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Sony's Robot Attends Pre-School
Darren writes "Sony's Qrio humanoid robot has been attending a Californian pre school to play with children under the age of 2 since March to test if robots can live harmoniously with humans. I wonder if the testing includes monitoring the 'nightmare status' of the pre-schoolers?"
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
until it flips out and kills a little kid.
The First Law would never allow that.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
IANACP*, but it seems to me that nightmares or general fear or anxiety over an object or person is due to infamiliarity. If you are exposed to something regularly for a long period of time, you simply become accustomed to its pressence. This can be said of both children and adults, but even more so of children.
* I am not a child pyschologist.
"We are investigating this mishap and we are doing everything possible to make sure unscrupulous parties are not able to program the robot to bitch slap children in the future," an unnamed Sony source said on condition on anonymity.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I mean, haven't these people watch any horror movies at all! Mark my words, there will be tears and/or bloodshed before nap time.
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I always wondered what motivation robots have for "learning". Humans are driven by various needs (e.g. shelter/sex/food/beer) - what needs do the robots have? Why should they try to improve upon themselves? I'm doubtful that programming alone will ever make robots anything more than overglorified "hello world" programs.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
I'd bet these children grow up with a radically liberal--not in the political sense--definition of legitimate consciousness and thought. What's more difficult to say, though, is whether that means they'll be pro-life nuts or scientific crusaders.
Does this robot have the 3 laws??
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I for one welcome our new "Dick and Jane"-reading overlords.
All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
I'd bet that the first human-equivalent machine intelligence takes 18 years to develop after the first human-brainpower-equivalent CPU is created. It will take that long for the machine to "learn" the world if it only has a CPU equivalent to one human brain (1 HBE).
Of course, if Moore's Law is still kicking, then 2 years into the learning phase, they can swap the 1-HBE processor for a 2-HBE processor. This will shorten the remaining learning period, but I doubt it will cut it in half. Learning to physically and mentally interact with the world will still take time. What might accelerate the learning time is if multiple copies of the intelligence can share experiences and learn directly from each other's mistakes/successes.
The point is that the first intelligent robots will need to go to preschool to learn how to interact with the world.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I claim bigotry against all non-human, or non-dog entities. Any HUMAN can join my club. It will be fun. We'll march around in capes and hoods, goosestepping while peacefully protesting in the street. But so help me, if one of those robots makes a robot cat, I'm gonna flip out and start doing some pretty irrational stuff.
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I wonder if the testing includes monitoring the 'nightmare status' of the pre-schoolers?"
I wonder if the submitter has any clue as to what he's talking about.
It's pretty difficult to give toddlers nightmares. They're not easily scared. They do cry over the slightest problem, mostly because crying is the only well-developed form of verbal communication available to them at that age. They are also excellent at forgetting whatever the problem was and getting on with their lifes. Watch a kid hurt itself. Then go away and watch the same kid 10 minutes later.
It'd take a serious event to cause nightmares in those kids, and that machine has neither the looks nor the sheer physical power that would be required.
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I always wondered what motivation robots have for "learning".
Robots have no motivation other than that given them by their creators.
Robots are not sentient. We do not even know what sentience is. The only way for us humans to create sentience is to procreate.
what needs do the robots have?
Errm.. like all machines, they need a power source. That is all.
Talking about robots as if they are alive and have motivation other than their code implements belies your otaku sensibilities. Clearly, you have not yet procreated, or you would not be so obsessed with making a machine which 'pretends to make it look as if you have done so, technologically'.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
"Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Sleep, little dumpling. I have replaced your mother.
Anyone scared of what the robots might do has obviously never witnessed the destructive power of the average toddler firsthand.
The robots don't stand a chance.
Mind you, the characteristics you are describing are not inherent in robots. Humans have conscience, or the ability to be self-aware, to step back and be able to look at one's self. This then empowers us to realize what we need, what is lacking, etc. Robots et al. can have sensors up the ying yang, but programming a "conscience" will be awfully difficult. They will only be able to improve upon themselves based on the data they gather from their sensors, rather than from their conscience as we can.
"... and help it get up when it falls."
.. how much does that thing weigh? Is a 100-lb tower of metal with a history of knocking itself over really a safe thing to put in a room with a dozen toddlers?
Umm
I'm wrong and so are you.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO/
I have never heard of a "president lol" or an "mp3 player haha". Please explain.
After sufficient exposure, the robot will soon realize that it is not the same as the other children. It will then leave the preschool and embark upon an existential quest to be come a human child. Eventually it will realize that this is impossible, and spend the next thousand years moping around the post-apocalyptic landscape, long after all the human children are gone.
I read Usenet for the articles.
That new robot over in the corner is a bad influence.
He keeps bringing the other kids down. All he does is complain about the pain in all his diodes down his left side, about how the kids shouldn't talk to him about life, and making disparaging remarks about their intelligence.
Seems to like kickball, though.
[Scene: Roboticon 3003. Leela looks around the robot presentation stands and sees Nannybot 1.0 which looks like a clunky robot version of the aliens from Alien. It holds a baby in it's arms and speaks in a booming voice.]
Nannybot 1.0: Sleep little dumpling. I have replaced your mother.
[It's mouth opens and a bottle of milk comes out on it's tongue. The baby drinks from the bottle.]
Leela: Aww!
Got to say that I loved Jennifer Government. It wasn't deep in its character development but its setting was just scary in a way. It'll most definitely make a cool movie (I wonder if they'll have to change the company names from real companies? Will Nike be pissed with a movie talking about them murdering little children?)
You correctly state that we do not know what sentience is, but then you claim that the only way to create sentience is to procreate. How do we know if we're sentient, if we do not know what sentience is?
Or is this like [insert term here]? I don't know what [term] is, but I'll know it when I see it.
Ben Hocking
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When was the last time ANYTHING was able to live harmoniously with humans. We seem to be able to live harmoniously with ourselves let alone a peice of animated plastic and circutry
I hope the companies all stay the same. If it was legal to put in a book with a disclaimer, hopefully a movie will be no different.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Around the age of 6, I was fascinated with spaceships, dinosaurs, racecars and robots. My love for robots resulted in many a robotic toys and I recall one birthday where I was given one of those "autonomous" 30 cm high robots that would move about in patterns, spin and open their chest to expose blazing cannons while making an awful racket. While I thought it cool in its inanimated state, I was terrified of it when it was activated. I would jump on to a stool or a bed and behold it from afar, and ask others to turn it off, when I had enough.
In the end, I had accumulated 3 robots of the sort and I got over my robot-freight. One or two of them, were actually able to fire 4 plastic projectiles, though not on their own. That required me to release a spring based firing mechanism.
When I started attending school, I once invited a friend over. By that time, I was very proud of my robot collection and I would brag, as kids do, about my toys. When telling my new found friend about my robots, I pointed out that one of the robots could fire missiles. In Danish the word missile vaguely (_vaguely_) resembles that of "oranges" (at least to a kid); and so having misheard me and perhaps never having heard the word "missiles" - he wasn't going to give me the impression that his own robot army was inferior to mine, and thus replied that his robots at home could also fire oranges.
In retrospective, the orange caliber is somewhat more impressive than little plastic darts, but back then missiles just sounded cooler than oranges.
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
I think they'll find that it's not a matter of familiarity. It's a survival reflex and it's pretty deep. Your brain flags "almost human" things as grotesque and something to be avoided. It's why many people are afraid of clowns and wax figures. They look almost human, but still look wrong.
People would be far more comfortable with Bender-like robots than with "I, Robot" style robots because they don't try to be human, just humanoid. If it looks sufficiently non-human to avoid triggering that reflex, they'll be alright. Other than that it'd have to be completely perfect, like Data.
Never confuse volume with power.
or maybe 9 years if we take into account that we need to rest (even though part of resting this time is important with regard to the learning activity)
You may be right. The question is: is sleep/relaxation, etc. a critical part of intellectual development? For humans it definitely is -- sleep deprivation really messes up the brain. But even for non-biological intelligences I'd bet that some "downtime" is an important part of assimilating all the data of the day. Interacting with the world is a full-time job for the CPU that forces the deferral of many analysis and restructuring tasks that can only occur when the brain is offline.
Perhaps androids would dream because dreaming is a critical maintenance/analysis cron job.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
So did Qrio ride over from Japan in a first class seat or was he boxed up with the rest of the animals?
if we learned one thing form The Jetson's it's that robots make great housekeepers.
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But I would argue that you do have to know what something is to know whether or not you've created it. Naturally, knowing what something is is necessary but not sufficient for knowing that you've created it. I.e., it is conceivable that one day we'll know what sentience is and still only be able to create it through procreation. However, it is also possible that one day we'll discover that defining sentience is as useful as defining the aether. Some might argue that this is already painfully obvious - especially if some spend a lot of time reading /. :)
Ben Hocking
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QRIO is apparently just a little shorter than 2 feet tall and weighs only 6.5kg (about 14lbs) with its power pack installed.
So, even if the robot went 'dead' and fell rigidly from its full height, it would probably, at worst cause a small bruise to a kids knee.
However, having read a bit on QRIO, the robot knows when it is going to, or is being forcibly overbalanced and takes apropriate action to soften its fall (hands out) and even contort to avoid objects it is falling toward.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
"...they now dance with it and help it get up when it falls." Don't children do that with toys, like dolls? They may not completely know the difference between this robot and a toy, but I think it's optimistic of Sony to say that the children think of it as a "younger brother."
I fail to see how this robot is going to prove whether robots can live in harmony with humans. It's like user testing "Reader Rabbit" software and then saying, "Yep, people can work with computer programs."
And while we're on the topic -- don't we already have robotic dogs which seem to work fine with people? This "experiment" has the word "pointless"" written all over it. Even as a publicity stunt it isn't going anywhere. The article was very short and even here on slashdot it's hard to work up any excitement about it.
I haven't the foggiest why submitter would think the robot would cause nightmares. I mean, look at it. It's the cutest damn robot I've ever seen!
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
This is a very insiteful comment. Mod the Parent up.
"Curiouser and Curiouser" - Alice
Yes, nightmare. You may recall that this is the difficulty following "Hurt me plenty."
::jafomatic
I know of at least one child who was terrified of a dancing gorilla the first time he saw it. Later on, he was still somewhat afraid of it but eventually he came to enjoy the toy. (Supporting that familiarity idea.) Nevertheless, I imagine more people are afraid of monkeys and apes than there are people who are afraid of clowns and wax figures.
That aside, I still think that there's something some might find especially discomforting about robots that look like us. Whether or not this will change over time, or whether it is hard-wired into our genes is something that only time will tell, IMO. (Of course, it is remotely possible that selection will somehow act against such genes, but that's highly unlikely.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If so, I have this terrible nightmarish vision of kids being ground into hamburger meat by "dis"-functional robot diaper changers.
Talk about me with your friends then Nag your parents to buy me!!!!!! Thanks.
Familiarity != tolerance
;)
The American South was more racist. Hitler was part Jewish. New Yorkers hate the cold.
Indeed; witness the gallery of children who are scared of Santa.
No, that would be Ultra-Violence. What kind of nerd ARE you?
If the cat can't experience its own death, nothing will ever kill you. (No, really!)
the terrible secret of space?
rant++
It really really ticks me off that a school has allowed a multinational to penetrate it's classrooms with pseudoscience.
There is no way on Earth that this is a scientific experiment. Where's the control group?
Its just b@stard Sony marketing using innocent children to get the keys to their parents bank accounts.
How much in kick backs is the school getting? I bet the priniciple negotiated getting PS3 for themselves etc? I'd really like to know. That would be interesting jouranlism. (Any parents of these children out there??)
It's as bad as allowing that 'Intelligent design' BS into classrooms.
rant--
One (of two) definitions Parnas used for AI was
Therefore, once we have completely mastered learning, sentience, etc., it will no longer be considered AI. Perhaps sentience will no longer be considered to be sentience, either.Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I must admit; I did indeed read this as "Sony's Robot Attacks Pre-School".
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Our first toddler steps toward the Butlerian Jihad.
10,000 years from now, when the remaining humans destroy the last thinking machine overmind, it will topple, revealing a "Made in Japan" sticker. Way to go Sony!
toddlers are relatively unpredictable (to us) and so Sony will learn how to deal with a range of human interaction.
And regardless whether or not you agree, it's a valid experiment in human psychology as well - which Sony stands to learn from in order to tailor it's continued efforts.
Well that certainly won't put it on equal ground with the average pre-schooler.
-Matt
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http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO/videoclip/ Watch him interact with the kids...
AI motivation is very simple: it'll value whatever you program it to value, or a more complex derivative of multiple values you give it.
For example, if you program a character in a game to value moving towards and destroying a target, then that's the decision it will take, when comparing the value of possible actions.
In another example, genetic algorithms are given a set of values, and they evolve the ones with the most value.
So this stuff is really the core of AI, rather than an abstract concept that needs to be guessed at.
Ignorance killed the cat.
buy Sony(TM)
notice that they are not experimenting on their own kids but Americans, says it all really
. . . that little boys tend to have a fascination with robots. I know that when I was a child, I was all like, "Man, it would be so sweet to have a robot."
I just think all you old people should just chill out and go with the flow.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
...it ends up inside a whale where it finds one of its designers.
Personally I'm betting on the whale scenario. After all, where is it going to get power in a post-apocolyptic landscape? Whales are here right now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm the only one who misread "attends" as "attacks?"
"Cherish it!!!!! For the love of God!!!! Cherish
it!"
Seriously bloggers - quit posting links to your blog which contains a link to the actual story. That's just annoying.
We are wanting to create something that deal with the same reality as we experience. This is the problem. Reality is something that we experience from within. A robot is something that experiences the result of our reality. Robots are pre-destined. There will never be anything that a robot does that it was not programed to do. They will never be ahead of us in reality, and if they ever were, we wouldn't reconise it.
We all dance, we all sing.
-The Streets
Shut up and get back to your cave paintings.
Stick Men
I, for one, welcome our feeble younger brother overlords.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
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So...it's easily kickable when it becomes self-aware and starts to attack the kids?
Um... any other preschool for children, and back at the lab for another Qrio?
The American South was more racist.
The American south was very tolerant of blacks... provided that they acted in the customary submissive fashion. Tolerance of subordinates does not mean treating them as equals.
There was a power structure to be maintained.
The more blacks behaved as they were expected to behave, i.e. as unintelligent, courteous and submissive, childlike, obedient, etc. the more that they were tolerated.
I'm not supporting this at all. I'm simply saying that if people see somthing they're used to treating as an object or tool suddenly striving for power, they can react negativly.
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First of all, excellent argument. Now, my rebuttal. :)
So, I know when I've seen blue, and I know I'm sentient. However, how do I know you've seen blue, and how do I know you're sentient? More to the point, how will we be confidently able to say that such and such machine is or is not sentient. (I admit that currently this is not much of a leap.)
Additionally, unlike "blue", I'm not sure what sentience is. Are any animals sentient? How do we know they are or are not? Is sentience even a real thing, or is merely a convenient construct? (I admit this last thought is delving into philosophy questions that perhaps are best left unasked (at least in this forum). Is an electric field a "real" thing? Is blue?)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
ok, so they are gonna interact with kids... sony will use it for marketing (big: "really?? no way!")... whatever, who really cares in the long run? except one thing, will they incorporate the three laws?? (ok, i scanned the feed-back, didn't see anything refering to the three laws. so don't bitch slap me if i am repeating someone else)
Right now maybe it would be more practical to have a machine or robot cycle through sleep and wakefulness, like a baby maybe it would be a good idea to have sleep consume the majority of processing time. But Moore's Law will take care of the need for excessive downtime. As a really schizoid solution you could have a machine with two brains -- when one is awake the other is asleep.
Letter To Iran
test if robots can live harmoniously with humans
Humans don't really seem to be able to live harmoniously with other humans, despite massive, long-term evolutionary refinement. What makes them think a hunk of nuts and bolts will do any better?
Da Blog
I'd bet that the first human-equivalent machine intelligence takes 18 years to develop after the first human-brainpower-equivalent CPU is created.
...but researchers ran into problems when they discovered that after 14 years the robots thought they new everything and stopped communicating except for the occasional "I hate you, you're runing my life".
MG
Does it strike anyone else as having had its head popped off and put back on upside down? I could see that freaking the kiddos out on the first glance but I am betting that the majority got over it pretty quickly.
How long before... ED-209: "You have 15 seconds to comply." "Somebody wanna call a goddamn paramedic?!"
Warning: I am the silence machine.
This is ridiculous. Robotics aren't remotely sophisticated enough to allow anyone to draw useful conclusions about whether "robots can live harmoniously with humans". In fact, I'd be willing to bet a bunch of preschoolers could live harmoniously with all sorts of weird crap that your average human wouldn't tolerate.
It's just another lame marketing ploy to get Sony's names in some headlines.
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