why is there so much crap being talked about robots right now?

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I find it frankly astounding. Talk of them taking over, having rights etc.

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:30 (nineteen years ago)

You are a Cylon.

― blueski, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:30 (nineteen years ago)

transformers hype

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:33 (nineteen years ago)

How can a machine, something that ppl have created, no matter how "intelligent", have rights? After all, ppl don't have rights based on their intelligence. They have rights based on the fact that they are a person. If I murdered or seriously maimed a person with severe learning difficulties I could still expect to be tried, sentenced and set to prison. If I walked into a hospital where there was someone with no brain function who was being kept alive by a machine and switched that machine off -- the same.

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:34 (nineteen years ago)

well, isn't it interesting that both of the answers besides mine mention sci-fi? have many of us been so entranced by sci-fi that they can't see the reality of the situation?

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:35 (nineteen years ago)

How can a ~~machine~~ baby, something that ppl have created, no matter how "intelligent", have rights?

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:36 (nineteen years ago)

I can't tell if this is a joke or not.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:38 (nineteen years ago)

Talk of them taking over, having rights etc.

-- Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:30 PM (8 minutes ago)

taking our jobs...

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:39 (nineteen years ago)

where is this talk?

― the next grozart, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:39 (nineteen years ago)

Voices, head.

― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:40 (nineteen years ago)

There must be some way outta here, hmmm-mmm dum dum dum dum dum

― Alan, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:41 (nineteen years ago)

i think robots should take our jobs. jesus christ, in this day and age you'd think we'd have found a way to get machines do most of the work for us and free up our spare time. why are we still working 8 hours a day when we could just get machines to do it for us?

― the next grozart, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:41 (nineteen years ago)

let's warm up for robot slave reparations RIGHT NOW

― Alan, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:44 (nineteen years ago)

That guardian article was teh sukc. Such articles always are. All "robot rights"/"uncally valley" robot speculative newspaper articles barely touch on the elephant(s) in the living room - what the first robots we will see will 99% certainly be used for; death and sex - ED-209 and realdoll are the future, "robot rights" and domestic household chorebot are a way of filling pages on quiet news days.

― Pashmina, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:50 (nineteen years ago)

Stanislaw Lem to thread

― Alan, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:51 (nineteen years ago)

will smith to thread

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:52 (nineteen years ago)

Ideally there'd be a robot that can fuck, do the hoovering AND assassinate your enemies.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:52 (nineteen years ago)

michael jackson to thread

― braveclub, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:52 (nineteen years ago)

Actually I think the first robots in common use will be glorified burglar alarms.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:53 (nineteen years ago)

+ doing basic felt-tip line drawings

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:54 (nineteen years ago)

robot hoovers already. in yr server rooms vaccin yr dustmites

― Alan, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:54 (nineteen years ago)

How can a ~~machine~~ baby, something that ppl have created, no matter how "intelligent", have rights?

Is it wrong to masturbate while there is a robot in the same room?

― ken c, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:58 (nineteen years ago)

Andrew Martin to thread. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182789/)

― koogs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 12:25 (nineteen years ago)

You know what they need? A robot that can entertain children.

― the next grozart, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:04 (nineteen years ago)

Somebody revive the "Racist Epithets for Robots" thread. Possibly the funniest thread of all time.

― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:06 (nineteen years ago)

"so much crap being talked about robots right now" = one soft news piece in wired every couple of months, lol

― Sébastien, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:12 (nineteen years ago)

perhaps there hasnt been the right kind of robot thread yet. maybe "have you ever looked at a picture of a robot and then made a cup of tea" might have got him jumping

― 600, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:14 (nineteen years ago)

can the robot vacuum cleaner tell the difference between a sweet wrapper and a fiver?

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:16 (nineteen years ago)

That's what robot garbage separators are for.

― onimo, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:17 (nineteen years ago)

if you built a robot you wouldn't program it to feel pain or get upset by ppl insulting it. If someone damaged a robot, it wouldn't be an infingement of its rights but rather an act of criminal damage against the person who owned it and as for the racial slur thing, if the robot did't understand that it was a slur or if it understood the concept wouldn't be upset by it, there wouldn't be much point in saying it in the first place.

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:23 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.bernhard-prinz.de/img/bernhard_prinz_-_pedant.jpg

― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:25 (nineteen years ago)

Look if you can afford a robot to clean your house you're not going to be missing a fiver here and there are you? Especially if you're profligate enough to leave them lying around on the floor.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:28 (nineteen years ago)

There was someone on the radio talking about building robots to sense something analogous to pain so that they could tell when they were being in danger of damaging themselves.

― Ed, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:29 (nineteen years ago)

ok, suppose you had a robot to mow yr lawn. The robot is unable to distinguish between a dandelion in its path, for which it shouldkeep going and cut up, and a toad, which it shouldn't. Now if you were mowing the lawn personally, you would keep going for the dandelion but stop for the toad. Now I'd imagine that toad lovers are equally divided between rich and poor and toads don't belong to anyone anyway, so until you invented a robot that could tell it needs to stop for toads but keep going for dandelions we will still be mowing our own lawns regardless of how wealthy we are.

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:33 (nineteen years ago)

can they make them wear hawaiian shirts?

― 600, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:33 (nineteen years ago)

marks in his stride now, happier about the robots?

― 600, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:33 (nineteen years ago)

There was someone on the radio talking about building robots to sense something analogous to pain so that they could tell when they were being in danger of damaging themselves.

analogous to pain in the sense that the robot would need to desist from doing the thing that could harm it or seek assistance, but not in the sense that it hurt!

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:34 (nineteen years ago)

What is pain, if not that.

― Ed, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:35 (nineteen years ago)

it would be an alert, but it would not cause suffering.

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:36 (nineteen years ago)

Is suffering not an alert?

― Ed, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:37 (nineteen years ago)

I believe the dandelion/toad distinction problem could probably be sorted through programming...

― braveclub, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:37 (nineteen years ago)

In teh future dandelion and toad sorting will be a piece of piss to yer average lawn-mowing robot.

― onimo, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:37 (nineteen years ago)

xpost

― onimo, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:37 (nineteen years ago)

Mark's hectoring in this email reminds me of red-faced old Victorian gentleman getting apoplectic about evolution or steam engines or the bicycle while completely neglecting the fact that in the future, things may not actually be exactly as they are now.

The potential problem with robots, Mark, is that as they become more advanced there is likely to be a critical point where they are able to self-replicate and evolve, and it's at this point we a) shit ourselves and b) figure out how to live alongside our metal brothers.

― Mark C, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:42 (nineteen years ago)

Also, you know how much you're sounding like someone discussing slaves rather than robots?

― Mark C, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:43 (nineteen years ago)

I'd imagine that toad lovers are equally divided between rich and poor

i think we should pause for a moment, here.

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:43 (nineteen years ago)

self replicate yes, maybe, evolve no. For them to evolve would require there to be some kind of selection pressure.

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:45 (nineteen years ago)

Like toad spotting ability?

― onimo, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:46 (nineteen years ago)

Why should robots not be subject to the same selectional pressures as urban humans?

― Ed, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:47 (nineteen years ago)

i think the galapagos turtles are the way they are because of *absense* of selection pressure.

groo.

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:47 (nineteen years ago)

Are urban humans evolving?

― onimo, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:47 (nineteen years ago)

The level of Robotism on this thread is sickening.

― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:47 (nineteen years ago)

Let's say panicking humans went out and smashed any replicating robots they found. But the replicating nanobots escaped immediate detection and, while dog-sized robots were wiped out, a vast swarm of billions upon billions of micrometer long robots built up in deserted areas, blah blah blah.

― Mark C, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:49 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2001/zoolander2.jpg

"Robot rights talk is so hot right now"

― Alba, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:51 (nineteen years ago)

Don't forget the poor underclasses who can't even get nuts & washers (until Bigweld returns and saves the day).

― onimo, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:52 (nineteen years ago)

a vast swarm of billions upon billions of micrometer long robots built up in deserted areas

and what would they do?

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:58 (nineteen years ago)

Survive, regroup, evolve, organise, destroy all humanity!

― onimo, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 13:59 (nineteen years ago)

what would they have to gain from destroying humanity?

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:01 (nineteen years ago)

lebensraum?

― Ed, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:02 (nineteen years ago)

What do you have to gain from denying rights to the poor little guys?

― ledge, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:02 (nineteen years ago)

what is pain, if not that
it's when you go "oooh yeahhhh babbyyy more" when people drip wax on your cock

xxxxpost

― ken c, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:44 (nineteen years ago)

do you think if robots do become commonplace in society and we start employing all the racial slurs in that thread against them, we might start being nicer to each other? If all the hate is taken out on the robots we might bury racism, war ect ect!

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:59 (nineteen years ago)

Not when we're basing half of the slurs on human racial slurs.

― onimo, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 15:01 (nineteen years ago)

> "so much crap being talked about robots right now" = one soft news piece in wired every couple of months, lol

they were talking about it on radio 4, prompted by some upcoming 'public debate':

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6583893.stm

(but yes, also on march 2007, dec 2006...)

the android in Bicentennial Man pointed out that he was becoming more organic and the humans were becoming more mechanical (replacement hearts, hips etc) and that at some point he'd be more organic than them.

― koogs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:01 (nineteen years ago)

That robot was full of shit, it's not like we're born with replacement hips.

― onimo, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:05 (nineteen years ago)

You wanna see crap talked about robots?

― Ned Trifle II, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:18 (nineteen years ago)

> That robot was full of shit, it's not like we're born with replacement hips.

it's not like he was created with organic parts - he got a bloke to design organic replacements for his systems and swapped them over gradually over his 200 years. the other key point is that the organic stuff had a shelf-life - he could've existed forever when he was purely mechanical, the organic replacements made him mortal.

― koogs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:25 (nineteen years ago)

Grandpont Genie is a robot

― RJG, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:29 (nineteen years ago)

Bring on the robosexuals

― kingfish, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:33 (nineteen years ago)

xposts

it's an 'ah but is man what he was born as, or what he becomes?' thing innit.

though surely his organic replacements could be replaced when they wore out, keeping him immortal.

― c sharp major, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:35 (nineteen years ago)

but he chose not to. which proved his humanity. or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bicentennial_Man

― koogs, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 16:51 (nineteen years ago)

Goddamn robots. How I hate them!

― M.V., Wednesday, 25 April 2007 17:55 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, they are awful.

― Alba, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 18:16 (nineteen years ago)

Wait, how do we know you are not a robot?

― M.V., Wednesday, 25 April 2007 18:35 (nineteen years ago)

"who does he calculate he is"

― Ste, Thursday, 26 April 2007 10:54 (nineteen years ago)

stories abt this in the press are almost invariably accompanied by semi-humanoid robots, usually you can see the wires and other components but they are generally human shaped, as if to emphasise their closeness to us. Never mind the fact that most real robots, such as there are, look nothing like humans at all and there is no need for them to eg those which build cars or (badly) vacuum carpets.

― Grandpont Genie, Thursday, 26 April 2007 13:45 (nineteen years ago)

Except the artistic robot in the Picasso car ad. That's non-humanoid but still very cute.

― Masonic Boom, Thursday, 26 April 2007 13:46 (nineteen years ago)

that's presumably based on a real one!

― Grandpont Genie, Thursday, 26 April 2007 13:46 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.thechestnut.com/bertha/bertha1.jpg

― The Wayward Johnny B, Thursday, 26 April 2007 14:28 (nineteen years ago)

BRAIIIIIINS

― Mark C, Thursday, 26 April 2007 15:42 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.hansonrobotics.com/

http://www.hansonrobotics.com/images/diner.jpg

Note that the head of the PKD android has still gone missing.

― kingfish, Thursday, 26 April 2007 15:49 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.lovingthemachine.com/2006/07/meet-my-robot-twin-geminoid_20.html

(not as pervy as the url suggests, but kinda spooky)

― koogs, Thursday, 26 April 2007 16:04 (nineteen years ago)

ten months pass...

As they say:

Japan is already an industrial robot powerhouse. More than 370,000 robots worked at factories across Japan in 2005, about 40% of the global total and 32 robots for every 1,000 Japanese manufacturing employees, according to a recent report by Macquarie, which had no numbers from subsequent years.
And they won't be claiming overtime or drawing pensions when they're retired.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 04:27 (eighteen years ago)

But more importantly:

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-03/36350044.jpg

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 04:28 (eighteen years ago)

which is more sexed up, the asimo or the cylon there

― kingfish, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 04:32 (eighteen years ago)

― roxymuzak, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 04:51 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5nA2SZX1nE

― roxymuzak, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 04:51 (eighteen years ago)

nerds are the new jocks.

― Michael F Gill, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 05:28 (eighteen years ago)

In a few years, at the age of 14, Marshall will discover ILX, out-post Ned and consistently pwn everyone on these boards. Rumors will circulate that while Marshall brings the lolz, true excelsior credit actually belongs to 'Qwanky'.

favorite moments:

there would be a bunch of robotic arms in the doors and the walls of the house, and speakers and microphones, and you could say like "I'd like some meatloaf. And it would cook you some meatloaf".

...

think robots could help with global warming IF THEY RAN ON POLLUTION AND EMITTED PURE OXYGEN!

― Cosmo Vitelli, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 07:09 (eighteen years ago)

Like that awesome robot 1X.

― Trayce, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 09:45 (eighteen years ago)

Asimo always looks like it's trying to walk while taking a dump...

― snoball, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 09:55 (eighteen years ago)

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