Will robots ever really be humanlike?

[Peter May]

The recent advances in machine technology,and robotics notwithstanding, will
machines ever be truly humanlike.


For a Breath I Tarry, by Roger Zelazny (extract).

Mordel drove a shaft of metal downward into the snow.
He retracted it, raised it, held up a piece of ice.
"Regard this piece of ice, mighty Frost. You can tell me its
composition, dimensions, weight, temperature. A Man could not look at it
and do that. A Man could make tools which would tell him these things,
but He still would not know measurement as you know it. What he would
know of it, though, is a thing that you cannot know."
"What is that?"
"That it is cold," said Mordel and tossed it away.

 

[BenBurch]

More likely that humans will be robot-like.

 

[Octavo]

human-like in some aspects, sure. Robots that are human-like in all aspects? Will require some fairly revolutionary advances. Give it 20 years or so

 

[theprestige]

The recent advances in machine technology,and robotics notwithstanding, will
machines ever be truly humanlike.


For a Breath I Tarry, by Roger Zelazny (extract).

Mordel drove a shaft of metal downward into the snow.
He retracted it, raised it, held up a piece of ice.
"Regard this piece of ice, mighty Frost. You can tell me its
composition, dimensions, weight, temperature. A Man could not look at it
and do that. A Man could make tools which would tell him these things,
but He still would not know measurement as you know it. What he would
know of it, though, is a thing that you cannot know."
"What is that?"
"That it is cold," said Mordel and tossed it away.

Will robots ever not know measurement, but know cold instead? Probably someday an artist will exploit sufficiently-advanced technology to make something along those lines.

Robots are tools. Humans generally make tools for exactly the purpose to which Mordel alludes: To do things we can't do already. We don't need a hammer to feel the hardness of a nail, we need a hammer to drive the nail home.

I think BenBurch is closer to the truth of it. Humans will increasingly integrate with our tools, until we know measurement almost as well as robots do. Whether we will still know cold as well as humans do is an open question.

 

[Eric D]

"Will robots ever really be humanlike?"

I hope so. Imagine how it can improve our sex lives.

 

[Ladewig]

The recent advances in machine technology,and robotics notwithstanding, will
machines ever be truly humanlike.


.

"Ever" is a long, long time.

"Human-like"?
I think it will be easy to make machines that will feel superior to machines made in other parts of the world and will create slurs to describe those machines.

The trick will be to make machines which can create elaborate creation myths to justify ignoring the needs of other machines.

[joking aside] what do you mean by human-like?

 

[Tiktaalik]

They're already descending into the Uncanny Valley as far as I'm concerned.

 

[casebro]

I think it will all be possible, in whatever permutation the OP means.

But will it ever be economically competitive with a human that some loins are just itching to produce for free? ?

 

[Brian-M]

The recent advances in machine technology,and robotics notwithstanding, will
machines ever be truly humanlike.

There already are humanlike machines...





They're still pretty crude and limited at present, but the technology is slowly advancing.

For a Breath I Tarry, by Roger Zelazny (extract).

Mordel drove a shaft of metal downward into the snow.
He retracted it, raised it, held up a piece of ice.
"Regard this piece of ice, mighty Frost. You can tell me its
composition, dimensions, weight, temperature. A Man could not look at it
and do that. A Man could make tools which would tell him these things,
but He still would not know measurement as you know it. What he would
know of it, though, is a thing that you cannot know."
"What is that?"
"That it is cold," said Mordel and tossed it away.

But humans with experience would be able to tell you those things. They could produce a rough estimate of how large it is by looking at it, how heavy it is by holding it, how cold it is by touching it, and its composition by knowing that ice is made up from water.

For a general-purpose robot to do better than any possible human could do that, it'd have to have the instruments equivalent to those that a human would use to measure those things built in.

And as for knowing that it's cold, why wouldn't a robot be able to experience that?

The robot named Dvorak in the Freefall webcomic came up with the solution to this (I can't be bothered to search the archives to find the exact comic). He built a small heating pad and a thermometer into his hand to be able to experience the way that humans feel hot and cold.

(It's not just the temperature of the objects we handle that affect how hot or cold they feel to us, but also their thermal conductivity, which is why he needed a heating pad in his hand to experience this.)

 

[fuelair]

human-like in some aspects, sure. Robots that are human-like in all aspects? Will require some fairly revolutionary advances. Give it 20 years or so

Anthony Boucher wrote about this in a couple of SF stories long years ago. The point of the stories was that robots would be effective to a much greater degree if they were not built like humans but were designed to do a specific job perfectly. Company formed was, iirc, RUR which stood for R's Usiform Robots (a rip on Capek, o.c.)

 

[Brian-M]

But will it ever be economically competitive with a human that some loins are just itching to produce for free? ?

But a human freshly produced by those loins is pretty much useless thing. It requires an investment of large amounts of resources for years before that newly-produced human can become an economically viable production unit, while a newly made robot is potentially an economically viable production unit from day one.

 

[Ladewig]

Anthony Boucher wrote about this in a couple of SF stories long years ago. The point of the stories was that robots would be effective to a much greater degree if they were not built like humans but were designed to do a specific job perfectly. Company formed was, iirc, RUR which stood for R's Usiform Robots (a rip on Capek, o.c.)

In intriguing idea.

Now I am wondering if I would rather have a humanoid robot or a centauroid robot. Or a Pegasusiod robot.

 

[Manopolus]

I think it's pretty creepy that anyone even WANTS a robot that looks and/or acts like a human. I don't see the point. I can see machines that do what we ask them to... but really see no point in those machines having human characteristics.

Then again, I don't even like voice-activated stuff. I feel like talking is for communicating with humans, not machines. We have buttons for the latter. That sort of thing just sort of creeps me out.

 

[Brian-M]

I think it's pretty creepy that anyone even WANTS a robot that looks and/or acts like a human. I don't see the point.

If you could only afford to own one general-purpose intelligent robot (I'm assuming that by far the most expensive part would be the brain), you'd want one that was approximately human in form, so it could operate tools and machinery intended for humans.

A human-shaped robot should be able to drive your car, use a pair of scissors, climb a ladder to clean the gutters, use a lawnmower to mow your lawn, use your vacuum cleaner to clean your carpets....ect.

Good luck trying to get an intelligent robot-car to to clean your gutters or bring you breakfast-in-bed!

ETA: But I suppose you could have one central robot-brain in your home which wirelessly controls purpose-built non-humanoid drone robot-bodies, such as a robotic lawnmower, ect. But the cost of getting separate remote drones for each specific task might be prohibitive.

ETAA: If you were talking about robots that could pass for human instead of merely humanoid in form, I guess it would effectively be a way for people to own the equivalent of loyal slaves and servants, without coming up against laws about human slavery or having to pay wages. A lot of people might want that.

 

[MontagK505]

If you could only afford to own one general-purpose intelligent robot (I'm assuming that by far the most expensive part would be the brain), you'd want one that was approximately human in form, so it could operate tools and machinery intended for humans.

A human-shaped robot should be able to drive your car, use a pair of scissors, climb a ladder to clean the gutters, use a lawnmower to mow your lawn, use your vacuum cleaner to clean your carpets....ect.

Good luck trying to get an intelligent robot-car to to clean your gutters or bring you breakfast-in-bed!

ETA: But I suppose you could have one central robot-brain in your home which wirelessly controls purpose-built non-humanoid drone robot-bodies, such as a robotic lawnmower, ect. But the cost of getting separate remote drones for each specific task might be prohibitive.

ETAA: If you were talking about robots that could pass for human instead of merely humanoid in form, I guess it would effectively be a way for people to own the equivalent of loyal slaves and servants, without coming up against laws about human slavery or having to pay wages. A lot of people might want that.

Initially such machines would be for the very wealthy. I suspect the most popular models would be like Valerie 23 or the male equivalent.

 

[PixyMisa]

The recent advances in machine technology,and robotics notwithstanding, will machines ever be truly humanlike.

Sure. Humans are humanlike, so there's no reason why robots can't be.

More likely that humans will be robot-like.

That's already true.

 

[MontagK505]

I think it's pretty creepy that anyone even WANTS a robot that looks and/or acts like a human. I don't see the point. I can see machines that do what we ask them to... but really see no point in those machines having human characteristics.

Then again, I don't even like voice-activated stuff. I feel like talking is for communicating with humans, not machines. We have buttons for the latter. That sort of thing just sort of creeps me out.

I recall a short SF story I read as a teenager titled "The Dollhouse" that had a house of prostitution that was staffed with robot gynoids that were remote operated by real women, who for reasons of age or physical appearance were unable to attract men. Creepy as hell.

 

[MontagK505]

human-like in some aspects, sure. Robots that are human-like in all aspects? Will require some fairly revolutionary advances. Give it 20 years or so

It could begin with the development of cyborgs. As our knowledge of brain function advances the possibility of direct interface and replacement of damaged neurological parts with cybernetic parts could continue until there is nothing left of the original biological brain. Such a machine/person could plug into any number of body types including a humanoid that would look much like a bio-human. One question is, would the resulting machine be considered a legal person?

 

[marplots]

A related question: Will cars ever become horse-like? Doubtful. We already have horses for that.

And you know what we have that is very human-like? Humans. We have lots of them, and we know how to make more if we need to.

 

[PixyMisa]

A related question: Will cars ever become horse-like? Doubtful. We already have horses for that.

And you know what we have that is very human-like? Humans. We have lots of them, and we know how to make more if we need to.

Quality control isn't great, though.