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Meet Lucy, The Orangutan Robot
Roland Piquepaille writes "Lucy is not an ordinary robot, driven by software. She's a pure product of artificial intelligence (AI). And after a three-year long training, she's now able to make a difference between an apple and a banana, which is quite handy for an orang-utan, even if she doesn't eat them. Her five microcontroller chips wouldn't like this... In "A Grand plan for brainy robots," BBC News Online tells us that Lucy is the brainchild of Steve Grand, an honorary research fellow at Cardiff University's School of Psychology. And why did he choose an orang-utan design? "I made Lucy as an orang-utan because, can you imagine how scary it would be if she looked like a human baby?," said Grand. More details and references are available in this overview which also includes the cover of Grand's last book, 'Growing Up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps,' which was already reviewed on Slashdot."
umm...unicos/mk?
dyyghrnmiw
Maybe he could build and program an entire zoo (extinct species and all)..No feeding, no vets, just an occasional tune-up :0
opensource AI projects? It'd be interesting to play around with something, even very primative. It' would need to be OSS so I could actually modify it though.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
I would bet that the thought of a baby would be on the order of 1,000,000 times of that of this robot. And probably 100,000 times that of a real Orangoutang. Obviously I have absolutely no backing for those figures. As for AI, the studying I have done has made me conclude it's a failed, crack science at this point for people who really have no concept that a brain doesn't act like a computer, or a computer programmed to act like a brain. In order for this to work we have to be able to quantify a brains element, chemicals etc and we haven't much idea of most of these anyways, and if we do we don't have a clue as to how they function together.
I'm just sick of recursive "best yet" algorithms that claim to be AI when in fact it's nothing more than deduced logic and we are, thankfully, a but deeper than that.
So, go ahead and study AI as perhaps one day something may come of it but be realistic in that you're becoming skilled in a clever art of trickery and deterministic patterns. Good luck!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
It has occurred to me, whenever the subject of AI is broached, that scientists seem to be doing a bang-up job of heading towards replicating the proper function of a brain in computer hardware, but none of the projects I've seen try to replicate the errors that result when the brain cell sending or receiving a message dies, is replaced incorrectly, is deformed one way or another, or is subject to any of the other myriad flaws of flesh.
Could it be that sentience, in the end, is the result of brain farts?
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
Guess flexible wiring is more pleasant to be strapped into than a squid or a cuttlefish, though I doubt it'd be as fast. Cephalopods have very fast nervous systems, they're lightning quick partly as a result.
rjt
has 50000 'neurons'. Does Steve Grand really think he'll approach mammalian intelligence with so few? I agree strongly with him giving Lucy a rich environment, but maybe he should be looking at using something like FPGAs to get more neurons on board for a reasonable cost. That's what Hugo de Garis is doing, and he had much more ambitious plans. The company he was working for failed though, so I don't know whether he's still making progress in actual building of AI. Anyone?
thanks, i appreciate the insight, it's nice that i now have a reason behind the face-less design theme. i totally agree about hard to read faces...some folks' scariest childhood memories revolve around unblinking eyes or faces missing key components. an example would be if eastman & laird had kept the ninja turtle's pupils out of the cartoon show. they would have been way creepier and probably not done nearly as well.
fyi, when i mean "emotion" i'm not just talking about positive, so-cute-it-makes-guys-ovulate emotions, but scary, creepy emotions too. and maybe it's a question more of intensity. a de-skinned animatronic kitten with a lazy eye that glows krypton-green is less scary than a steel-lattice PCB cookie jar topped with an exaggerated primate head with a glowing green krypton eye with a grimacing i'm-gonna-eat-your-children face!
Man those games were obsessions...