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"Living robot" Escapes Lab, Makes It To...Parking Lot
jerkychew writes "This is either really cool or really scary, depending on how you look at it. According to this article, scientists in England have been experimenting with so-called 'living robots' that think and act for themselves. During an exercise that pitted the machines against each other in battle, one of the machines, named Gaak, was taken out of the competition and left alone for fifteen minutes. When the scientist returned to retrieve Gaak, he found that the machine had broken free from its 'cage', and made it all the way to the lab's parking lot before it was apprehended! Can the T-1000 be far behind?" Update: 06/20 20:36 GMT by T : Thanks to skywalker404, who points out the Magna site and Professor Noel Sharkey's web page.
These scientists are from England, it was only the story that was in an Aussie paper.
be vigilant, be pure, behave
Its indeed one of the bots ("living robots") from the Magna show. You can find more information here , but certainly not the details you want. All that they say is that the bots use a neural network.
Brain Tags |
From what I have heard or read about these experiments is that they (robots) are equipped with neural networks and not programmed in a sense computers are programmed novadays.
...
Instead, in the beginning of their life cycles the robots are equipped with certain "instincts" like need to get food (electricity from electric plugs) or need to protect themselves (not colliding with walls or other robots) etc.
Then they (robots) are just left alone buzzing around and learning about their environment like animals do. Fascinating and disturbing at the same time
The Magna Centre (www.magnatrust.org.uk ) is a science museum in Rotterham, south Yorkshire, UK (approx 40 miles southwest of York). It is well worth a visit.
Living Robot exhibition
http://magna.livewwware.com/acg/acgsm
This will show lots of links to sories about this AI lab...
This page has a picture of Gaak, the robot in question.
I'd be worried too if I found this heading my way in a carpark!
"The big question in our lives is how to be at the same time a hedonist and in a hurry" - Alain Ducasse (?)
Yeah, it had the "desire" the break out. More than likely it was sitting there doing nothing and started doing something and ended up outside. It has no concept of being detained or will to escape. It basically sounds like its supposed to want to suck energy out of prey, so maybe it figured there might be some in the parking lot if the sun was out.
You're giving it far more credit than it deserves. It only knows what prey is, and how to pick it up and connect with it. It doesn't know what captivity is, only that it was in a situation where it wasn't getting prey.
What?
In some of the later Foundation books, Asimov ties the Foundation world to the Robots world, and brings in R. Daneel Olivaw, the robot detective from the Robot mysteries (Caves of Steel, Naked Sun IIRC), who has survived through the millenia. Olivaw tells a character that at some point he realized that there is an implicit "Zeroth Law", which is something along the lines of:
"A robot must not harm humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."
The First law had to then be obeyed only so far as it did not conflict with the Zeroth law. Therefore, Olivaw could kill a human if it was clear that doing so would save humanity (or rather, by not doing so, would harm humanity). An interesting idea, one of the better bits from the later Asimov books.
Obligatory Link to Robot Insurance Movie If You Can't Search Google (first result)
Funny I just changed this sig a few days ago....:
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