The mechanics of robots has proceeded at a good pace. Robots in factories do their jobs quite well. We have running and grasping robots, ect., but they only work well when a human is supporting them with some level of tele-operation. This supports the point that the mechanics are good (or at least good enough), but their control is missing – and still has to be supplied by a human for practical applications.

I suggest another direction. Factory robots we have. Field robots we need. Harvest Automation (http://www.harvestautomation.com/) has made a start with field robots that autonomously move plants around in a nursery. A simple – but not necessarily easy – task. There is a huge range of applications for robots that can move things around without knowing before hand exactly where they are, as is required in factory robots. This is tough engineering, as opposed to R&D. But it is a path that can be developed to yield increasingly useful stuff.

1. AI must automatically be “superior” to Human.

Why? Why do we assume that AI will outstrip humanity by a wide margin? A human with a BCI or a complete upload could access the same hardware an AI could. With our increasing knowledge of the brain, it’s highly probable we will redesign it to use nanocomputers to run at electronic speeds. Why should an AI surpass a nanoenhanced human?

2. AI “must” be sentient and self aware.

Why? Why does an autopilot need to be aware of anything other than the data needed to do it’s job? Or a construction bot? or a maid? Even if it requires understanding and emotional responses at a human level, why must it posses desires? Why must it possess curiosity, why must it posses anything outside of the narrowly defined field of expertise? Does a maidbot need to know about to build a copy of herself? Or how to use a weapon? A General purpose AI may need to know an enormous amount of data to do it’s job, but it still does not need to know “everything” or share common human faults.

3. AI “evolution” will ensure revolt.

Why? Humans evolved because of pressure from our environment. Most of our problems in the world stem from the fact that evolution equipped us to survive in a jungle. Alpha dominance behavior lies behind nearly every war, injustice, and inequality in our world today. Even the drive to expand wants is due to the constant striving of the Alpha Dominance routine to take more and more to constantly prove it’s superiority over all competitors. Why would an AI feel these forces? It has no need to evolve aggressive behaviors, UNLESS WE PROGRAM IT TO. The ONLY way humanity could be a minor threat to a “superhuman AI” would be to force humanity as a whole into survival mode. If Humanity is sharing the same technological advances, advancing itself as quickly as the AI could, what, really, would make either side view the other as a threat? (other than the primitive natures we humans drag with us. AI is far more likely to be SEEN as a threat than actually BE one.

4. AI must be “inhuman”

This one I never got, really. By DEFINITION, AI is intended to make a “sentient” computer program which is capable of being considered “human” In other words, it will share Human emotion, thought patterns, drives, goals, ambitions, etc. It will by definition, be “HUMAN”

In otherwords, it will be like taking a human being and uploading them. In all ways it will be indistinguishable if it is a AI or a Uploaded Human in order to be considered AI as currently accepted.

What people fear isn’t AI at all. An AI would just be another human, just made artificially. What people fear is a NON Human AI. An AI which would completely fail a Turing Test. Skynet isn’t an AI, it’s a singleminded killing machine. The Matrix isn’t AI either, it’s hostile Deus Ex Machina.

Neither of these machines would pass the definition of AI as held in the popular mindset. They aren’t HUMAN, but monsters of the ID brought to life.

People fear the future because they don’t understand the future. Their primitive cortex is scared that they will lose what they have instead of gaining far more. A robot society cannot be a dystopia like people fear, because the actual effects of a robot society are too corrosive to artificially maintained scarcity. A dystopian phase may happen, but it can only be maintained for so long.

People need to stop looking at technological advancement as separate and discreet things, and realize everything has to be taken as a whole. It’s not just AI, but AI and Biotech, and Nanotech, and Virtual Reality, and Quantum computing, and everything else.

And first and foremost, we must come to grips with our primitive biological drives, and cope with them honestly.

My experience with Verizon (business DSL to be specific) this week would contradict this claim. In fact, it was almost the editorial’s exchange verbatim, except there was more swearing.

The main difficulty facing habilis creators suffering from robophobia is that current simulation environments are insufficiently rich to be capable of producing experiences comparable to human sensory input. Some satisfaction can be obtained by using data sets such as those on Rawseeds, but real AGI will require learning through interaction which these static data sets are unable to deliver.