i just read something that kinda bothered me...

[Damphier]

...has anyone heard of the ASIMO by Honda? I was reading PEOPLE magazine randomly and saw this ad:

"We're building a dream, one robot at a time. The dream was simple. Design a robot that, one day, could dupilicate the complexities of human motion and actually help people. An easy task? Hardly. But after more than 15 years of research and development, the result is ASIMO, an advanced robot with unprecedented human-like abilities. ASIMO walks forward and backward, turns corners, and goes up and down stairs with ease. All with a remarkable sense of strength and balance.
"The furture of this exciting technology is even more promising. ASIMO has the potential to respond to simple voice commands, recognize faces, carry loads and even push wheeled objects. This means that, one day, ASIMO could be quite useful in some very important tasks. Liks assisting the elderly, and even helping with household chores. In essence, ASIMO might serve as another set of eyes, easrs and legs for all kinds of people in need.
"All of this represents the steps we're taking to develop products that make our world a better place. And in ASIMO's case, it's a giant step in the right direction." END ARTICLE

Now, why does this bother me you ask? Because I have seen all the Robocop and Terminator movies, that's why!! No, seriously, is this humanity's first step towards destruction at the hand of the machines? Maybe this article will be in a robot museum 5000 years from now, in a glass case, and families of robots will pay to see it, and maybe even regard it as their creator!! Lol, I think I have read one too many Arthur C. Clarke and Orson Scott Card books, but who knows.

Maybe humans will never be able to constuct a mechanism whose internal operations are similar to those of the human body. But, ASIMO can think. Maybe not creatively, but it can recognize human features, respond to voice, has "remarkable strength and balance", and has "unprecedented human-like abilities." Maybe it can't think but the technology is pretty scary just the same. Honda has made a robot with machine strength and computer intelligence, and they have only begun to explore down this technological road. Who knows where it will lead. Is this the beginning of the end? Or should I just use this inspiration to write an unoriginal movie script :-P

You decide...

[Genaside]

I seen this before on a tv special. The robot is still pretty damn goofy mobility wise, but does walk like a human on 2 feet. I wouldn't worry about it becoming like the terminator untill they start trying to make it have a super smart AI. Knowing us people though as soon as they make the robot able to work as a servant they will try to make it more human.

I predict I will be an old geezer by the time machines will be able to take over the world, so who cares :(

[BluebieSerra]

They will still have to make it a genuine "intellect" rather than something with multiple responses programmed in.. if you want something REALLY to worry about, with the increase in ability and the reduction in the cost of processors, think about what this is going to do to manual labor and assembly work.

Still a very long way off though..

[Stoffer]

THE MACHINES ARE TAKING OVER. GAN GAN GAN.
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES
ARGAH #/"¤(&"! B#

[Syft]

I've read abit on nueral networking which is scary stuff. Basically it's the idea of trying to program a computer that can think like a person although with no emotion and soley based upon logic.

If this were every succesful WHOA to the guy who tries to turn it off, a thing which was solely logical would not be a huggable vulcan.

Something that lacks compassion would have no problem burning 20% of the population of china in ovens to solve there overpopulation problem. It would simiply weigh the issues and create a solution, overpopulation eventually leads to exstinction so it's only logical to begin killing people right away why look for a different solution the computer found one that works.

A machine programmed to come up with planetary solutions based solely on logic wouldn't take long to see People are the worlds biggest planetary problem eliminate people and the planet is fixed. You see how this seemingly beneficial solution becomes a dangerous problem when looked at logically.

A programed robot instilled with logic would be taught to evalute the world based on what it percieves around it. Turning it off would = no more perception no more learning a confliction in commands, but this thing has been programmed to overcome problems and it would easily see the person trying to turn it off as a big problem.

People say art imitates life, but i think Life imitates art. We made movies about travelling to mars and the moon way before we ever went there. To me this is not science fiction but an inevitable future outcome, machines don't need us we need them. We make one that can think on it's own and it won't be long till they figure that out.

P.S. As for the old geezer comment we went from horse and buggy to the moon in less then 50 years. Technology wise were less then 2 decades from AI. You can sit and roast in a fire screaming im not burning all u like, in the end your still gonna fry, and I would rather do it caring with open eyes.

[Valkar D'Abhor]

wonder if theyre gonna have a TYPE R model...

on a serious note..no need to be worried..things are pretty ghetto besides being able to move kinda cool like...

[Syft]

Oh im not worried about the wobbly peices of shit I've watched on the discovery channel coming for me in the night. The first AI built won't have a robotic shell built in semblence of a human being. It can simply be a circuit mainframe with no body at all, it doesn't need a body to hack the DoD and launch every nuke in the USA arsenal. Remeber human beings die from Radioactive fallout machines don't.