By Mary van Tamelen
 Steve Chiolero speaks on “Living with Robots” at last week’s Morning Forum lecture series. |
Is your toaster arguing with you?
Morning Forum members learned how close that possibility is when Steve Chiolero spoke about “Living with Robots” last week.
Sony has a Bipedal Service robot that cannot be knocked down and is completely unaffected by dynamic forces. It walks convincingly like a human, can move up and down stairs and even balance on one leg.
Further, Sony’s newest robot can recognize your face and shake hands. Using artificial intelligence, robots may become smarter than we are.
Chiolero, a systems engineer at Hartwell Consulting in Santa Cruz, predicted an interesting future in robotics, today’s newest technology.
First he described the past. As long ago as 322 B.C., Aristotle envisioned the robotic age. “If Every Tool when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords,” he said.
Leonardo Da Vinci designed a robot, much like a knight in armor, though it was never built. In the 16th and 17th centuries, royalty funded robots for amusement - machines that could play the piano or draw pictures. Most robot designs tend to take human form, although it seems the lobster actually has the perfect body form.
Describing the present state of robotics, Chiolero listed power as the biggest limitation on its expansion. Battery power doesn’t last long and there are problems with fuel cells. Presently, robots are used as delivery systems in hospitals, dispensing medicine and food as they navigate through hallways avoiding hazards. These are very primitive and very heavy.
NASA uses robots, powered by solar cells, which function very well. They can see, navigate, decide, act and communicate. Processors are becoming very inexpensive, enabling their use in cars, microwaves, refrigerators and toys.
Robots are at work in Iraq: bulletproof, tanklike, able to run up to 5 hours, heavily armed and used mainly for reconnaissance. They are able to tell friend from foe and help make decisions.
Many professions, such as law and medicine, are affected by artificial intelligence - a technological revolution in which machines using sophisticated software can sort through huge databases at small cost, draw inferences from past cases and make decisions based on rule of thumb.
A self-help legal software package was so effective that for a while its use was banned in Texas. And DXplain, a medical decision support system, was found to be more accurate than 90 percent of doctors.
Chiolero described a robot manufactured in Japan that left him awestruck. It had the exterior of a woman, so lifelike that he couldn’t tell it was not real. “She” breathed, talked and had warm skin. However, when it came time to accept an award, she gasped and failed completely.
Chiolero asked the audience to consider the result were machines to become conscious. What if your computer wants to assert its rights?
The implications for humans in the robotic age are staggering: If automatons are soon to do most jobs, what is to be done with the people who used to do them?
What about the digital divide? It is immense at this stage, with children so adept with automation and familiar with robots. Young people are comfortable with technology. Chiolero suggested all of us had better face the future. No matter what the social upheaval, more automation and robotics are coming our way.
Morning Forum is a members-only lecture series held at the United Methodist Church of Los Altos. To get on a waiting list for membership, write to: Morning Forum, P.O. Box 274, Los Altos 94023-0274.
