#ai developers

Part 1 - History of Technology

The New Yorker recently put out a great article, covering the modern day conversations we're having about how "lifelike" AI systems are:

It's a great article, which covers a lot of modern discourse around the last 25 years around how we've attempted to make "lifelike" machines. In an age of incredible speed and velocity in progress, we often forget how things have ended up this way. If you look, it turns out the quest for lifelike machines has been going on for a lot longer than people might suppose.

1st Century Antiquity - Age of Inquiry - The Mortal Hephaestus:

When people think of lifelike robots, they often jump to the robots of the 20th century. The past, however, is deep and full of secrets for those who know where to look.

Hero of Alexandria was a master craftsman, and mathematician, famous for one of the world's first steam engines, and Heron's formula for calculating the area of a triangle. He also created some of the first known humanoid automata.

This video is slightly misleading, as it shows a combination of his efforts, and that of another, but Hero himself was able to create moving automata that used weights as potential energy to drive wheeled devices around a room. The Herakleidon Museum does also have videos recreating his original mechanism.

The Greeks were, in particular, prolific in their creation of automata which mimicked life.

18th Century - Artisanal Age - Dreams of Automata

The writer is a mechanical automaton, created in 1770, by the aritst Pierre Jacquet-Droz. It is a marvel of early engineering, using a series of what are called "cams" to direct a machine in the shape of a child to write sentences.

It combines the mechanical aspects of writing, with the aesthetic appearance of a child, in order to create a work of art. It is also one of the first programmable machines, using a series of replacable letters to change what words are written.

But machines with lifelike qualities are not just limited to human motions. Master British automata makers John Joseph Merlin and John Cox created an astoundingly lifelike rendition of a swan in 1773, which preened its feathers, and caught fish from a pond.

Both of these devices were driven by the creation of advanced clockwork, and machining technologies. As with today's semiconductor revolution, clockwork started off the size of rooms until it was progressively miniaturized into the palm of your hand.

While the 18th century artisans and mechanists were able to create wondrous mechanical motions, they were not truly able to replicate the mechanics of "thinking". The writer is one of the few examples of programmatic "thinking", but cannot independently operate.

20th Century - The Cybernetic Age - Adaptation and Evolution:

The advent of thermodynamics, and the rise of electronics, led to new means by which to create "living machines". In the 20th century, it also led to differing approaches to simulating life, such as cybernetics and expert systems. Walter Grey's tortoise robots are a great example of the cybernetic attempts to create complex behaviours by using simple rules in the form of both a light and touch sensor.

This robotic tortoise was able to exhibit very lifelike behaviours and reach goals without explicit instructed programming, such as with The Writer automaton.

This is a key "adaptation" and evolution from the concept of an automaton. Whereas automatons had simulated the mechanics of life though motion and muscle, robots such as the tortoise started to simulate the mechanics of thought through electronic wiring and circuitry.

The rise of the integrated circuit, and transistor, has been key to allowing modern automata/robots to reach advanced levels of ability unthinkable in pre-modern times.

Shakey represents another branch of 20th century robotics, the expert system, led by ideas similar to the 19th century automata, but updated exponentially. By using several sensors, Shakey was able to navigate around rooms and create internal representations of the rooms it was in, in order to perform objectives.

21st Century - Age of Artificial Neural Networks - Memory and Thought:

Similar to the age of automata, we have entered another age of biomimicry, this time using Artificial Neural Networks. Instead of attempting to replicate the mechanics of actions, we are instead attempting to replicate the organic mechanics of thought. One of the key ideas behind life is that it is self-sustaining - it operates all on its own. 18th/19th century automata weren't able to do this and 20th century automata/robotics did to a certain extent, but were often still viewed as machines with function.

Sony's AIBO represents a more "lifelike" kind of design - where the entire system is driven by "curiosity" rather than by specific instruction. While it posseses some subroutines, similar to its 20th century counterparts, it surpasses them in how it can also adaptively learn new behaviours to better suit its surroundings, both in practical settings (finding its way around) and social settings (recognising people, and interacting with them in a socially "successful" way). The fields of reinforcement learning and artificial neural networks allow for complex behaviours to be simulated for the first time. Sony's AIBO is an excellent example of this in practice, with the robotic dog able to learn through positive reinforcement verbally, or via tactile methods, to promote certain behaviours.

It can even use computer vision capabilities to recognise specific users on sight, as well as allowing it to create its own internal model of the world around it. Much like the 18th to 19th century automata, AIBO also attempts to replicate the actions of life itself, with its design, and actions, replicating that of a puppy or small dog. Unlike the automatons of old, however, the use of tactile, vision and sound sensors allow its form to play some function in its operation aside from aesthetics.

Cybernetic Meadows - The Future?

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