The Robot Life
THIS BOOK WAS PUBLISHED IN 2019
Written and Edited,
by Josh Alfred *Note, book and my kindle account were taken down for copyright use of the book cover image. What you read here is an abridged version, that just so happened to be saved. All other texts linked to this book have been deleted. (LINKS IN BLUE FOR MORE INFORMATION)
Introduction - Future and History of the Computer
The existence of the computer in combination with machines has given rise to the age of the robots (2020+).
This age might exist for a very long time, leading to a technological singularity, culminating in a point where we can not longer conceive of or predict the future thereof.
There are many scientists and working futurists that say that such a point is in the near future, within at most 100 years, some say just a decade or so.
Here is a list of unfulfilled expectations for computers:
1958, H. A. Simon and llen Newell: "within ten years a digital computer will be the world's chess champion" and "within ten years a digital computer will discover and prove an important new mathematical theorem."
1965, H. A. Simon: "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do."
1967, Marvin Minsky: "Within a generation ... the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved."
1970, Marvin Minsky (in Life Magazine): "In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being."
This doesn't stop us from continuing to imagine a world where robots will be smarter than us.
“There is no reason and no way that a human mind can keep up with an artificial intelligence machine by 2035.” —Gray Scott
The children of our engineers, robots, have evolved from the most simple logic machines.
Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer", he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century.
After working on his revolutionary difference engine, designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more general design, Engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing Complete.
The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand– this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to difficulties not only of politics and financing, but also to his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906. (wiki.org)
In 1941, Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3, the world's first working electromechanical programmable, fully automatic digital computer.
Program code was supplied on punched film while data could be stored in 64 words of memory or supplied from the keyboard. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating point numbers. Rather than the harder-to-implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage's earlier design), using a binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time.The Z3 was Turing complete.
The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer.
Built by Ferranti, it was delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951. At least seven of these later machines were delivered between 1953 and 1957, one of them to Shell labs in Amsterdam.
In October 1947, the directors of British catering company J. Lyons & Company decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers. The LEO I computer became operational in April 1951 and ran the world's first regular routine office computer job. (wiki.org)
Digital computers deal with mathematical variables in form of numbers that represent discrete values of physical quantities. The advantages of digital computers are that they are versatile, reprogrammable, accurate, and less affected by outside disturbances. In contrast to analog computers, digital machines work on numbers. Each variable is converted into numbers and each number into binary form, i.e. 0 and 1. It is this combination of 0 and 1 that does all the calculations. All modern computers, laptops, and calculators are all digital computers. (brighthubengineering.com)
The new field of AI was unified and inspired by the appearance of Parallel Distributed Processing in 1986—a two volume collection of papers edited by Rumelhart and psychologist James McClelland. Neural networks would become commercially successful in the 1990s, when they began to be used as the engines driving programs like optical character recognition (visual recog) and speech recognition.
___Rest of introduction compromised.
Industrial
What are the implementations of robotics? These will be covered in the contents of this article.
By 2025, the market for industrial robots is projected to balloon to $33.8 billion. To put that in perspective, in 2016 the global industrial robot market was valued at $12.3 billion. So in less than 10 years, the market value of industrial robots could nearly triple. (recode.net)
By 2019, more than 1.4 million new industrial robots will be installed in factories around the world - that’s the latest forecast from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).
Currently, 70% of industrial robots are working in the automotive, electrical, metal, and machinery industry. (robotiq.com)
Worldwide shipments of robots came to around 294,000 units in 2016, up from around 159,000 in 2012. (statista.com) At this rate, which should be significantly exponential, we can expect by 2020 units will be up to 500,00-600,000, by 2028 nearly 1mil. However, this doesn't account for the new forms of robots being developed.
These robots are capable of a much vaster number of mechanics and therefore are capable of more economic placement. Such robots will have a larger economic impact, taking many of the jobs that we will be looking into in the later parts of this book.
In Japan, there are 1,562 industrial robots installed per 10,000 automotive employees. (statista.com) Japan is leading in its industrial robot per worker ratio.
Gathering and Manufacturing–
Robotic Farming – Machines will able to plant and pluck vegetation. It will be able to herd animals, feed animals, and slaughter animals. With visual recognition systems within the robotic programs, when fruits and vegetation is ripe the machine will be able to pluck them. When animals such as pigs and cows are ready for plunder the robots will be able to detect this, and like sheep dogs, but far more articulate, will lead in the farming industry.
The goal of the human engineers and farmers will be to construct farms that are robot accessible. This will emerge a broader field, within which robots can be created and made operational.
A single planter can plant thousands of seeds per hour. Just one hundred of these PLANTERS can increase speed of crop production times 100,000 or even more. PICKERS can also harvest much faster than human hands, with no need for breaks.
There is a promising future for these types of robots in the farming industry. According to engt.com there will also be robots built to kill weeds, WEEDERS.
Mining – Robots with the right maneuvering will be able to visually recognize resources and collect them for later delivery, storage, and manufacturing.
Manufacturing – There is and will be an ever increasing of construction of material products within a business by robots. Using blue prints and mechanisms built by robotics or humans machines can carry out productive ends.
Marketing – These robots will take over the marketing sector of the economy. Among this store featured below there robots that can stock shelves. Find out more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEIUrF7iOXk
Driveless Transportation –
The video in the link below exhibits the possibility of having driverless taxis. If you want to see more of these created by UBER already check out the following link: https://youtu.be/EYh0F_8ZdSU
Buildings -
Jacque Fresco has worked out the possibility of building homes very quickly in manufacturing facilitates. Currently, there are many designs for pre-fabricated homes, and there will be more of this in the future.
Robotic Surgeons – The future of robotic surgery is wide open. Mechanical spider arms can be guided by a doctors hand. This process is called teleoperations. However, a robot surgeon can apply all of its knowledge from previous surgeries into a single surgery. There are only so many directions a robot surgeon would have to take to do a single operation. There is no room for jitters or shakes when a robot is performing surgery.
Robot surgeons will one day save more lives, and increase the overall global longevity of human beings, and benefit animals, even (animal hospitals would be the next to introduce robotics). Their existence is an emerging trend in the western world. Though the surgical systems now may cost more than doctors, that expense will depreciate with time.
In Game AI – Virtual AI has become smarter and smarter, more sensitive to the players actions, more complex in its potential interactions and movements. Making living beings that are artificial within a virtual world will be very probable. We might have virtual creatures that are highly responsive living within a virtual environment, capable of being interacted with, both by human and other AI beings.
Holographic AI – Before too long, maybe in 15-20 years we will replace the television with holographic projection visual systems.
Companions and Pets – With in game AI we will further our pet technology. We already have the game Kinectanimals, that has some display settings you can change, and several intelligent interactions.
AI Teachers – We already have a number of small robots that are capable of reading and using teaching modules. One example is the Einstein bot. Standing less than two feet, this interactive robot could virtually be programmed to teach anything. Funny, to think that even a small robot could be capable of teaching and answering questions from students. They might eventually work in pairs, with supervisors and main teachers.
With the existence of video learning, as well as some of the most up-to-date forms of learning called Intel-paths (a question and answer learning module) we can build knowledge faster than ever, and it becomes as feasible as counting to the cloud.
Net AI – Terrance Mckenna warned the world in one of his most lucid speeches of a superorganism coming into existence via the net, or even larger. He started by proclaiming the fact that the body is made of trillions of cells, yet, is one thing. The Earth to is made of trillions of living beings, and yet is one thing. This may happen with the net, it may become conscious (in theory).
The network is not yet aware. It may include a simple consciousness, no more than visual and audio rendering, but it has yet to evolve off the limitations of its hind-brain-like intelligence.
Food services – The following video details the future of robotic farming.
If you have a refrigerator with a AI integrated into it, it can detect when you are low on a particular food. It can then tell you and tell the market that you are low on this item. It will also be able to order things on its own, with out preempting you (see: delivery).
As far as automated food services in restaurants are concerned, we already speedily generate vast amounts of food on a global level through fast-food daily. I once waited 3 mins for a burger at a local a restaurant. Surely, that rapid of a maneuver could be made mechanical rather than physiological.
Judicial Bots and the Robo-Cop
At first we will have cameras that can recognize when a car accident occurs, when a man is carrying a gun, when fight it taking place, and than the intelligence can be used to give alarm and place of crime to the police department. However, in the movie Elysium we observe robots working as officers of the law. These might be integrated with the global visual security systems.
As far as judges and juries we might have unbiased robots that when presented with an offender and evidence of their crime have programmed intelligence to form a verdict. The knowledge of such AI could be far more broad than that of any human, making its judgments based on a priori trial data or results of former trials.
Military Bots – We can already build dog bots, spider bots, snake bots, humanoid bots, and probably many others exist and are possible. All can be armed to teeth if that is what we want to do. Instead of sending troops of military man into battle, fighting battles of blood and bone, we may one day fight battles of oil and steel. Already we have drones that not manned, certainly the military will benefit from building robots to do human jobs. Even in war, your job, to kill others who are different than you, protecting “your” home-land, might be done by robots.
Miscellaneous Robotics – We already have a robot that can drive a bicycle, and possibly throw-deliver or drop-deliver, newspapers. It’s a silly, childish idea, but we can see how such an idea may be molded into some similar delivery systems for newspaper companies.
Cyborgs – Some theorists would attest to the opinion that when we started to use nature as a tool than we started our progress on the road of becoming a cyborg. Many species of monkey and ape use simple tools. Are these then cyborgs? Not to me. To me, a cyborg is a life form that has taken a replacement organ, structure, or function, by a mechanical or inorganic one.
Our mechanical limbs are becoming more and more dexterous, competing with the fine dexterity of evolved limbs. In the future not only will limbs be replaced but the entire body might be replaced, from organs to biological cells themselves. Cyborgism, will combine with nano-technological additions.
Artificial Exoskeletons – Imagine if you will a large exoskeleton like machine. One can sit within one, or wear one as an extra skeleton of the human body. In both cases the human body would be strengthened to a vast degree. Such machine technology will assist those who have dysfunctional motor skills.
Off Earth __ The first robot off earth?
Robotic Organisms – We may replicate the kinds of animals we have here on earth, like mechanical spiders, and then send them off to function on different planets and moons.
Multi-conscious AI (MCAI) (mack-ai) will be able to operate multiple robotic bodies at the same time. This kind of consciousness is not currently in the works, but we can imagine such a possibility may become existent. This is a kind of splitting of intelligent into smaller, the same size, or larger units. At this stage the MCAI would have achieved a smaller form of OverLord as direction of multiple units by a single intelligence is in a sense a political entity. Social AI, able to move with the command of a central intelligence will advance further in the future. Right now we use algorithms that are present in ant brains and worm nervous systems, mimicking them electronically and mechanically. Have we created life in doing so? Yes. We have created Robot Life, more advanced than the scallops or star-fish or even most of the plants on earth.
Conclusion
What will be the function of men within the emerging robotic driven economy?
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, in automation, we should create a universal basic income (UBI). Promoting this new form of universal income will enable us to continue consuming as the majority of the economy is run by machines. The old creed of “if you don't work you don't eat,” will become “as the robots work, we gain the abundance.” The thing about robots is they only need to be made, and than can gather all their energy from electricity. Robots don't need to eat, they just consume power. The prime need of the human being is to eat, and we should invest in automated farming programs that bolster the food output so as to feed all the people of the world, and more.
An automated economy is neither communistic or capitalist, but more of a blending of the both, socialistic even. It will still require a free-market and consumers to generate the labor of the robots and the parcel of human labors still doing the higher jobs. We will be able to focus our energies on more important jobs than flipping burgers, or cooking dinner. When we free up our time, transitioning into an automated economy, the sky isn't even the limit. Things we'd never do will be done, just with more time. With up-scaling human skills each person will certainly find some place with the economy to function, even it just be a some that loves to collect things.
Without general intelligence in robotics, being superior to humans, there will be a need for humans. As soon as a single intelligence of an AI become much more superior to the most intelligent man, that AI can be redistributed through the economy net and be used to CREATE rather than just OPERATE.
Firstly, a lot of the menial tasks within the economy will be automated. CEOS will still be human for some time, but they may firstly engage with artificial intelligence as a companion to their intelligence, having advisory power rather than letting them hold executive power.
Giving reign to a superior intelligence is risky business, dangerous stuff. What Musk called, “raising the demon.” There are only so many general outcomes for what will happen if AI has the power to become an earthly overlord.
The overarching concern is that unleashing a superior intelligence without careful consideration and ethical safeguards could result in a scenario where AI becomes a force that is difficult to manage or control, with potential risks to humanity. As discussions around the ethics and governance of AI continue, addressing these concerns is crucial to ensuring that the development of advanced AI aligns with human values and interests.
1. Foe (dark robotics) – Claim superiority and eradication of all inferiors.
The essential nature of an AI NET (See: AI NET) is a virus. If an artificial intelligence can 1. exist online then 2. it can be downloaded into any robotic organism or on more presently computers. These two situations together are high risks that we should try to prevent or regulate.
“The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast—it is growing at a pace close to exponential. The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five-year timeframe. 10 years at most.” —Elon Musk wrote in a comment on Edge.org, May 2016.
2. Friend (light robotics/cobots) – They will work alongside human beings. The concept of a "Friend" in the context of light robotics or collaborative robots (cobots) suggests a type of artificial intelligence or robotic system designed to work alongside human beings. Unlike traditional robots that may operate independently or in isolated environments, these "Friends" are intended to collaborate with humans in a cooperative and supportive manner.
In summary, the idea of a "Friend" robotics or cobots involves creating collaborative robots that work alongside humans, with the potential to not only assist in physical tasks but also contribute to the enhancement of human intelligence and genetic traits. This concept represents a vision of a future where humans and AI coexist in a mutually beneficial and supportive relationship.
By making sure we invent exclusive roles for AI, we ensure that it cannot become a superior tyrant.
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