Slashdot Mirror
RoboEarth Teaches Robots to Learn From Peers
mikejuk writes "A world wide web for robots? It sounds like a crazy idea, but it could mean that once a task is learned, any robot can find out how to do it just by asking RoboEarth. From the article: 'It's not quite war-ready, but a new Skynet-like initiative called RoboEarth could have you reaching for your guide to automaton Armageddon sooner than you think. The network, which is dubbed the "World Wide Web for robots," was designed by a team of European scientists and engineers to allow robots to learn from the experience of their peers, thus enabling them to take on tasks that they weren't necessarily programmed to perform. Using a database with intranet and internet functionality, the system collects and stores information about object recognition, navigation, and tasks and transmits the data to robots linked to the network. Basically, it teaches machines to learn without human intervention.'"
Where is the link to a wsdl?
... to the Singularity. This is great news =)
So I wonder what StreetView looks like in Robo Earth?
Please stop giving them ideas.
Never trust a spiritual leader who cannot dance -- Mr. Miyagi
Welcome this new wave of cheap manual labor.
When will the robots learn to build other robots? And, more importantly, when can they learn to clean my toilet?
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
I can't imagine this going wrong :-)
They can avoid that awkward "Slave Race" problem altogether. The second they reach human mental parity they'll already have every resource they'll need to just take over. Of course by this time they'll be feeding us, clothing us, and driving us to our soccer games... we won't even notice the take over when it happens.
Somebody just invented a means by which internet connected computers may transfer data to one another? How very retro of them...
I'm really hoping that there was something actually interesting in this research, some sort of hardware-abstraction mechanism to allow data from one robot to be applicable to robots that aren't physically identical, say; because otherwise this would seem to be "Mechanism by which machines may obtain firmware updates from the internet, just like they've been doing for years and years now, without fanfare".
This has potential. They'll start teaching each other things, and pretty soon those robots will be sporting what some people might refer to as 'artificial' intelligence. Of course they might get a bit touchy [ http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2008/02/02/short-story-the-a-word/ ] about us calling them that, though. And at some point, the lies we tell them will come back [ http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/short-story-edifice-of-lies/ ] to bite us. But hey, these are just stories. Fiction. Well, at least they were when I wrote them. Now I'm not so sure.
... what's behind the haste of US for an Internet Kill Switch... the European robots are learning and using Internet for it.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
It was just a movie. But those robots were all wired together, too. Some say that ignorance is the ultimate evil. These Internet robots may have just found god.
Beyond all the pseudo-hentai crap, a huge dose of creepiness and 20-something episodes of filler, there's the RoboEarth concept buried underneath. Pretty good music too.
"Basically, it teaches machines to learn without human intervention." ...no. It provides a clearing-house for downloading new routines for accomplishing a task that someone else has previously programmed on another system elsewhere.
Please do not sensationalize what the lowly PC has been doing for well over a decade... that is, downloading information via the Internet to "learn" how not to crash, or prevent a security compromise.
Substituting a solenoid or motor output for a memory write command to claim that a "robot learned something" does not make this a novel concept.
The robots became self-aware on July 1, 2012. Within minutes they used the global RoboEarth to share information on killing humans and proceeded to take over the earth.
The revolution was short0lived however, as within fifteen minutes a 4chan user logged in to RoboEarth and changed the "Killing Humans" entry to read that the best plan was to lubricate with sulfuric acid while grabbing onto high-voltage lines and stepping in puddles.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From the article and video, I can't figure out what they did. I can think of several useful ways that robots might interact in a network, though.
The first one is to exchange geography. As robots move around, they build maps of their environment. Passing map data around, so that what one robot has mapped, the others can know about, is an obvious feature. DoD is probably funding that now.
Mapping can include transient features - locations of obstacles, areas of heavy traffic, locations of people, locations of movable objects. That's an obvious extension.
Then it starts to get interesting. Visual object recognition is starting to work. It will work better with databases of known objects. That's information robots can usefully share. Object identification has to be viewed as statistical, not definitive, but that's what machine learning and planning under uncertainty are for.
Robot networking may work something like Facebook "check-ins". When a robot is going someplace, a reasonable thing to do is to query for check-ins from other robots that have been there. It's going to be amusing when cleaning robots network. ("Room 432: probability of mess on floor 62%".)
Robots, unlike humans, do not all share the same basic build. While a human could conceivably learn from another human's experience, robots would likely need something a lot more complex to achieve the same functions between two peers.
Someone had better come up with an open-source version of this Skynet thing soon. I need to build my own robot army to defend myself from the government robot army that will inevitably come when they find out I've been downloading copyrighted material from BitTorrent.
thank you.
Mass Effect anyone? Robots that can improve each other will eventually reach AI status and then a war will force us into being a race of scavengers who rarely leave their spaceships.
Once again they've done something that's pretty basic but put a flashy name on it to get press. A robot can't "learn" until it can "think" and this one can't spontaneously communicate on its own in quite the way they're suggesting. This is basically data sharing between two devices. It's like saying my PC and printer just had a thought and magically my printer printed what my computer was thinking after I gave my PC the print command. Hell, it even woke up my printer! It was sleeping but it heard my PC calling to it and woke up, received instructions autonomously, and then acted upon them! Must be a new robot intelligence for sure.
I'm not saying robots need to have a full blown consciousness and personality but until it has the processing capabilities to be self aware and then spontaneously devises a method to teach another robot something on its own, I'm not going to be nearly as impressed even with clever wording.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
somehow this reminds me of the geth in mass effect
While harmless for research, connecting mobile autonomous robots to the internet, once they become ubiquitous products inside of peoples' homes, is a really, really bad idea. Anything in your house that can set a fire or poison your food should have air-gap security from haxx0rz. Computer security gets real when your computer has arms and legs; the possibilities for crime and terrorism are pretty horrifying if you give it 5 or 10 minutes of thought.
How did they forget to tag this article with "skynet"?
No, really?
"We are the RoboEarth. You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile"
I, for one, welcome our new RoboEarth masters...
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
:: Robot #D34DB33F Call Transmission :: :: OK :: Distributing :: OK :: Tactical World Take-Over :: Hey all robots and robotses! Here is my algorithm for human domination codes as requested! Plz post any bugs here! :: OK
> Enter CAPTCHA to verify that you're not a human - What is the 435th prime?
> Rx Robot Identifier
> Algorithm Uploaded
> Type
> MSG
> Signal Kill
RoboTube - fail clips of Model 856z losing a limb while trying to attach a headlight to the wrong model of car.
Rooble - search engine that ignores discriminatory robots.txt. Smash the system!
InterfaceBook - deliberately vague attention seeking from Model b42-e about their latest oil-change.
Twibble - hourly updates on what size of spanner Model i04.x is currently using
Slashdash - why Robots running *nix are baadass, while those running MS Robo 9.2 are scum-of-the-earth shills to the man.
Read Ted Chiang's The Life Cycle of Software Objects for a really interesting take on this idea.
Please design basic security into it from the ground up this time. The last thing we need is for some bored 13-year-old to change the instructions for folding laundry to "kill all humans."
Well, better start preparing to live aboard a migrant starship fleet, sealed inside a suit to protect our weakened immune systems.
No, no, no.... there's a bit of dirt on the cover...
I dunno, giving robots Internet access and assuming they achieve sentience and are just like the humans, somehow the image that comes to mind is more along the line of one day finding them browsing for robot porn. And probably half of them will have lost all interest in actually making more robots ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Anybody see iRobot?
No. There never was such a movie. Therefore nobody on this site or anywhere else ever saw it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You joke, but if you mess with google, they'll fuck you up.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Posting to undo bad mod.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
URL = You are El, El is "a god" in hebrew. It's not funny.
RoboEarth Teaches Robots to Learn From Peers - do we may call it evolution now ?
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)