A.I. and Robotics Take Another Wobbly Step Forward

CWmike writes to tell us that artificial intelligence and robotics have made another wobbly step forward with the most recent robot from Stanford. "Stair" is one of a new breed of robot that is trying to integrate learning, vision, navigation, manipulation, planning, reasoning, speech, and natural language processing. "It also marks a transition of AI from narrow, carefully defined domains to real-world situations in which systems learn to deal with complex data and adapt to uncertainty. AI has more or less followed the 'hype cycle' popularized by Gartner Inc.: Technologies perk along in the shadows for a few years, then burst on the scene in a blaze of hype. Then they fall into disrepute when they fail to deliver on extravagant promises, until they eventually rise to a level of solid accomplishment and acceptance."

Comments

I'll build robot soldiers.

[tjstork]

I'm building a robot soldier. It will have a pistol in one hand, and a club in another, so it can club a bunch of people, and shoot the rest, because the pistol will be fed by 2000 rounds stored in its arm. It will weight 400lbs. Build 500,000 of these things, and we won't have to worry about hearts and minds. We'll just unleash fire breathing metal terror on our enemies, and they to us, and all that will be left is a bunch of robots running in circles until they run out humans and batteries. But hey, I'll get tons of government money to do research.