No sex please, robot, just clean the floor

THE race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated.

Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now — before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control.

“There are two levels of priority,” said Gianmarco Verruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, northern Italy, and chief architect of the guide, to be published next month. “We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots.”

Verruggio and his colleagues have identified key areas that include: ensuring human control of robots; preventing illegal use; protecting data acquired by robots; and establishing clear identification and traceability of the machines.

“Scientists must start analysing these kinds of questions and seeing if laws or regulations are needed to protect the citizen,” said Verruggio. “Robots will develop strong intelligence, and in some ways it will be better than human intelligence.

“But it will be alien intelligence; I would prefer to give priority to humans.”

The analysis culminated at a meeting recently held in Genoa by the European Robotics Research Network (Euron) that examined the problems likely to arise as robots become smarter, faster, stronger and ubiquitous.

“Security, safety and sex are the big concerns,” said Henrik Christensen, a member of the Euron ethics group. How far should robots be allowed to influence people’s lives? How can accidents be avoided? Can deliberate harm be prevented? And what happens if robots turn out to be sexy? “The question is what authority are we going to delegate to these machines?” said Professor Ronald Arkin, a roboticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Are we, for example, going to give robots the ability to execute lethal force, or any force, like crowd control?” The forthcoming code is a sign of reality finally catching up with science fiction. Ethical problems involving machines were predicted in the 1950s by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov whose book I, Robot was recently turned into a Hollywood film. The Terminator and Robocop series of films also portrayed mechanical law enforcers running amok.

Present robots perform more mundane tasks: the most common consumer robots in Britain include self-guided vacuum cleaners such as the Scooba, lawnmowers such as the Robomow and children’s toys such as Robosapien.

But far more sophisticated machines are being developed. The National Health Service has used a robot called da Vinci to perform surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London. In Japan, human-like robots such as Honda’s Asimo and Sony’s Qrio can walk on two legs. More advanced versions are expected to be undertaking everyday domestic tasks and helping to care for the elderly in as little as 20 years.

“I would hope they would always be subordinate,” said Brian Aldiss, the science fiction writer. “But one will no doubt come to rely on them deeply.” Aldiss’s short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long was the basis for the Steven Spielberg film AI, which addressed the subject of whether androids that have become as intelligent as humans should be denied equal rights.

Other dilemmas may arrive sooner than we think, says Christensen. “People are going to be having sex with robots within five years,” he said. So should limits be set on the appearance, for example, of such robotic sex toys? The greatest danger, however, is likely to lie with robots that are able to learn from their “experiences”. As systems develop, robots are likely to have much more sophisticated self-learning mechanisms built into them and it may become impossible to predict exactly how they will behave.

“My guess is that we’ll have conscious machines before 2020,” said Ian Pearson, futurologist-in-residence at BT. “If we put that in a robot, it’s an android. That is an enormous ethical change.”

To critics who scoff that intelligent robots are a long way off, the roboticists easily riposte that machines can already exert surprising influence over our lives — think about the influence of the internet.

Keeping control

New robo-ethics recommendations

* Safety Ensure human control of robot
* Security Prevent wrong or illegal use
* Privacy Protect data held by robot o Traceability Record robot’s activity
* Identifiability Give unique ID to each robot

Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics

* Robot may not injure human or, through inaction, allow human to come to harm
* Robot must obey human orders, unless they conflict with first law
* Robot must protect itself if this does not conflict with other laws

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20...0.html?feed=rss

its allready know that human brain has far more memory that a computer will ever have, therefore forever superior

we are only a few years away from computers that are more powerful than the human brain...

Read this http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

You know if Robots ever become superior to humans, maybe we should put them in charge, they might do a better job than us

i can imagine it..

scientist: here u go robots, u control our planet now, to save us from our stupidity and doom


robot: kill all humans

scientist: crap

a human mind is intwined in the quantum level, there will allways be things we will never understand about ourselfs.

I`ve heard that computers will become smarter than us by around 2015, that scares me. But, i`ve also heard that scientists are talking about plant chips in our own brains and make us to robots by 2030, that scares me even more. Infact, I think that we a couple of years ago (around 2000, 2001, 2002) reached our Gold-Age, the human races best period. I mean just look at the world now, the world is going under, we are slowly killing usself...

If i were a robot , more intelligent and a slave by humans, i really think i would try to make the human slaves instead. I think artificial intelligence is a very dangerous thing if not programmed right

Pfft, the person who wrote the title of this page has issues...

robots can't be used for sex....i thought that was the entire point....

lol its like an episode off the show futurama where they have robots u can program to look like a celebrity and be your lover.............
thats dirty

I think the one big thing that really got me thinking was the Outer Limits episode of the robot that was made to be sexy... A drop dead redhead built like a brickhouse and when tested and such... At first it was a good thing but then "she" started to have feelings of jealousy and anger when the guy left her alone and/or talked to others then finally she snapped and went on a killing spree.

But to really hold back robots, won't work forever. There will always be someone pushing the limits to expand further.

If they can clean, they can have sex... o_o

Actually there was a couple of stories about AI females gone bad in Outer Limits (awesome series by the way), which one are you referring to?

Lmao i don't know where you heard that if you did. Anyway for now the are..... in the past 20 years computers turned from having 14kbps internet to over 3mbps and memory for computers has gone up almost 1 million times. Humans will be outdated if androids arive. But hell why don't we turn into cyborgs. Ten times better to make a body half human half robot. Think about it you can live for almost ever and jump buildings.
Sadly it won't happen for a least another 100 years

We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated.

Though robotic limbs> human limbs. At one point I actually wanted to make an implant that would enhance your vision in one eye and attach to your brain *coughborgcough*

Alas, the funds of a 14 yr old don't stretch far...

You do all realize that by building something cabable of doing something horrible it will do it no matter what because it has the power to do so

also nothing can match human potential we have the power to find loopholes and adapt to differences remember the creator is always better than the created

As weird as that sounds, it's totally true.