Asimov in Modern Science

. Monday, September 22, 2008
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Today I've read about PHRIENDS project. Funded by EU (2.16 € million), PHRIENDS tries to force robots to respect Asimov's laws. Asimov seems to be a great scientific since even his most futuristic ideas are influencing the actual science.

I spent a great part of my adolescence reading Asimov's books and dreaming about intelligent robots that make use of the 3 laws. Now, it seems that, sometime, I could even work with a robot that implements those laws and that is so cool... :D


P.D: For Spanish speakers, I've posted a larger post about the project in my spanish scientific blog.

4 comments:

L. Venkata Subramaniam said...

Today most robots perform mundane repetitive tasks that can hardly be considered intelligent. I think the question of following Asimov's laws only comes when robots have some level of native intelligence. I guess for now the Turing test is the measure of intelligence. Turing had predicted that by 2000 we will have intelligent machines, but we still seem far from that.

When do you think intelligent machines will become reality?

JoSeK said...

It's a difficult question :) Following Turing's Test, I think we shouldn't wait a lot of years (maybe 5/10 at most) to create a machine able to pass the test. But I really don't think a machine that passes the Turing test can be defined as intelligent, and I supposse there will not be any really intelligent machine before 2100...and then the Cylons will destroy the human race :P XD

L. Venkata Subramaniam said...

do you then think that Asimov's laws mean anything in today's world where computers cant even pass the very basic Turing test which isnt even a good indicator of intelligence?

JoSeK said...

Asimov's law can be understood in a less complete way. For example, any robot in a factory can harm a human, which violates Asimov's law #1. You can develop a robot able to perform its task but able to stop at any time he can harm a human being. That do not require a real intelligent robot, and it can be implemented nowadays.