Thursday, February 9, 2006

Do Android Dinosaurs Help Children Have Sweet Dreams?

Ever since the old DOS program Eliza was talking to me on the TRS-80s in 5th grade, there has been a sector of technology that has aimed to emulate human behavior. Fuzzy logic enables the Google program Picasa to have an "I Feel Lucky" button on its photo-editing panel. The program does a pretty good job of making an average photo look above-average with a single click.

Now fuzzy self-programming will be used to help gadgets learn about human emotional response, and try to emulate it. A little robot dinosaur called Pleo will be hitting consumer electronics shelves soon.

The idea that robots will be able to reprogram themselves on-the-fly to "better serve" humanity seems a little scary to me, since I read every science fiction horror story I could get my hands on when I was in grade school. Of course, as long as they make the robots this small and without opposable thumbs, I guess we'll be all right. When they start making true androids with this sort of capability, I say we're screwed.

But I do hope that my prejudices will be ill-founded. One of the earliest texts of Buddhism begins:

1. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

2. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow


I wonder how Mind and mental states apply to robots. Will they be happy if they seem happy?

Peace,

Tor

Categories: ,