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The Death of Aibo, the Birth of Softbank's Child-Robot
New submitter pubwvj writes: Sony is killing off their robot Aibo, stranding the 150,000 or so owners with no support, repairs or parts other than cannibalism. Now we have another Japanese company, SoftBank, releasing a robotic 'child.' Eventually, they too will discontinue the production of parts and support, beginning the process of killing off all those 'children' that are spawned. As robotics become (far) more advanced at what point will it be murder for a company to discontinue a product line?
reading this stuff.
By the time we have to worry about sentience, won't we have good enough 3d printing?
Of course it's also a little worrying to imagine an AI that's sentient and impossible to murder.
OK, I'll bite: when it's sentient.
This place is going to hell lately.
It's not even murder to kill a cow to eat it. It's not murder to euthanize your old and sick cat. It is not murder for a woman not to have childrens. Why could it be murder to NOT PRODUCE a robot, which is a even barely an assembly of plastic and metal pieces ?
Then it will be able to organize political parties.
This is the dumbest post I've seen on Dicedot.
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Well, you can at least draw a parallel to withholding medicine from a patient who can't quite pay.
That is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. WTF is going on at Dice?
Who murdered Slashdot? Between this and the divide by zero question, I weep for the death of intelligent discussion.
Um, never. That's not what "murder" is, okay?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Why shouldn't death come for a robot? Where is it written that robots should be granted immortality, even if they are sentient?
All things come to an end. Even metal and plastic.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Aibo: "I want more life, fucker!"
Have gnu, will travel.
But I feel like I died a little reading crap like this on Slashdot.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
The difference is that humans can't live forever due to medical/technical realities (as yet), whereas a robot theoretically could.
At the moment this is just another case of a supplier refusing to supply proper maintenance support and spare parts when it suits them (bastards), but if robots ever become sentient then it could be akin to murder, by denying the "necessities of life"
Not in my lifetime, my lifetime, mi lyftm,...Dave?
If the robot is advanced enough to be considered alive and sapient/sentient, then it will be able to repair itself using off the shelf parts and/or materials it fabs for itself in your garage. This is in addition to fixing and upgrading everything you own on a regular basis.
A likely outcome/transition point we will see during the Singularity.
Never.
Bought a laptop 16 months ago, now the backlight is dead. Of course, they scrapped that division and nobody makes replacement parts. When you get tired of something, just ditch it - no need to concern yourself with support.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I would note this Freefall comic.
Just the robot equivalent of organlegging
By the time this could be anything like a problem, if 3D printing isn't in everyone's house like it was supposed to be five years ago, we should just nuke ourselves.
I remember the first time I saw an Aibo, and remembered being pretty impressed by its mannerisms. It did stuff like the stretches my dogs do, and would even cock its head off to one side the way a dog does when it's puzzled by something.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
That's what I'd like to see on Slashdot.
at what point will it be murder for a company to discontinue a product line
At a point likely atleast several centuries (if not millenia) in the future.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Honestly how hard is it to make replacement parts. Sony would be smart to release the design files for the plastics. As for electronics, people should have no problem figuring that out. Aibo isn't overly complex.
We're not without options. Get over it.
There is one significant difference.
While I never owned an Aibo, I do have several Roombas. The Roomba lacks one thing Sony put an effort into with the Aibo - a programmed personality put in something that looks like what most people would be attached to: a cute clumsy puppy. This is much more amusing to interact with than a hockey-puck shaped noisemaker that zig-zags around the room bumping into things like a drunk sailor. The Roomba has the personalty of a soap dish, but I do have to admit it is sometimes entertaining watching one work its way out of a tight spot.
Tldr:
The Aibo is designed to interact socially with humans, the Roomba is designed to clean your carpet. It all depends on your use case as to which is better.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
If the consumer wants to keep their robot around the parts will be there much like you can still get parts
for cars made in the 1980s. As patents expire robot parts for mass produced robots will be made by secondary sources.
Sentimental attachment to a sentient being would be far stronger than attachment to a preprogrammed toy.
I don't see how eating my neighbor gets me parts for my Aibo - unless he has one, too.
I think you meant that "cannibalizing" (i.e., removing parts from other currently functional) Aibos might be the only way to get said parts - similar words, two VERY different meanings. Even so, functioning Aibos need not necessarily be cannibalized, as I'm sure there may be one or two broken Aibos lying about for parts, too.
That is all.
So the robots won't have unlimited repair, but will instead age and die?
...but the Abios will all go to Silicon Heaven. It must exist, or where would all the calculators go?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
A more apt comparison would be a drug company stopping the production of an important but unprofitable drug. I imagine there are still people who own fully functional Aibots but not the number isn't high enough to justify Sony continuing to make spare parts.
It rather depends. Is that just giving up doing it themselves, or does it also include preventing others from doing it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So many orphans.
Bello vel Pace Paratus.
Is it murder what Dice is doing to SlashDot?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Unfortunately SlashDot editors deleted the key take home paragraph and instead sensationalized my submission. Aibo and the 'child' robot are not the point. Murder is not the point. The point is product support. The last paragraph, which SlashDot editors deleted from the submission, was:
"This leads to the thought that it is time for all products that are discontinued to be forced into the public domain, to be open sourced. If a company is going to discontinue something then they need to release all the information for the production and support of the product so that others who want to do so can pickup the project and continue itâ(TM)s useful life. This should reach back retroactively and is needed to support all those systems that are in place as companies drop support or go out of business."
Strewth, Bruce! You know it's against rule number two.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This submission isn't useless, it has a distinct use once you see it.
It's an example.
It's a convenient and concise way to illustrate the Full Retard overclocking that's been hyping up, the entitled SJW chronic victim slash terminal offendee complex. This entitlement, the demands and imposed obligation, it draws a plain contrast will all the "IT'S MY RIGHT MY CHOICE" derping that's always going on two posts away, yet the irony seems to whoosh on.
The expectant arrogance is also ignorant. Even if, IF, Sony had promised to support and repair and replace and sell forever and ever and ever and we even said so in writing, you don't have to be a pessimist to know better. Even if the relevant branch intends to deliver as much, you don't have to be a pessimist to know there's no guarantee that branch will exist next year. Even Sony can become so acquired/mutated that "you're on your own" happens overnight.
And to put a cherry on top, this is FirstWorldProblems through and through. If we can drop a "something something labor market too bad so sad" on farm peasants losing their doctors, I see no reason I can't wave this away.
Companies EOL lots of products. IMHO, the world would be good if companies would put support information (files, designs, STL files, etc) in escrow for 5 years after EOL is declared, then allow them to be used for 'support and maintenance purposes', even if it keeps competitors from building on their IP, or better yet, open source the information after some time.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
You lost the bet.
Plus the Slashdot editors edit off the rest of my original post which was the important part and they sensationalized the title into something totally different. What you, and probably most people don't realize, is submissions can, and do, get heavily edited by the Slashdot editors. It looks like the edit for sensationalism. A pity.
People should have known this day would be comming, it's been 9 years since they stopped production on the robots themselves, so 9 years later stopping the service is even quite a long time..
And with 3D printing, it shouldn't be hard to replace parts that are damaged..
And just think how far robotics would have been if Sony didn't stop the aibo, and they did sell just enough to make a small profit..
One time there was even the notion that a new aibo would be released which would have a CELL processor inside (ofcourse it didn't make it out of the sony laboratories)..
But the aibo has been one of the best 'consumer' robot for a long time, and still there really isn't any other 'consumer' replacement for it.. The i-cybie never even came close, and that was one of the only robotdogs that even came anywhere in the direction of the aibo...