The Economist magazine writes of Robots and Human Irrationality
Irrationals
"Once someone owns something, he places a higher value on it than he did when he acquired it—an observation first called “the endowment effect” by Richard Thaler. This has been proven in hundreds of experiments, the most famous of which found that students were surprisingly reluctant to trade a coffee mug they had been given for a bar of chocolate, even though they did not prefer coffee mugs to chocolate when given a straight choice between the two."
"Because the endowment effect touches on so many areas, it may be helpful for legislators to understand its evolutionary origins. That goods and rights such as pollution permits, radio spectrum and mobile-telephone licences do not inexorably flow towards the most efficient distribution worries the legal scholars charged with designing fair allocations. The effect also complicates the negotiation of contracts, as people demand more to give up standard provisions than they would have been willing to pay had they bargained anew. Nor is the endowment effect alone in suggesting that Homo economicus is a rarer species than neoclassical taxonomists would like to believe."
Other “irrational” phenomena include confirmation bias (searching for or interpreting information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions), the bandwagon effect (doing things because others do them) and framing problems (when the conclusion reached depends on the way the data are presented). All in all, the rational conclusion is that humans are irrational animals.
Robots
(from the Economist, rephrased)
Robots, of course, are only as rational as their programming. We humans are largely, if not entirely, programmed by evolution. Robots offer us an opportunity, especially for tinkerers and men, to be like God and get as close as we can to creating something resembling life. Robots are getting cheaper to make. The entire human genome is getting cheaper to sequence, too.
Robots are starting to come into their own. Computing power is increasing and their cost is decreasing. Because of the relentless increase in computing power, robots are moving from the simple, mundane, and monotonous tasks of their 60's origins to being able to see, feel, move and work together, because of increasingly sophisticated systems. Robot engineers call this “mechatronics”: the union of mechanics, optics, electronics, computers and software. Some factory robots are now smart enough to be released from their safety cages to work among humans. And as they become cleverer and more dexterous, they are starting to move from factories to offices and homes.
They vacuum, cut the grass, clean windows, transport stuff, and don't necessarily look human. Robots that can climb walls have been developed by scientists in the United States. The robots can scale surfaces using the same principles behind electrostatic charges, which make balloons stick to ceilings after being rubbed... Some robots look like spiders or flying insects. Many are also enrolled in the armed forces where they defuse bombs, fly reconnaissance and attack missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and meander under the sea. At the robot fair in Munich, among a bewildering array of robots that can now do most jobs in a factory there were also machines that, in addition to tasks like those already mentioned, could talk and even perform surgery. One robot bartender opens cans of beer and serves alcohol.
The cost of industrial robots has also fallen sharply against the cost of people, which has helped to boost their numbers to more than 1m worldwide. Most of them are built in Europe and Japan, with about half at work in Asia. The falling cost of computing power makes it practical to give robots features like vision, touch and awareness. They are becoming easier to program, and some respond to speech. Eventually, advanced humanoid robots will escape from the laboratory. Indeed, Toyota and Honda expect domestic robots to become a huge market in the future, with machines working as a family helper.
I imagine one day there will be robots that can build robots. So, in a way, they will be able to reproduce. With enough smarts and consciousness, won't this be life?
Irrationals
"Once someone owns something, he places a higher value on it than he did when he acquired it—an observation first called “the endowment effect” by Richard Thaler. This has been proven in hundreds of experiments, the most famous of which found that students were surprisingly reluctant to trade a coffee mug they had been given for a bar of chocolate, even though they did not prefer coffee mugs to chocolate when given a straight choice between the two."
"Because the endowment effect touches on so many areas, it may be helpful for legislators to understand its evolutionary origins. That goods and rights such as pollution permits, radio spectrum and mobile-telephone licences do not inexorably flow towards the most efficient distribution worries the legal scholars charged with designing fair allocations. The effect also complicates the negotiation of contracts, as people demand more to give up standard provisions than they would have been willing to pay had they bargained anew. Nor is the endowment effect alone in suggesting that Homo economicus is a rarer species than neoclassical taxonomists would like to believe."
Other “irrational” phenomena include confirmation bias (searching for or interpreting information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions), the bandwagon effect (doing things because others do them) and framing problems (when the conclusion reached depends on the way the data are presented). All in all, the rational conclusion is that humans are irrational animals.
Robots
(from the Economist, rephrased)
Robots, of course, are only as rational as their programming. We humans are largely, if not entirely, programmed by evolution. Robots offer us an opportunity, especially for tinkerers and men, to be like God and get as close as we can to creating something resembling life. Robots are getting cheaper to make. The entire human genome is getting cheaper to sequence, too.
Robots are starting to come into their own. Computing power is increasing and their cost is decreasing. Because of the relentless increase in computing power, robots are moving from the simple, mundane, and monotonous tasks of their 60's origins to being able to see, feel, move and work together, because of increasingly sophisticated systems. Robot engineers call this “mechatronics”: the union of mechanics, optics, electronics, computers and software. Some factory robots are now smart enough to be released from their safety cages to work among humans. And as they become cleverer and more dexterous, they are starting to move from factories to offices and homes.
They vacuum, cut the grass, clean windows, transport stuff, and don't necessarily look human. Robots that can climb walls have been developed by scientists in the United States. The robots can scale surfaces using the same principles behind electrostatic charges, which make balloons stick to ceilings after being rubbed... Some robots look like spiders or flying insects. Many are also enrolled in the armed forces where they defuse bombs, fly reconnaissance and attack missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and meander under the sea. At the robot fair in Munich, among a bewildering array of robots that can now do most jobs in a factory there were also machines that, in addition to tasks like those already mentioned, could talk and even perform surgery. One robot bartender opens cans of beer and serves alcohol.
The cost of industrial robots has also fallen sharply against the cost of people, which has helped to boost their numbers to more than 1m worldwide. Most of them are built in Europe and Japan, with about half at work in Asia. The falling cost of computing power makes it practical to give robots features like vision, touch and awareness. They are becoming easier to program, and some respond to speech. Eventually, advanced humanoid robots will escape from the laboratory. Indeed, Toyota and Honda expect domestic robots to become a huge market in the future, with machines working as a family helper.
I imagine one day there will be robots that can build robots. So, in a way, they will be able to reproduce. With enough smarts and consciousness, won't this be life?
No comments:
Post a Comment