Poll: Sentient robots: Will they or won't they?

[Doomdiver]

Before I start I apologise if this has been done before but the search didn't bring up anything.

I have had this argument with my friends many times before. Will it ever be possible to create sentient robots? Now obviously it is impossible to perceive how it could happen with today?s technology but does that mean it will never happen?

If a robot created it will have to have programmed into it how to operate, how to act etc. Surely if it has all been programmed it will be impossible for it to act outside of this programming?

On the other hand we have the argument of advancements in technology. Many years ago people would be ridiculed for ever thinking some of the technology we have today may ever exist, for example in medieval times could anyone have ever have thought that people may be able to play something like pong, never mind the technologically advanced games we have today.

There is also the argument of a very complex series of random number generators to make all of it's decisions, with the generators varying in scale and bias depending on the decision, but could this truly be classed as sentient?

What are your thoughts on the matter? Will it be possible for humans to create robots that think for themselves or not?

 

[regal90]

Personaly i think that eventually we'll be able to make sentient robots.. no idea as to how but still it's feasable, so i not going to rule it out...

 

[Merteg]

As soon as we make them they will murder us or keep as slaves.

Human nature and I'm sure we're program them to be as human as possible, that will be our downfall.

 

[JtLaneside]

We may one day have the technology to create truly sentient robots but I don't know if we should. Would we really want to create independent thinking machines that are more intelligent than we are, what if the A.I. decides it does not need us anymore?

 

[Gooble]

They will probably, eventually exist, but probably won't be human-like until at least 50-150 years.

And when every generation that has already been born when they are finally perfected will find them seriously seriously weird; it would be basically like having intelligent aliens living on our planet.

 

[Eskay]

If a robot created it will have to have programmed into it how to operate, how to act etc. Surely if it has all been programmed it will be impossible for it to act outside of this programming?

On the other hand we have the argument of advancements in technology. Many years ago people would be ridiculed for ever thinking some of the technology we have today may ever exist, for example in medieval times could anyone have ever have thought that people may be able to play something like pong, never mind the technologically advanced games we have today.

There is also the argument of a very complex series of random number generators to make all of it's decisions, with the generators varying in scale and bias depending on the decision, but could this truly be classed as sentient?

What are your thoughts on the matter? Will it be possible for humans to create robots that think for themselves or not?

Not entirely to do with sentience, but you might find this theory rather interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

"If machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to an exponential and quite sudden growth in intelligence."

Back on to topic more directly. The problem with this is that we don't truly know what sentience is. We can't prove free will, we cannot know if all actions are pre-determined, so a robot that mimics sentience may be the actually possessing sentience.

Basically a big shoulder shrug from me!

 

[Lord George]

What do you mean will? Oh right, you don't know about the... well I'll be quiet then.

 

[Irridium]

It will happen, I rember watching a video on youtube, this one was uploaded in 2007 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K04o2ic4g-A], its going to happen, and if youtube is to be believed, soon. Although that depends how well you trust youtube, so it may be completely wrong.

A little off topic:
huh, I just found this video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nteiqLgZFOU]
and its basically the same, only it was uploaded in 2008, and things have changed considerably in 1 year.
Imagine 10 years from now...


But again if you don't trust youtube, then it means nothing. Still pretty interesting though

 

[Dagodweezl]

No we'll all be eaten by zombies before we figure it out.

 

[vxicepickxv]

Next thing you know, we'll be hearing the civil rights activists argue for the rights of synthetic intelligence.

 

[gigastrike]

Depends on where you draw the line. My question is "will we ever know?" Even if there is a robot that can hold complex conversations, how will we know if it's self-aware and not just acting based on a program?

 

[Sewblon]

Maybe, but not until the 22nd century, and by then man and sentient machine may unite to conquer the universe.

 

[Alex_P]

If a robot created it will have to have programmed into it how to operate, how to act etc. Surely if it has all been programmed it will be impossible for it to act outside of this programming?

You can create a machine that learns. In the specific case, it's a bit like a fancier kind of pattern-matching. In the general case, you have to come up with a bunch of extra stuff, like a model of curiosity, but I think it'll be doable in the near term; getting to human-level complexity will take a while.

-- Alex

 

[Alex_P]

Depends on where you draw the line. My question is "will we ever know?" Even if there is a robot that can hold complex conversations, how will we know if it's self-aware and not just acting based on a program?

How do you know I'm self-aware and not just acting according to program?

Is the Chinese room [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room] self-aware?

You can take a lot of different tacts with it philosophically, but the most practical answer is pretty straightforward: anything that you perceive as self-aware is self-aware. That's the spirit of, say, the Turing Test.

-- Alex

 

[wewontdie11]

Probably not seen as how sentience encompass a wide variety of things such as moral choice, which I don't think machines will ever be truly capable of.

 

[dalek sec]

I'm sure one day we will have sentient robots and on that note I for one welcome our new cylon overlords.

 

[jim_doki]

dont you people watch Terminator? Sentient robots are possibly the worst idea EVER! Indestructable killing machines, no thank you

 

[Knight Templar]

Well the US would buy drones that can tell between friend and foe, they are using remote controle drones to dispose of IED (controled by Xbox360 controlers in fact). So there will be a market for anything even close to "alive" robots.

So at some point they will exsist, depending on what you think is sentient of course.

 

[hypothetical fact]

By the time they are around we won't be so it's not my beef. Though you might want to make this question into family heritage to be passed down until it can be answered at a relevant time.