The state of the art in robotics and artificial intelligence continues to advance at an accelerating clip, surprising experts and futurists. Increasingly complex and in telligent machines are changing the texture of human life as they are insinuated into more spheres of activity, from manufacturing to law enforcement to stock trading.
Military applications have historically been one of the greatest drivers of innovation. We can trace the history of warfighting and especially its recent history as a long arc of removing the warfighter more and more from harm’s way.
1 The so-called “drones” in America’s arsenal represent the latest in this progression, though, importantly, they still require a human to make the potentially lethal decision to engage a target.
In the 2012 film “Robot and Frank”, the protagonist, a retired cat burglar named Frank, is suffering the early symptoms of dementia. Concerned and guilty, his son buys him a “home robot” that can talk, do household chores like cooking and cleaning, and reminds Frank to take his medicine. It’s a robot the likes of which we’re getting closer to building in the real world.
The film follows Frank, who is initially appalled by the idea of living with a robot, as he gradually begins to see the robot as both functionally useful and socially companionable. The film ends with a clear bond between man and machine, such that Frank is protective of the robot when the pair of them run into trouble.
and makes them much happier. kathleen richardson is a researcher in robot ethics at the university of leicester she s launched a campaign against sex robots in the hope of stopping their development. they don t give a sense of people. a link connected or being a relationship there just objects that have become automated so even if you got this moving dog sitting next to you you re actually by yourself and so these people are promoting a technology. that is going to increase human isolation if it takes off it s just going to create more and more people sitting alone being alone with a dog. what is certain is that the robots are coming and they ll be capable of far more than just the missionary position to hold all intelligent robots really sought and offer us companionship and conversation. just about any subject that if