Slashdot Mirror
MIT Scientists Create Robotic Sea Life
Junior Barns writes "This
article on the BBC News site reports on the development of a robot that imitates primitive life forms. This project led by researchers from the
robotic life group at the MIT media lab is intended to study how people will try to interact with and relate to an "alien" creature that seems organic but is not anthropomorphic. Let's just hope no one tries to kill and eat it."
Better yet, reply if you think it's a bad idea.
For example, I think it's a bad idea.
Mostly because AI is generally an argument topic. It'd be like having an "Evolution" topic. Whenever anyone brings up AI, you get twenty highly rated posts talking about "Why don't the researchers see that AI would be easy if only they [insert poorly thought-out idea here]". And then you get like three voices of reason explaining why none of this is groundbreaking.
Er... I just made your point. If we had an A.I. topic, then everyone with my complaint could filter out the flames....
I guess I'm just trying to say there shouldn't necessarily be *more* AI stories.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Don't worry, as long as you say your off topic there is no way you can be modded down.
Hacker Media
Mostly I agree with you. The discussions on AI on Slashdot really haven't been of the highest quality.. but then again, neither have the stories.
I do believe, however, that AI is experiencing exponential growth at the moment, and that AI is becoming what people twenty years dreamt of. Sure, we have no HAL yet (another ten years, I bet ya) but there are going to be enough stories coming along that are directly related to AI that I think a designated topic would be useful.
Then again, I also believe topics like 'PHP', 'Perl' and 'C++' should also be culled, and instead use 'Programming'.. but hey.
And anyway.. how comes there's no area on Slashdot where we can actually discuss the workings of Slashdot? A 'MetaSlash', if you will? Journals are good, but there are none that are particularly popular for this type of discussion.
Suggestions?
mogorific carpentry experiments
AI research may have been most useful as a money acquisition scheme for expensive research, back when computers were expensive and rare. It's hard to believe today, but AI research used to dominate computer science at the major schools, which were MIT, CMU, and Stanford.
Spinoffs from AI research include time-sharing, EMACS, electronic mail, document processing, and parts of the ARPANET. But most of those came from the support people, not the AI researchers. Stallman, for example, worked at the MIT AI Lab for years, but he's not an AI person. AI lab support staffs made all the useful stuff work so the AI researchers could get their email, do graphics, move files around, and do all the basic computer stuff we now accept as normal.
The AI researchers helped justify using multimillion dollar machines for trivial stuff. Without them, nobody would have dared do, say, e-mail. When the hardware got cheaper, we knew how to do lots of useful, but not previously cost-effective, basic tasks. That may be the greatest contribution of the AI community.