Robots that Lust and Reproduce

redcone writes "The Guardian unlimited is reporting that Korean roboticist Kim Jong-Hwan, who founded the robot football (soccer) World Cup, and is 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."

Sound-Proofing

I guess it's time to stock up those sound-proofing materials, I can't stand metal-grinding noise.

Seriously though, what is the incentive for robots to reproduce? If they're so smart, they would've realized that they can simply upgrade or replace parts. They might enjoying sexing, but certainly not reproducing.

Re:Sound-Proofing

Actually, they won't enjoy anything.

For them to enjoy something they'd have to experience it and therefore have a consciousness.

This professor is very mistaken when he says they will experience lust. Unless you define "lust" as "programmed tendency to move towards another robot and interface to it" or something.

The most that this can do is to program sets of behavior probabilities. It won't by any means cause robots to suddenly become conscious beings.

We don't know

The problem is not that we can't "re-create it". In fact we might have already. The problem is that we can't measure it.

We can't even measure it in each other, because we really don't know of any measurable physical properties that may determine the presence of consciousness. And because we don't know how to measure it, we cannot know if we've already created it. Not you, nor anyone here on slashdot or anywhere else. For all we know, modern silicon-based CPUs already have some (very) dim, glimmering cognitive awareness of sorts. We really do not know. It is completely unfounded for anyone to claim that it has not happened yet (or likewise that it has happened) if we don't even have a clue what it really is or how to measure its existence. Heck, it's so elusive we don't even have a rational definition for it.

We don't know what physical (or otherwise?) properties of the human brain result in sentience. At all. Therefore we cannot predict what physical properties (possibly already present) could give rise to sentience in man-made creations. We have no 'measuring device' to stick in the brain that 'detects' sentience. (Asking "are you sentient" is futile, because the answer to that is computational.)

In fact we probably never will know if our own creations have "consciousness" until we figure out how to measure if other humans have it.

(Unless you are referring to a computational ability to "compute" and consider the "self", but that is not related to consciousness, that is pure computational machinery, just 'nuts and bolts', the mechanics of processing the understanding thereof. This is most likely completely separate to consciousness; any self-diagnostic system is "aware" of itself in that sense, and an advanced one could conceivably answer questions "Do you exist" and "Are you thinking" purely computationally - with or without sentience.)

Re:Sound-Proofing

Sexual reproduction does more than simply perpetuate a species, it also offers genetic material an opportunity to mutate and to mix things up with compatible sets of genetic material. I don't think the robots as machines really need this as much as the software components of the robots would perhaps benefit from it... but then the software doesn't really need a robot to exist, any CPU with cycles would do.

Finally,

A complete Fembot ! :D

More Seriously

I'm not sure if this is the direction we need to go
in the current state of Artificial Intelligence research. I think there are more worthy areas of research, like trying to create intelligence that works . ( It all depends on your definition of Intelligence in AI, do you mean mimicking human intelligence or do you mean capturing the principles of "intelligence" and creating devices that are TRULY intelligent )

If we take the latter notion then we need to make greater inroads in creating true intelligence in our devices ,then offshoot of that will lead naturally to researh into personalities. If we take the previous notion ( where we are just mimicking human behaviour ) then I guess it might just end up being another set of rule based system, or a system based on refined dependencies.

This is a bit of rant, its not meant to be, but when evaluating things like this you need to look at what our notions of intelligence really area...

Cassanova Dishwasher

Great, now I have to watch out for my dishwasher humping my leg.

Re:Cassanova Dishwasher

Great, now I have to watch out for my dishwasher humping my leg.

2 days later, the leg starts vomitting:

leg: "i think i'm pregnant, i don't want to put you in a bad position. you can be as involved as you want"
dishwasher: "but, but, you used protection! you used RCP, robot control pills"
leg: "i know! i know! ... shit happens"

etc... etc...

Re:Cassanova Dishwasher

Great, now I have to watch out for my dishwasher humping my leg.

Do you wear a prosthesis?

Great...

Horny Terminators.

Re:Great...

Hey, if it's liquid metal, it can have any kind of manhood it wants!

Re:Great...

"I'll Be Back..... For More!"

*shudder* Terminator 4: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Patrick and Kristanna Loken Get it on!

Getting lusty is one thing...

But they better have compatible hardware.

Re:Getting lusty is one thing...

Hey, non-compatible hardware mating is okay too! Equal rights for all robots! If an A connector wants to marry a B connector, they should be allowed to! Don't bring your religion into this!

Thus starts....

... The Rise of the Machines!

uh, no pun intended.

This has to be said

I for one cannot stand that horrid rampant humanophilia [sexuality.org] all over the net. It's only for pervbots and it's disgusting.

Regards,
Cmdr Data

One step closer

All we would need to is stick one of those in a RealDoll [realdoll.com], and we'd finally lose all use for the female race.

pretty cruel

The summary says it will make them feel lusty, but that reproduction is in the future. How cruel is it to make them want to reproduce without being able to?

Not that I've ever been in their position, of course. Ahem.

Re:pretty cruel

How cruel is it to make them want to reproduce without being able to?

Boy are you in the right place.

We already have robots that reproduce...

They are called "Promise Keepers".

Condensed article..

Article in condensed form:

Fuzzy logic
Genetic algorithms
Control robot behaviour
"Some time in the future"

It's easy to mimic feelings. Making up new ones or the robots evolving new ones though.. That's the tricky one.
Also, cue a hundred or so futurama related jokes. In fact, I'll just hop on the bandwagon;

- If robots don't reproduce - why are they so interested in sex?
- Entirely for the perversion

Just what I need

Just what I Need to help my confidence, robots getting it more than I do.

True geeks?

Robot: I'm horny; I think I'll build a new robot.

Truly horrifying

Modern mankind's problem is this: We are convinced that we are machines.

This is not a casual statement. If you believe that the laws of physics are the most fundamental things there are, then the logic is inescapable. You are determined by the laws of physics, chemistry, and neurology. You have no free will. What you think of as thinking is just neurological machinery over which you have no control - it controls you. There is no such thing as love; all there is is chemical machinery. All we are is machines. (The only escape from this logic is if you don't accept the premise - that all there really is is the laws of physics.)

The horror of the modern position is that we cannot accept that we are just machines. We feel that we are more, that humans are not just machines. And so we feel that we are more, but rationally we are driven to view ourselves as just machines.

If this is the modern human's horror, why do we want to take machines, and give them feelings? If it's horrifying to have human feelings, but rationally be forced to accept that you are only a machine, how horrifying is it to have human feelings, but be trapped in the body of a machine?

Note: The above analysis closely follows the thoughts of Francis Schaeffer. I can't claim much credit for it.

Code for the male robot

int main() {
while( 1 ) {
lust();
}
return -1; // We should not get here, return an error code.
}