“A system that can simulate itself is to some degree self-aware... We said, “Let’s take all that infrastructure that people have made to help robots learn about the world, and we’re going to turn it inside, on itself.””
However, now it's time seriously think about programming robots. I want tell computer what I want to do and the computer shall figure it out by itself, including writing code.
"Mobile AI robots do all the work autonomously. If they are damaged, they are smart enough to get themselves to a repair shop, where they have complete access to a parts fabricator and all of their internal designs. They can also upgrade their hardware and programming to incorporate new designs, which they can create themselves."
Okay it's too soon to talk about self-programmed robots. But I think it could be interesting to think about easier self-programmed things. They may not be too far away from now.
If a robot can write code in our environment and deal with all the politics and stupid decisions and wishy washy product direction (we don't know what we want, just implement everything) and broken technologies, you're welcome Mr Robot.
Afaik we can already program industrial robots by showing them what to do. Robot records movement in its actuators, then keeps replaying over and over.
And we already have machine learning agents that can observe your behavior and learn which news stories are "good" news stories and which aren't. (algo newsfeeds). You could use them to observe a magazine editor and after a few issues, you'd have a robo editor.
> looking out for a good application to try it on.
Self driving vehicles - or other robotics localization and similar problems. Those are fun, at least, I find them fun.
I've also considered stuff in the graphics arts - like the various "deep dreaming" things, or the various ML filtering of images (turning a painting into a "photo" for instance); there's some interesting possibilities there.
But for me - robots are where it's at. The idea of making a machine that can "do its own thing" intelligently - well, that has fascinated me ever since I was a small child and watched the original 1970s "Buck Rogers" series with my dad.
“In the future, robots must be able to solve tasks in deep mines on distant planets, in radioactive disaster areas, in hazardous landslip areas and on the sea bed beneath the Antarctic. These environments are so extreme that no human being can cope. Everything needs to be automatically controlled. Imagine that the robot is entering the wreckage of a nuclear power plant. It finds a staircase that no-one has thought of. The robot takes a picture. The picture is analysed. The arms of one of the robots is fitted with a printer. This produces a new robot, or a new part for the existing robot, which enables it to negotiate the stairs.”
-2014 Kyrre Glette "Using 3D printers to print out self-learning robots"
> "All of us know a huge number of things," said Sloan. "As babies, we crawled around and yanked on things and learned that things fall. We yanked on other things and learned that dogs and cats don't appreciate having their tails pulled."
Then let the damned thing explore! Why do we make such huge advances in robotics if not for this? A baby-like robot shouldn't be that hard to make. I'm no AI expert but couldn't we just throw our best learning AI in there and give the thing a couple of years?
Why are we trying to short-circuit human learning instead of mimicking it?
Maybe this is the revolution we need to give a chance to the next generation to have fun programmable robot. I was promised that as a kid and I still don't have it!
It's when we create the robots that can build (and program) other robots that this conversation will really get interesting.
Until then, who's going to be the brains behind making the machines? Certainly humans (albeit, and understandably, a small segment). That's work, right?
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