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."

Comments

The real link

[unsinged int]

Here is a working link to the story. And a working BBC link.

Prevalence of A.I. stories = AI /. topic needed?

[wackybrit]

In the past few weeks we've had a lot of stories relating to Artificial Intelligence. Yesterday we had that game characters one, we had the computer that built an oscillator, news about 'Ai' and 'Cyc', and so forth.

AI is definitely becoming a reality. Everyone was interested in AI ten or twenty years ago, but it's NOW that things are starting to really happen. The technology is here.

So why doesn't Slashdot have an 'AI' topic? I think it's time we had one here, as AI is clearly becoming a popular topic on the site.

P.S. I believe in this enough that I'm willing to burn some karma by posting this almost offtopic post, which will probably be modded down as such. Mod me up if you agree, or mod me down if you think it's a bad idea.

Access problems

[K.]

If you get 403s, try clearing your BBC cookies and going via the front page, answering yes to the are you from the uk question. Worked for me.

I doubt it was slashdot wot done it too, more likely someone fucked up file or CMS permissions and hasn't noticed coz of said cookie being set to "yes" on all BBC boxes.

Re:Prevalence of A.I. stories = AI /. topic needed

[Elwood P Dowd]

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.

Re:Prevalence of A.I. stories = AI /. topic needed

[Kizzle]

Don't worry, as long as you say your off topic there is no way you can be modded down.

Rod Brooks and the Toy Factory

[Animats]

This sort of thing has been seen before. Rod Brooks, head of the MIT AI Lab, has a side business making robot toys. Their success in the toy market has been rather limited.

Their best known product is My Real Baby, manufactured by Hasbro around 1999-2000. It's basically a baby doll with Furby-type software. Rated "Worst Idea of the Year" by the Alliance for Childhood. It's not even that original; Baby Think it Over, the anti-teen-pregnancy doll from hell ("requires real care on the part of the student, including feeding, burping, rocking, and changing diapers"), has been around for years, but at a price well above the toy level.

This whole direction is way too much like Eliza. Much of the AI field, having failed at tasks that actually require doing something successfully without human assistance, now seems to be focused more on faking it. You've all seen Ask Jeeves, and obnoxious "virtual customer support reps". Those are pathetic.

There's some good work going on, but this isn't it.

Re:Rod Brooks and the Toy Factory

[Animats]

Sounds a bit like science in general; ie: looking for something else and stumbling onto a whole slew of other things.

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.