The Age of Robots
We're close to making humanlike machines. It's time to reckon with the promises and perils
The millennium was still a half century off in the future when Isaac Asimov penned his sci-fi classic, I, Robot. So it must have seemed plausible to imagine a world populated by big, strong, intelligent humanoid robots. The mechanical replicas he conjured may have had shiny metal bodies and glowing red eyes, but they otherwise resembled people, thought like people, and--most important of all--devoted themselves to taking care of the human race.
Contrary to Asimov's genre-defining tale, humankind is still operating pretty much on its own. Indeed, of all the great science-fiction predictions to go bust at the end of the millennium--no time machines, no intergalactic space travel--surely the most galling is the absence of a single decent robotic maid. Or butler, take your pick. Oh sure, the new Robomower will trim your lawn while you recline in the hammock, and the Dyson DC06 robotic vacuum cleaner will soon be available to suck the lint from your carpets. But if you want something from the fridge, you're still going to have to fetch it yourself.
If visionaries like Asimov may have been wrong about the timing, they were right to predict a bright robotic future. Indeed, robots of various stripes seem to be popping, whirring, buzzing, and gliding up just about everywhere. Very practical-minded bots are at work in the real world right now, exploring distant planets, assisting with precision surgery, and locating deadly land mines.
The toy market, already home to Aibos and Poo-Chis, is just months away from a massive invasion by robotic cats, dogs, and mice as well as mechatronic aliens and babies and dinosaurs. Steven Spielberg will set the stage for the fall shopping frenzy this summer when his movie A.I. does for supersmart, supersensitive robots what his Jurassic Park did for supersmart, supervicious dinosaurs. And labs around the world are busily working on the robotic parts--feet and knees for walking, hands for grasping, versions of eyes and ears--that will someday be stitched together into a fully functional humanoid robot.
Early lessons. The dream of such a humanoid compatriot--machine enough to boss around but human enough to be a good sidekick--stretches back at least to the early 20th century. But the early decades of research proved mainly this: that humans are a lot more complex than originally considered--and it's really, really hard to build one. In the past few years, however, important advances in computer science, artificial intelligence, biomechanics, and material science have once again raised hopes of reaching the holy grail of robotics. In fact, progress toward a fully autonomous, intelligent robot has been so convincing that any number of technofuturists are worrying publicly about the perils of robotics. At least one highly regarded scientist, Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has predicted that our own robotic creations might one day replicate themselves and contribute to humankind's demise.
Whether humans are in a hopeful or precarious place, the journey here has been an intellectual challenge. Don't even contemplate the brain for a moment. How about something simple like walking on two legs. Humans do it naturally, and our ancestors have for millions of years, but it took one of the largest industrial companies in the world 10 years and untold millions to build a machine that could master a workable form of bipedalism. That was the Honda P3, a 5-foot, 3-inch, 290-pound astronaut look-alike unveiled by the Japanese car company in 1996. Widely hailed as a triumph of pure engineering willpower, the P3 does walk convincingly and can even go up and down stairs. But the Honda spokesbot--P3 has been succeeded by the more diminuitive Asimo--can manage only a sluggish 1 mile per hour on the straightaway. It's going to take a lot more hustle than that to make it in the domestic-service racket.
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