Forget the Hype about Robots Ruling the World. They Aren’t That Smart!

Will we make robots that are really like people? Not for a long time. On the other hand, robotics will give us a lively and unsettling ride. Here’s what to expect:

1) Robot manufacturers will make an aggressive play for the pet market. And for the doll and toy markets.

2) “Robots” that help around the house will be constantly in the news. Robot vacuum cleaners, for example. But keep in mind that these are very simple machines and hardly deserving of the title robot. Likewise, military robots are radio-controlled devices, not machines that can operate independently.

3) Robots (a nurse, for example) that can pretend to chat with you are on the way. You may be fooled. Robots that can genuinely chat with you are a long way off, because consciousness, personality, humor, language, even common sense are extremely difficult to replicate.

A big reason why robots are so hard to appraise realistically is that sci-fi movies have filled our heads with vivid pictures of what robots are capable of. But robots are a lot like time travel--easy to describe, hard to do! So where exactly are we? I’d say the whole field of robotics is in a state of reassessment. All the early dreams are in ruins. The AI (Artificial Intelligence) crowd is realizing with a shock that ordinary humans are immensely complex and talented--replicating us is akin to building a city on the moon. Replicating even lower life forms is way beyond us at this point.

I’ve been tracking robots for more than 20 years, ever since I read about a breakthrough robot in a magazine. Supposedly it could walk around at trade shows and interact with people. It was said to be very entertaining. Wow! I had to see this thing. With an assignment from Esquire, I trekked off to New Jersey and interviewed the inventor. Then I went back to my apartment in Manhattan and called experts all over the country. Was this thing real? Was it doing what the inventor claimed it was doing?

In a word: no. It was a total fake. But what a struggle figuring this out!

Here’s the striking thing about robots. Even the experts don’t know what’s going on. Virtually all predictions made by robot experts throughout the 20th century have turned out to be false. Why? Because building a human-like robot turns out to be much more difficult than anyone imagined. Furthermore, all these geniuses, each mired in his own little part of the problem, often had no clear picture of what other experts could or could not do, or might do soon. Keep in mind that a robot is not one thing. It’s a combination of a thousand subsystems. Each one has to be invented and refined and made to work together. Then you might have the robots that sci-fiction dreams about.

Computers dazzle us because they can crunch numbers a trillion times faster than we can. But that’s much like admiring a motor because it can turn 50,000 rpm. The smartest machine remains simple-minded. It’s trying to mimic various human activities, but even routine human activities (for example, crossing a street) are staggeringly difficult. A machine is most impressive when you give it a single task, such as playing chess. Our genius is that we can do a million different tasks. We’re flexible, resourceful, adaptive, intuitive, and creative. Robots, so far, are not.

Indeed, one new development is that some scientists are realizing that the whole AI (Artificial Intelligence) project was unrealistic from the start. A more realistic goal is AL or Artificial Life. Here you forget the clever human behavior and simply try to imitate how a cat walks or a fish swims.

I think robotics is one of the most fascinating but elusive subjects there is. Here’s the crux of what happened the past 50 years. The experts, almost everyone a certified genius, did not grasp that trivial little activities, the kind that a four-year old can do, are vastly complicated. Running, playing, conversing--these are gigantic accomplishments.

Bottom line: mimicking us is going to be tough. But entertaining and serving us, hey, these aren’t so difficult. That’s why you’ll see robots first appear as pets, nurses, guards, domestics and playmates (in every sense). These robots will do limited jobs in limited domains. They will not try to take over the building, never mind the planet.

Here’s the key point: these machine will be elaborate fakes following programmed or mathematical instructions. They won’t have feelings. They won’t be conscious. They won’t have volition. They won’t have common sense, or only a smidgen.

Did you ever see fake flowers that look more real than real flowers? That’s the world we are entering vis-à-vis robots. Imagine a cuddly robot baby. Or a sexy robot woman. Get ready to feel uneasy.

For more on robots, please see "Understanding Robots" on the writer's site Improve-Education.org.