Bicentennial Man

In the first part of the film, it is clear, from the scenario portrayed and from the apparent challenge for the actors, that people in general (and script-writers in particular) have a great deal of trouble portraying a natural transition into a reality where intelligent autonomous robots are commonplace. For many people, there is a huge leap of experience that they must take from the present time and state of the art (basically, hardly started) to a future point --- and it seems so unnatural.

George Lucas perhaps got it right more than anyone, with R2D2 and C3P0 in Star Wars. These were intelligent autonomous devices that were clearly machines and not trying to be human which is to some the ultimate objective for autonomous robotics.

In the second part of the film, as Andrew (the robot) becomes more human-like, we are treated to the kind of superb acting and entertainment that we have known and loved from Robin Williams. But I expect that robots, given the choice, would not choose to regress their potential to what in time would become if not a lesser life-form, at least a different life-form, less suited to space colonization and a vast array of futures that may lay ahead for a machine-augmented human race. For that matter, I don't anticipate robots turning into human beings as much as I anticipate human beings incorporating technology into our own evolutionary development.

We are already a machine dependent human race in many respects --- at least those of us in the "developed" nations. With medical prosthetic and artificial organ advances, and age extending research findings, the future for us is clear. Our own natural evolution will likely take us to a composite being that has all of the very best of where we came from as biological beings and what technology we are able to create for ourselves in the future. The choices will always be ours. The transition will be more natural than most of the science fiction we are subjected to portrays.

For me, I could care less about robots imitating humans. First of all, I expect [autonomous] robots to take a myriad of natural forms, natural for machines in a world of all sorts of beings, and physical settings, and all sorts of early roles for such devices to take. Second, I expect without a doubt that machines will be able to surpass human capabilities in most if not all categories we could list --- sensing, strength, speed, agility, and, the tricky one, various aspects of intelligence. For after all, robots will acquire capabilities that we ourselves endow them with --- and we (our engineers, scientists, etc.) have been quite capable of constructing mechanisms and processes with powers and capabilities that we ourselves either don't have at all or don't have to the degree of our creations --- fork lifts, x-ray machines, telescopes, microscopes, automobiles, airplanes, diving gear, remote operated underwater vehicles, unmanned space craft --- and on and on and on --- devices that extend and/or complement human capabilities and activity.

The quest for human-like robots is merely one subset --- and to me not a very interesting one --- of all of the autonomous robot activity and capability that we have within our reach to foster.

Where shall we go with this over the next few years? Small deliberate steps, please, but greater ones than we have taken to date.

Joe Bosworth

robotchannel@aol.com

December 26, 1999