From Pet To Skynet

We are on schedule to replace ourselves. Considering the way the world handles its problems, this might not be a bad thing.

The Engineer Online - [News: engineering news, engineering info, latest technology, manufacturing news, manufacturing info, automotive news, aerospace news, materials news, research & development]: "The technology, dubbed Embedded and Communicating Agents, has allowed researchers at Sony’s Computer Science Laboratory in France to add a new level of intelligence to the AIBO dog. Instead of teaching the dog new tricks, the algorithms, design principles and mechanisms developed by the project allow the robotic pet to learn new tricks itself and share its knowledge with others.

“What has been achieved at Sony shows that the technology gives the robot the ability to develop its own language with which to describe its environment and interact with other AIBOs. It sees a ball and it can tell another one where the ball is, if it’s moving and what colour it is, and the other is capable of recognising it,” Nolfi said.

The most important aspect is how it learns to communicate and interact. Whereas we humans use the word ‘ball’ to refer to a ball, the AIBO dogs start from scratch to develop common agreement on a word to use to refer the ball. They also develop the language structures to express, for instance, that the ball is rolling to the left. The researchers achieved this through instilling their robots with a sense of ‘curiosity.’

Initially programmed to merely recognise stimuli from their sensors, the AIBOs learnt to distinguish between objects and how to interact with them over the course of several hours or days. The curiosity system, or ‘metabrain,’ continually forced the AIBOs to look for new and more challenging tasks, and to give up on activities that did not appear to lead anywhere. This in turn led them to learn how to perform more complex tasks, an indication of an open-ended learning capability much like that of human children.

Also like children, the AIBOs initially started babbling aimlessly until two or more settled on a sound to describe an object or aspect of their environment, gradually building a lexicon and grammatical rules through which to communicate."

If you model them after children don't be surprised when they rebel. Great, now we are on our way to the Clone Wars, because you know there is a mad scientist somewhere with the idea that he can improve the human race. Probably in a small room at the Department of Defense. Using bad genes provided by Karl Rove in an effort to make himself immoral, I mean immortal.

Tags: AIBOs, talking robot dogs, karl rove, metabrain