASA trying to build a robot to crawl around Mars and take pictures rather than the Defense Department trying to create another weapon.

  2. Today: Robot Scorpion, Tomorrow: by blair1q · · Score: 3

    Chinese Glorious People's Fly-by-Wire Cactus Wren!

    --Blair

  3. New Scientist by Hilary+Rosen · · Score: 4

    When New Scientist was read by intelligent people, they wrote about intelligent robots. Now they write about dim-witted robots.

    ObNotFlamingNS: This has been one of my pet peeves for a long time. We threw all this time and effort at creating AI, when we didn't even know how to create Artificial Stupidity. Humans did not walk fully-formed from the primordial slime. It took evolution a lot of trial and error to get from slime to scorpions to us. We should use the benefit of hindsight to avoid errors like the dinosaurs, but that doesn't mean we can skip all the steps on the way. We might miss an important lesson.
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    Yes, the nick is flamebait