This is all about things that are popular today, or at least interesting. If I find something of interest I will put it here. It may be about celebrities, new technological advancements or movies, books and games. What used to be found only in Sci-Fi books, movies and TV shows are part of our every day lives. Robots are reality and soon our cars will drive themselves. Today’s Sci-Fi will build tomorrow.
Almost every story I have ever read has negative consiquences for creating artificial intelligence. Humanity always ends up controlled, contained, or destroyed by the very beings or machines we created. All the natural consequences of creating an inelegant machine. Knowing this would be the likely outcome we still strive to create artificial intelligence. The question is why.
I believe it is like many things humanity does. We have known the consequences of global warming, over fishing, and destroying the delicate balance found in nature. Yet we continue to do so simply for the immediate reward. Also the reaping of the consequences is not likely to be within our life time but our children’s children’s life time. The immediate reward out ways the long term consequences.
The challenge of creating artificial intelligence is also hard to resist. It is interesting the things humanity is willing to create just because they can. In fiction more often than not humanity is seen as the cause for its own demise. In reality it seems quite likely humanity will eventually cause irreversible damage to our planet, ecosystem, or the species.
The idea of having sex with a robot has probably existed as long as the concept of robots has existed. Books, T.V. and movies have been sexualizing robots for decades. The question is why? What makes the idea of having sex with a robot so attractive?
1) No rejection or humiliation or any negative response unless it was programmed in as part of your fantasy. The robot is a sure thing because it is programmed to want to have sex with you.
2) Enthusiasm: You can actually live your fantasies and desirers with a willing enthusiastic partner. The robot would be programmed to find all your wants and needs to be it’s as well. It can also be programmed to provide a variety of “new” things to try, and be willing to try them. A robot is not going to look down on you because of your desirers or fantasies you would like to try.
3) Variety and fantasy fulfillment: Robot can be anything or anyone you want it to be. Any fantasy can be fulfilled using a robot. You want to have sex with someone famous, get the robot that looks like him or her. You can even have the robot look like something that never existed, like an anima character. You want a change; switch robots or have the robot change its appearance. One company, NTT DoCoMo, is actually working on “glasses” that you put on and you see what ever you want superimposed over the body of the robot. Don’t get me started on those who have fantasies that would involve their robot pets, it’s a robot, anything is possible.
4) No fear or reprisal or risk of secrets desirers being reviled. No robot is going to post the sex tapes you made on the Internet because you traded it in for a newer model, or use sex secrets you revel to it to blackmail, control or to humiliate you.
5) Consistent availability. The robot is there when you need or want it. It does not need sick days, have headaches or need to go on business trips.
6) Control. You have absolute control of all interactions with the robot. Even when your fantasy is for the robot to have control, it only has as much control as it was programmed to have or you allow it.
7) Robots don’t come with baggage, issues, past relationships, hang-ups, pre-made families or “in-laws”.
8) No pressure: It is all about you, your needs desirers and satisfactions. A robot is never going to be disappointed or frustrated with your lovemaking or that you want the same thing as last time. So what if you want it to be nurse Betty or Dr. Bob again, it is all about what you want or need. The robot can be programmed to meet all your needs and you don’t have to worry about meeting its needs because it has none unless you programmed it in.
9) Robots cannot become or make you pregnant.
10) No consequences or guilt. It is not cheating; you are just using a machine or sex toy.
11) Stamina and flexibility. A robot can be designed to be able to do things no human could possibly do
12) Security. A robot will not leave you unless it is repossessed for non-payment.
With the way technology is going it will not be long before atomically correct robots are available. Several of the larger companies are working on it as well as more mainstream commercial applications. The sex industry is huge so it only makes sense that the companies working on robotics would want to tap into that market. Robots designed for sex or capable of sex and emotional relationships has been the theme of many science fiction plot lines since before the 60’s. Think of all the movies, TV shows and books that have sex robots, Weird Science, Circuitry Man, A.I., Millennium and more. It is something people have thought about for some time; it is not surprising that it is becoming a reality. The concept is that there will be robots interacting with us everyday almost indistinguishable from a human both in form and function. Robots would become an accepted part of our society with the possibility of relationships developing, even marriage. Marriage to a robot has already taken place and is legal in Japan.
So there are two minds to the possibility of sex robots. One is that there is a market for robots designed for sex. Second is that as people interact with robots emotional bonds will develop with the possibility of humans falling in love with robots: “Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships” by David Levy. There is even a theory that robots may be programmed to love and other human emotions. Kim Jong-Hwan, the director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre, has developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing. He says the software will give the machines the ability to feel, reason and desire. Which reminds me of the twilight episode where the robot killed because she loved. Another possibility, that if we program robots to react as humans they will.
There are people who would benefit from the creation of robots for relationships, so here comes WowWee's Femisapien and Sega's E.M.A.. Some people are destined to be lonely due to physical location, personality issues, or are just not attractive. Robots can be designed to fulfill that need. Some people need the interpersonal skills and could practice with a robot until they are able to develop a relationship with a real person. But would that be cheating on the robot? There are other people who are unable to maintain relationships who could have a robot programmed to put up with them. Now comes the moral question, would having sex with a robot be cheating? Would the robot count as a “person” or would it just be another sex toy? Think about it, there could be a robot designed to meet all your needs, from cleaning the house, cooking, and sex, as the ones in Cherry 2000. The robot could even be designed to change its physical appearances so that you could have a different partner, or a variety of partners to play with depending on your whim. Robots can even be designed to meet the needs of sexual deviants hopefully keeping real people safe.
Will there be a day when a wife or husband says, “Not tonight honey, I have a headache. Why don’t you pull the robot out of the closet?” Will having sex with a robot be seen as being as bad as having it with another person or just a really fun sex toy? Will robots replace prostitutes?
The real question for me is: How can an average person compete with a robot? They don’t age, they can look physically perfect, meet anyone’s desires, and are ready and willing anytime. They can be programmed to have no moral hang-ups, so you want to do two robots or a robot and a person, why not. How can an almost 40 overweight and overworked woman like me possibly compete with a robot designed to meet my husbands every desire both in the physical appearance and sexual appetite, what ever he likes she does as well and is always willing and able. That is the real question, can human relationships survive the perfection of robot partners?
Those who have watched The Jetsons cartoon show might remember Rosie, the robotic kitchen maid. Now, scientists are working towards making her a reality.
A robot with empathy sounds like the stuff of sci-fi movies, but with the aid of neural networks European researchers are developing robots in tune with our emotions. The tantalising work of the Feelix Growing project is grabbing the world’s attention.
I find it interesting to see how technological and medical advancements change people’s viewpoints. As computers became able to take over more tasks for us it was thought that they would take over our jobs, and they did. People thought that they would give us more leisure time, paperless offices and instead we spend more time on the computer and are flooded with paperwork. We tend to spend more time with our computers then our families.
As we became more comfortable with computers new sciences and technology became everyday. Then our science fiction became probable and possible. Now what was science fiction in the 70 and 80’s are now commonplace commodities. Every time I look around I see things people created in stories in the 50’s and 60’s being used as every day items. Now there are quite a few things have surpassed the original ideas. For today’s invertors or scientists the idea of teleportation devices, holograph rooms, cars that run on air or water, or devices that let the blind see are not some far off idea but something people are working on at different labs or have already been created.
It is nothing to have friends from all over the world that you chat with on the computer, not typing but actually talking face to face, play a game or party all online. At this point some doctors actually use robotics and computers to operate on someone. Now people are actually having chips imbedded in their bodies that hold their identity, and credit card info. We can JPS our pets using chips and now there is talk of trying to have ones made for our kids. Not a bad idea but does give life to some of the dooms day and big brother is watching you science fiction found in many books and movies.
People are always looking for the fountain of youth, be it in a bottle or surgery, but now it is possible to create organs so we can be young inside. It is possible for humans to extend our life span to indefinite depending on the science of organ growing and how long our minds can actually last. We have already created cyborgs, man blended with machine and robots, both as external skeletal units and limb attachments and internal with artificial harts.
The only thing holding us back from creating a world of our dreams is that not everyone has the same dreams.
I know that my children will have things that were only thoughts found in sci-fi books, movies and T.V. shows. Already the toys they have are way cooler then anything I ever had. There are robot pets that actually respond to voice commands and can learn on their own. There are products available now that were only ideas when I a kid, and more things are being investigated, and created every day.
Inud the Robo-Dog (VIDEO) – responds to voice commands.
I remember when walkmans came out, now there are iPods, MP3’s and MP4’s. I remember the big changes DVD’s made, and now we can watch movies, and TV on our phone or watch just like in the old spy movies. Cell phones are right out of Star Trek and other Sci-Fi sources. There are times when I am just amazed at the things people are working on and then create. I really do envy what my kids are going to see in their lifetime. Here are some things from the world of Sci-Fi that have been made or are being worked on.
Research is being done by several countries on long-term space travel for things like visiting Mars and possibly outside of our solar system.
Personal robots like Asimo to assist people: be it for people who are physically challenged, or to help people with daily life such as keeping an eye out on the kids and interacting with them, cleaning our homes. Robots are one of the biggest marketable products simply because of the different uses for them. Currently we have little robots to clean our floors. My understanding is that they don’t work that well but I am sure the next generation will work better. We have robot wheelchairs being created that will assist people as well as transport them. There are several different robots being developed to operate independently and assist people to be the arms and legs or even eyes for some one. Then there are ones being created to actually do jobs, such as being a tour guild, where they learn as they go. I know that the sex industry is working with some of the robot designers to create a sex robot to replace sex dolls. Eventually there will be robots created to assist with daily living and will actually be companions and possible sex partners. There is a belief that people will eventually fall in love with the robots and marry them. One lady has already become married to a robot so the prescient has already been established. Robots at the Kennedy Center
Toyota robots
Robot Sex possible
External robotic skeletons for military purposes, just like in the movies and games are already being created. The skeletons will work as protection, increase strength, and be armed to the teeth, as well as be computers to assist solders. It will not be long before we have solders in robotic suites and independent robot solders. It is only a matter of time.
Robotic exoskeletons could become standard military issue
Research is being done on holographic rooms like the holodeck. It can be created in small scale, visual only. I don’t know if they will ever be able to crate the actual holodeck on Star Trek but they are trying.
Eye visors to see with for the blind are being researched and tested right now. It has gone from a large bulky unit to a small visor that looks close to the one Geordi La Forge has on Star Trek with a hip unit. The person who has been the test subject has gone from being unable to see, to seeing some light to actually being able to make out shapes, like people.
Ways to extend life are being created. We already have artificial harts, but now they are actually being cloned and grown outside of the human body. It will become possible to clone organs that your body will not reject because it is actually part of you. At first this will be used to save lives, but eventually it will be used to extend life. It will still be saving lives but will eventually result in people living longer and longer. How long can the human life be extended if we can just replace the parts that break down? I think that this will come down to money, the rich will be able to pay for the cloning and medical procedures, the poor will not.
Growing organs in a lab
Re-grow body parts
Cars that run on plant oil, water, air or the sun are being made and sold today. I would love to be able to buy the air one but they are not available in Canada yet. I hope that the car companies here wake up and try to be the first one to build them here, to corner the market. It would be the smart business decision. There is a demand for them and the technology is available and working. I wonder what car manufacture in Canada is going to be the first one; if I owned a car manufacture company I know I would want to be the first. Same if I sold cars, I would be demanding to have them on my lot ASAP.
Use water to run a car
Used vegetable oil to run a car
Use air to run a car
More and more things from Sci-Fi are becoming reality today, wonder what will be available 10, 20 or 50 years from now. Mind you if I had the money I might still be alive then using organs grown just for me. I will have my own personal robot to take care of me, possibly a robotic chair or even a robot skeleton to move around in. Who knows how long I will live and what my life will be like. All I need is money and new technology.
The def will hear, the blind will see and the rich will live forever.
Cars that drive and even park themselves could be ready for the road within a decade, GM executives say. But such cars would also have to navigate such obstacles as government regulations, liability laws, and the desire of drivers to keep control.
This video is about: Tiny cameras will monitor your in-flight behavior, Viacom to provide video for bloggers, Mexican drug gangs big fans of YouTube, Crazy cool nanotech bandaids, Yuki Taro eats snow and poops ice, a visit to the Korea Expo in Madrid
This is actually interesting to watch. I found this video looking for information on the Yuki-taro autonomous snowplough robot. Research and Development information about the Yuki-taro autonomous snowplough robot can be found HERE. I think that this snow removal robot is a great idea. It takes snow of the ground, and turns it into blocks of snow/ice that can be easily stacked and then removed. Every year people die as a result of shovelling snow. This looks like this snowplough robot could be a big help not just for individuals, but that a city could make great use of them. The labour cost and fuel cost goes up every year. Using these autonomous snowplough robots would be a great way to clear the sidewalks, driveways and parking lots. A larger version could help with side roads, but I think that main roads and highways will still need the big snowploughs for a long time to come.
I wonder how well it works on snow/ice. I always find patches of ice from where we walked and compressed the snow. It would be interesting to know if it can deal with that or just fresh snow. Will it have some way to deal with ice from melting snow? We sometimes have a snow/rain mix in the same day and this will form snow with a hard ice shell or a mix of heavy wet snow, and sometimes layers of snow with ice. I guess we will have to wait until the snowplough is available for the general market to see what it can actually deal with.
The US military have been using an experimental robotic exoskeleton to increase the strength of their soldiers. I know that I have seen video games and movies and have read lots of sci-fi books about using robotic exoskeletons as a way to protect the people in them as well as increase strength and speed. I just never thought that people would actually create and use them. Then I found some information about an exoskeleton some students were working on to increase strength. It was just an idea they liked and then decided to create it. I thought that it was interesting and decided to look into it a bit more. What I found was that the US military is already using them. It did not take very long for it to go from an idea, to reality once we had the technology and skills to make them. I wonder what other things to be found in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s sci-fi books that were just ideas will or already has become a possibility and then reality as technology changes our world. I would like to think that these exoskeletons will be used in rescue situations where buildings have fallen on people and fire fighters use them to bring people out, or that they will be used in construction to replace some of the big equipment needed. There are a lot of uses I can think of, but I suspect that they will be mainly used by the military eventually creating the super-soldiers every military in the world seeks.
This virtual humanoid was on display at ASIAGRAPH 2007 in Akihabara (Tokyo) from October 12 to 14. This is a humanoid robot using virtual reality for its image. You put on special headset and then interact with the robot. The image can change to be different people as you interact with it. You can even touch so that you can feel and see the “person” you are interacting with. The virtual image moves with the robot so that what you see is in sink with what you feel. This could definitely make some drastic changes in online gaming, and virtual sex.
NTT DoCoMo brings together the sensing and control systems of space robots, the humanoid robot design, mixed-reality systems, and 3D graphics in creating U-Tsu-Shi-O-Mi. The idea is that eventually we will be able to buy a sophisticated humanoid robot, overlay the computer graphics of Fred Astire or Ginger Rogers and go dancing.
This is an article on the reality of sex with robots. And not just cold, mechanical sex that barely incites a feeble meep-meep-meep from your robot lover: No, we're talking about real elbow-pads-and-helmets sex. Electrifying sex! (And afterward the robot will take a drag on a cigarette and say, "That really recharged my batteries.")
BBC News just did a story Japanese develop 'female' android in 2005 on the newest Robot unveiled, a "female" android named Repliee Q1Expo. I found it very interesting seeing as she looks so real that it can be hard to tell from a picture that she is a robot. There were a few videos of her, but her movements made it easy to tell she was a robot. That was over a year and a half a go. What do they have now? KOKORO COMPANY LTD was talking about improving her movements so that people would be unable to tell she was not human. The new model ActroidDer was unveiled in 2006 and is available for 5 day rental, costume included. This year they unveiled ActroidDer2, “a younger sister of Actroid-DER, has been improved in her astonishing appearance and high performance and is now even cuter than her older sister”, and is also available for rental. This does make me think of the movies Blade Runner (they were not androids but same idea) and Cherry 2000. It seems that some time in 2008 they may be introducing a new version, at Comdex 2008. The idea is to have a robot so lifelike that people cannot tell is a robot.
It is going to be very interesting to see what comes out next. I was impressed by the toy robot dogs and Azimo; this is kind of scary that they have come so far in the last few years. It is said that most of our technological advancements are done for war or sex. In this case it may be both. David Levy just wrote a book, LOVE AND SEX WITH ROBOTS The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, about sex with robots being a reality in about 5 years and marriage with robots being a reality in 2050. No one knows what military uses will be for the humanoid robots, or when they will be being used. For all we know they are already in use. There is Robonaut for the Mars exploration, Robonaut is a humanoid robot designed by the Robot Systems Technology Branch at NASA's Johnson Space Center in a collaborative effort with DARPA. There is currently a sex robot being designed for the adult industry, for people to actually have sex with. Though sex androids have already been developed by aircraft mechanic Michael Harriman and are for sale on his web site FIRST ANDROIDS. The idea of Data from Star Trek the next generation may become a reality in my lifetime.
Robonaut
These developments are leading to some moral questions. How real are these robots? Will they have feelings and emotions? Timesonline did an article called No sex please, robot, just clean the floor where an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated. We have all read the Sci-Fi stores or have seen the movies where we misuse robots as our slaves and they develop into a species. In the 2005 article Sex and the single robot, Kim Jong-Hwan, the director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre, a leading authority on technology and ethics of robotics, developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing. He says the software will give the machines the ability to feel, reason and desire. He also said: ‘Christians may not like it, but we must consider this the origin of an artificial species.’ It makes you wonder what is next.
