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[DPRG] SRS thread
Subject: [DPRG] SRS thread
From: R. Steven Rainwater
srainwater at ncc.com
Date: Mon Apr 30 14:50:30 CDT 2007
On Mon, 2007-04-30 at 13:30, dpa wrote:
> "I believe the design model for the robot is not a synthetic
> human with independent thinking, but a sheep dog that acts
> as an agent for the shepherd. The sheep dog has autonomy
> (like a thermostat) without independence."
>
> Those familiar with my own vapid ramblings will recognize
> the same model. I usually say to think of robots not as
> "replacement humans" but rather as "intelligent tools."
> But it is the same basic concept.
I see this more as an ongoing semantic challenge. Some want "robot" to
be the word that describes only intelligent tools or sheep dog level
autonomous agents. Others want to use the word "robot" to describe only
human-level autonomous machines. In a sense, robot has become as
controversial as the word emotion. People who advocate "dogbots" don't
want the folks advocating "peoplebots" to use the word robot.
We need a better description mechanism for robots. Something to
encompass human-level machines, simple autonomous machines, and even
remotely-controlled machines like battlebots. In the biological world,
we don't have to argue about whether the word organism can only describe
an amoeba or if it can also describe a human. I've come to mentally use
robot in place of organism for machine life.
Maybe we just need a robot taxonomy that breaks machines down into
domains, kingdoms, phylums, classes, orders, families, genera, and
species? So dpa's comment could then be seen as simply saying that
machine species robot:conscious:autonomous:peoplebot is not the same as
machine species robot:subsumptive:autonomous:dogbot.
The important thing is not confuse "I want people to build more dogbots"
with "all robots are dogbots".
-Steve
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