"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.

Comments

Re:Asimov had it right

[foniksonik]

Unfortunately we will only have the technology to enforce these laws many years after they have the potential to be broken.

All three laws are subjective and would require immense logic databases and analysis algorithims of constant environmental feedback imput. amazing how much the brain really does... not to mention the 'gut' whatever that is...

A.I:

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, this is totally amazing. This thing:
- had the desire to break out of the cage
- did so and
- navigated to freedom

Needless to say, this warrants further examination. This sounds like roughly animal level intelligence. I hope they make more tests what this Gaak is capable of. It already sounds autonomous enough. Might this be the first step to true AI?
One thing to consider, though. Are combat and "survival of the fittest" type exercises REALLY what we want robots to base their intelligence on? It sounds to me like we are "breeding" them for aggression.

this article is very short on details

[Kargan]

I'm sorry, it just failed to strike me as anything major, simply because we don't know anything about the robots, the lab setup, the prior research or robot behavior, etc. etc.

All this means to me is that a robot drove out into the parking lot without anyone controlling it. Is that really so great a feat? I mean, if it is, please correct me here.

Do they know for sure that it was maneuvering itself towards the outside world with the actual intent of "escaping" or doing anything?

What would have been really interesting to see is what would have happened if they had just sort of followed it around outside for a day or two, of course making sure it didn't get destroyed or anything.

"Asimov had it right"? Bovine excreta!

[Anarchofascist]

First Law:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

How would we go about enforcing such a law?

In the Asimov stories, the First Law was somehow deeply ingrained in the mind of every robot's "positronic pathways" for the peace of mind of the human race. The fear was that the first robot to kill a human being would result in a mass destruction of the world's robots, due to what Asimov called the "Frankenstein complex".

But, welcome to the 21st century. In Japan alone, so far 11 workers have been killed by production line robots, resulting in precisely zero anti-robot pogroms.

We know, as technicians of the modern world, that the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to build something will almost always win. Our solution is not to write complex programs to give robot workers some sort of respect for human life, but to give the human workers around the robots a respect for the power and arbitrary nature of their mechanical colleages. Large yellow stripes are marked out within the working area of all robots, within which humans shall not go, and outside of which the robot (hopefully) cannot reach.

Of course, when you start giving robots wheels and independent goal-seeking behaviour, things get interesting.