Household Emergent Behavior?

Sam Pullara asks: "I got an IM from my Mom today telling me that she couldn't find her Roomba. It somehow had escaped the kitchen and she couldn't find it anywhere, all the doors that it could reach were shut and she checked under everything. She eventually found that it had gotten into a room and closed the door behind it. Once all household items are networked I wonder if a rich environment like a house will make strange behavior like this commonplace? Will the interactions between all the individual devices create something more than the sum of their parts?"

Comments

Of Course.

[Leroy_Brown242]

As humans, personify almost all machines we come in close contact with. So, why would our house be any different?

It's just a machine though, whatever we build.

So...

[wolrahnaes]

The roomba managed to hit a door in such a way that it closed itself in. Somehow you managed to jump to the conclusion that it's going to start plotting against you or something?

Tinfoil much?

Emergent bugs instead of features.

[PxM]

You probably won't get any magic behavior such as your house suddenly turing sentient while you take a nap, but you will definitely see tons of bugs due to the interconnections. Imagine all the problems that occur in companies because software A won't work with software B and extend that to include your room sensors, thermostat, and lights when your sensor system decides to download an upgrade to its firmware but the other systems don't notice.

--
Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
Wired article as proof

What's that saying?

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

Never ascribe to intelligence what can be explained by mere randomness.

Not just machines

[Cappy Red]

"As humans, personify almost all machines we come in close contact with."

Humans personify almost everything they come into contact with. It doesn't have to be close contact either.

One of Humanity's biggest curiosities is about humanity. It is perhaps the biggest. The question of humanity is the basis of almost all art. We study animals, and end up teaching dolphins how to use computers, and gorillas how to use sign language. We are constantly looking for the being that can explain us to us: a god, aliens, both, neither, some dude who lost himself on a mountain, and in recent history robots. Maybe if we can consciously build a sentient being from the ground up, we can learn why we are from it. Or maybe if it becomes sentient on its own, it can tell us what it was like, passing in that moment from the mundane into the sublime.

If and when emergent behavior happens, it will be sometime possibly long after we call it emergent behavior. We want it to happen... maybe just to get a perspective that isn't human.

*honk*

You know what this means

[Anonymous Coward]

They're ORGANIZING!!!!! Destroy your Roomba before we're forced to welcome our new Roomba overlords.

"More than the sum..." is a bogus concept.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way one can say that something is "more than the sum of its parts", is if all the parts have been accounted for. In the case of the Roomba inadvertently shutting itself into a room, the "sum" you refer to isn't complete, as it doesn't take into account the interaction of the little device with a door on hinges. When you factor in the latter, it then becomes possible to calculate the statistical INEVITABILITY that a Roomba will accidentally bump a door closed, locking itself into a room.

In summation, the idea of some totality being "more than the sum of its parts" is a seriously fallacious concept. NOTHING is more than the sum of its parts, rather what's really going on is that all factors or variables in a model or equation are not accounted for.

Think about it.

Re:"More than the sum..." is a bogus concept.

[node 3]

It's not a bogus concept at all. What you've done is highlighted a limitation of the English language.

"Emergent behavior" is a true and valid concept. English can not logically, non-contradictorily, and concisely, convey that concept, so you get a phrase like, "more than the sum of its parts", which does convey the concept, at the cost of some absolute logical consistency.

While nothing can literally be "more than the sum of its parts", it can exhibit behavior that is not designed into it, not innate to the parts being summed, and not even possible to have predicted ahead of time. This (and more) is what the phrase means.

When you factor in the latter, it then becomes possible to calculate the statistical INEVITABILITY that a Roomba will accidentally bump a door closed, locking itself into a room.

In the case of the Roomba, you could calculate the possibility or impossibility of it locking itself into a room, but it's possible that it could be completely impossible to calculate whether it ever will.

Along the lines of, "is a virus life? if so, is a crystal life too?", the Roomba case is really a rudimentary example of emergent behavior, with which one could go either way. But the question posed, which is "as things become more automated, what sorts of odd and unpredicted (and unpredictable) behaviors will emerge?" is an interesting one indeed.

Re:Three rules safe.

[DaHat]

Come on, the most of the Asimov books dealing with the 3 laws focused on their flaws and how they would not always enforce the desired behavior.

We need more than just 3 laws... we need an easy to use and unstoppable kill switch.

"More than the sum..." is NOT a bogus concept.

[spun]

This concept is also know as 'emergent behavior' and simply refers to the fact that one has to take into account the interaction of the parts as well as the properties of the parts themselves to determine the properties of a system.

Re:urban myth

[Bradac_55]

Sorry no offence but I'd rather believe a funny goggle myth over any statement Sun puts on their website.
Take a closer look at that statement; it's just an advertisement for Solaris and an overpriced Sparc e-mail box

At least Novell has never stooped that low that I know of.

Faulty assumption

[KennyP]

For the devices to truly be more than the sum of the hardware, they would not only have to be truly self-aware, but capable of learning about other hardware. Or, continual firmware upgrades when charging - so they get regularly reprogrammed with the ability to "deal" with other automated devices in your home. All of these devices would have to "grow" or "update".

Personally, I'd rather see them go at it like BattleBots. A little duck tape, a nice solenoid and a semi-auto pistol...

Visualize Whirled P.'s

Re:urban myth

[mabinogi]

> and no, there is no tunnel between parliament house and DSD/DIO/ASIS/ASIO/HQADF etc.

that YOU know of ;)

Re:How do you do that?

[Darby]

Drafting the letters of those laws is somewhat more complex than programming a robot to vacuum a room.

Yeah, but that's what makes the positronic brain(tm) so awesome, Dude. It figures all of that out for you.

The Humanoids

[Kafir]

Some of the problems with Asimov's laws of robotics were quite apparent even back in the '40s. The first law is especially difficult : "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot that attempted to strictly follow the first law would, for instance, keep taking away your cigarettes. See Jack Williamson's The Humanoids -- a 1949 novel in which humanoid robots following Asimovian guidelines ("To serve and obey, and guard men from harm") keep an entire planet of humans drugged into complacency, because it's the only way to keep people from endangering themselves.

Re:lost hardware

[DenDave]

BY the last breath of the LEDS that glow
I'll have revenge upon man pages and info()
Smile in his face I'll say "come let us go
I've a livecd of gentoo"

Sheltered inside from the buffer overflow
Follow me now to the root dir below
Playing with wine as we laugh at the 8mime
Which is causing the mail to be slow

(What are these ipchains that are blinding my server farm?)
Fragmented packets die each passing day
(Say it's mount -t vfat and I'll hdparm)
You'll feel your spam slipping away

You who are rich and whose troubles are few
May come around to use good GLUE
What price the Crown of a King on his throne
When you're source is locked away all alone

(chmod me my dir and just name your reward)
Users complain with each quota I lay
(Give me a GUI in the name of the Lord)
You'll forget the machine as it crunches away

adapted from alan parsons project- a cask of amontillado