Yep.

That's really deep MrScott. My brain hurts

I started with 2 robots but before I knew it, well, it's a disease I tell you.
RSV1, RSV2, RS Media, Homersapien, Spidersapien, Roboraptor, Robotyrannus and Roboquad

You know... A cyborg might be something that can possibly come to achieving emotion while still having a robot side. The question then becomes who is in control, the living organism or the robot? And could we or the cyborg be able to tell the difference? It would take a long time and a ton of advancements before we get to that point where you can't tell. And by the time that happens we would probably all be dead from world wars and pollution and such.

Oh and hello all =) Been away for some time and now im back. If for a little bit. *Makes some coffee and fires up the microwave*

Fastenjaw

Since robots will one day populate every aspect of your life, its a good idea to make friends with all of them. Otherwise your shower bot might decide to play around with the water temperature while you are showering...

Thats how it starts... Then before long your brain is all nanoed up and you are talking and dancing like Data from Star Trek. With enough advancements of course.

Fastenjaw

Since robots will one day populate every aspect of your life, its a good idea to make friends with all of them. Otherwise your shower bot might decide to play around with the water temperature while you are showering...

There certainly is a lot of common technical ground between cyborgs and robots. The motion control systems, actuators, sensors, and power sources would all have the same roots.

It's the higher level logic functions that differentiate the two. Once you know how to move, what do you do with that capability? That is where a robot, with it's manufactured brain, will differ from a cyborg.

If it's a stock, home grown, human brain that's in charge, then discussing a cyborg's emotions or intelligence is no different than discussing your neighbor's emotions or intelligence.

Regulating a cyborg's emotions would be an extension of how we regulate those of people, today. Roll out the Valium, Prozac, Ecstasy, transcendental meditation, or anger management courses.

As for being able to "turn off" your emotions when you choose to, there are plenty of EMT's, firemen, and soldiers that can accomplish the feat in the short term. People who experience no emotions in the long term are generally considered candidates for mental health counseling.

ScottE -- Member (always) & Moderator (when needed)

Here are my thoughts on why robots/machines have not yet achieved emotion (as far as we humans can tell):

The main thing about machines and robots, are that they have no desires or needs, thus they remain inert. There is no reason for them to "think" or feel. People have programmed some machines to appear to express "emotion" or have "needs", but it's all illusory. To the machine, these programs are still just numbers with no underlying significance to the machine itself. As always, it's all just 0's and 1's.

I think we need to start at the root of the problem. In biology, there is one base instinct: survival. Everything else evolved out of it. So I think we need to make a computer that is interested in self preservation. The basic thing a computer/ machine "needs" is power; a means of getting energy to power itself.

So, I'm thinking, maybe we could create a computer that is not "reliable". It must constantly arrange for itself to have a power supply. What if you didn't teach it this, but left it alone to discover this on it's own? The only directive being, "you need to stay alive". This brings up another layer of self-preservation- it needs to be able to look at its internal state and figure out what's it's various parts are telling it.
So the unreliable machine might endeavor to become more reliable. What if it had access to datasheets for its parts, and could extrapolate it's power needs?
maybe it would invent for itself a novel power system?
Then what would happen if you gave it additional basic directives? How would they conflict with each other? Or would it integrate smoothly? If there was a conflict... well, there's a basis for grumpiness, or some other "conflict" based emotion.

The hard part is obviously, writing all these low level programs to allow it some chance of being inventive or creatively seeking solutions.

And of course, you do this without letting it have access to the outside world, cuz you might be creating Skynet.

Let me see if I can take a stab at how a robot could theoretically be made to have actual emotion. First of all, you are right in that a robot will need to have the desire of self preservation. It is where all our basic emotions stem from. The need to survive. Emotion is basically used in the mating process to decide who has a strong and stable brain as well as a body. But the way to achieve that is a bit more tricky. You see, in nature, things evolve and adapt by a thing called natural selection. That means it could take alot of mistakes before something better comes about than what you started with. And we are normally talking on the order of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. It took a loooooooong time of bacteria shaping and reshaping themselves to achieve what is seen today. To do that with a robot, it would basically need to experience everything that a bacteria went through. We could speed up the process by intervention and assisting the bots. But it would take alot correcting of unforeseeable errors.

I think the problem with most scientists is that they are mostly trying to make robots that only think. Most things in life don't spend all day pondering. Their functions are very basic. 1. Survive against the competing organisms. And 2. Reproduce or your species won't be around very long. So the robot needs to constantly create a new generation. Remember that natural selection can only affect a small portion of the offspring. So if the changes are all failures, they won't hinder the species. With each new generation, that group needs to compete to survive against other robots. If a robot dominates, other robots need to be able to adapt to fit somewhere in the food chain or risk extinction. As robots develop new survival techniques such as communication and logic, it will need to utilize it or lose it. Nature strives to be as efficient as possible. That is a product of all that competition. Something that waste too much energy will not last long.

Now we also need to remember that to get big life forms we had to start small. Really really small. What we need is to make nanobots and have them evolve and compete for limited supplies of food and energy. As they evolve and become more advanced, you may see some larger ones, some with spikes, some with armor, and some with zappers too! Eventually they will become organized and form structures of nanobots to beat the competition! But wait! Others can also evolve to achieve the same thing! So it becomes an arms race. Eventually the robots will achieve sizes that are visible. And with enough guidance, they can achieve insect like or animal like bodies. Then facial and emotional attributes will evolve to better improve survival and efficiency.

Since robots will one day populate every aspect of your life, its a good idea to make friends with all of them. Otherwise your shower bot might decide to play around with the water temperature while you are showering...

I just read the first chapter. Very interesting! Thank you for mentioning the book. So far this is what I would expect a robot to accomplish given the right "code". Though a little different than what I imagined, it is more or less what I feel is the right approach to take.

Since robots will one day populate every aspect of your life, its a good idea to make friends with all of them. Otherwise your shower bot might decide to play around with the water temperature while you are showering...

My personal thoughts are that one day, they will create a line of software within a robot's computer mind that will make it respond with a human like response, and they will record all the possible human reactions and moods, so that effectively, a robot will react and behave in the same way as a human. They may not feel it, but it'll feel darn real!

Yeah I totally agree with you dude, I kinda meant that in my post but didn't fully explain. Basically I mean it will react like a human, but will never be able to react on it's own, without input, and could never truly think for itself

Yep! Thanks for helping me clear up what I was saying lol.

A newborn is a human being, not a robot. Robots use preset digitally programmed reactions self generated or not. The true emotion of a human being is different.

Ah now we come back to the MrScott vs. Robo BG contreversy.

Good times. Good times.

Keep the robotic dreams alive,

-BG

"We all move to our own robotic stride. If you wish to keep your robots as is then do so. If you must open that screw then that's the path you choose."