Bet 86
By the year 2150, over 50% of schools in the USA or Europe will require classes in defending against robot attacks.
Prediction 86
Duration 148 years (02002-02150)
Predictor
Alex K. Rubin
Challenger
TBA
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With the current rate of technological advancement, artificial intelligence is a very real possibility in the near future. I predict robots with AI will inevitably be uncontrollable and over power their human masters. Schooling and education is what the children of the future need to fend off these super human robots. Therefore, many schools will offer if not require training in robot fighting. The first wave of these schools to offer the class will be around 2120.
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By the year 2150, over 50% of schools in the USA or Europe will require classes in defending against robot attacks.
There are several implied points.
1. Attacks by robots will be a common threat.
2. Individual private citizens and possibly teenagers will be expected to have responsibility for defending themselves against such a threat.
3. Preparing for such a threat will include classes in school.
Point 1. Seems fairly unlikely on the face of it, but let's leave that to one side.
Point 2. It seems more likely that specialist police / army / robots would have that job. General citizens aren't (routinely) expected to prepare for being attacked by muggers / terrorists or whatever.
Point 3. Where 'self defence' is an issue it's (generally) learnt on individual initiative (possibly via private groups) outside of school.
1) Since robots are deterred only weakly by instinctive fear or the threat of shame, fines, imprisonment, exile, or execution, their attacks should be far more frequent than their organic counterparts, ursine and homonid. If the mid-21st century Cause is to murder infidels, robot martyrs will be ubiquitous.
2 & 3) Defense can be delegated to specialists only when danger is uncommon. Children are taught to look both ways, cross at the green, etc., rather than a human traffic officer at every intersection.
"Since robots are deterred only weakly by instinctive fear or the threat of shame, fines, imprisonment, exile, or execution, their attacks should be far more frequent than their organic counterparts, ursine and homonid."
Interesting use of the _present tense_. There are currently no robots capable of attacking (in exactly the same way as guns don't attack, people use guns to attack).
The quotient of robot 'instinctive fear' and 'self preservation' is also still up for grabs.
I understand that the Intel 8086 was the brains for early cruise missiles. Lighthearted software engineers called them "PC Senior." What capabilities would have to be added to a cruise missile in order for it to qualify as an attacking robot by your definition?
Soldiers don't use guns to attack, generals use soldiers to use guns to attack.
Perhaps this is a problem of subjective definition but when I see "robot attacks" I think that it's the _robot_ that makes the decision. Also there is the question of what counts as a 'robot' as opposed to merely 'machine'.
Obviously it would be sensible to wait for the negotiated bet details to be revealed - but that's never stopped me before. ;-)
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=robot
"ro·bot Pronunciation Key (rbt, -bt)
n.
1. A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and
is capable of performing a variety of often complex human
tasks on command or by being programmed in advance.
2. A machine or device that operates automatically or by
remote control.
Obviously a cruise missile is '2', but not necessarily '1'.
The definition used by the bettor is of course not known for certain, but from the time frame (2150) I'm assuming he's thinking autonomous AI machine - possibly humanoid.
"Lieutenant A," said Captain D, "bring your troops up on the east. Lieutenant B, bring yours forward to the tree line. Sergeant C, take the d----d hill however you see fit!"
In your opinion, who is deciding to attack?
In the case of humans, as (will probably be with) autonomous AI the Captain, Lieutenant and Sergeant are all assumed to have free will. That is to say, if the order wasn't "take the hill" but "burn the village" then they could all be tried for war crimes. The Captian for deciding to give the order, and the others for deciding to follow that order.
It is this element of responsibility which is a) the reason guns aren't arrested and tried and b) the reason by mental instability / deficiency can be used as a (partial) defense in law.
We will see what comes of the negotiation. I would judge the bet won if in 2150, students were being taught how to recognize and cope with entities resembling devices deployed in "Battle Bots" which were capable of finding their way to a schoolbus, pizzaria, restaurant, or place of worship using onboard sensors and intelligence, for the purpose of slaughter.
I would deem that the requirements would have been met by a five minute lecture each semester, similar to contemporary fire drills. Do students in the UK get taught about UXB?
Now _that_ should do it.
However I have to say that the UK "Robot Wars Extreme" is much superior to the US "Battle Bots" ;-)
> ... Robots Extreme superior to Battle Bots ...
Want to bet? :-)
Unfortunately it's not a long term bet. Because "Robot Wars Extreme" could kick "Battle Bots" butt right now. ;-)
I suppose we could bet on which series would first cease to exist (allowing for spin-offs and follow-on series), but that rarely has anything to do with quality of entertainment.
When I say "robots" I am referring to the second definition as mentioned by Mr. Blay. To me, a robot has artificial intelligence and controls its own actions. There is not a man behind the curtain controlling them.
Unless of course a person who will negotiate with me is willing to debate and discuss this issue.
-Alex Rubin
If we did, I slept through that class.
In (most) schools (nearly) everybody is taught about sex. Because everybody is expected to have sex at some point.
In many schools people are taught about road safety, and warned about drugs - because everybody is expected to face those dangers. [Personally nobody ever offered / tried to sell drugs to me, but I'm in the statistical minority]
On the other hand, it's a small minority that come into contact with un-exploded bombs [Which happens to include me, if you include a WWII hand grenade well past it's prime]
A world where there is an _expectation_ that you will be attacked by robots, appears to me to be one where it is unlikely that there will be organised schools. Post apocalyptic "Terminator" style future on the one hand, ocassional rogues that need to be dealt with "Blade Runner" on the other. I'm not sure that there is much of a middle road between the two.
Mr. Rubin, you would allow a human to be the motivator? A robot of canine intelligence that could cross busy streets in order to deliver a payload if given a map and an address seems plausible, a "cruise land mine." Nothing in the bet says that the attacking robots need feel any personal malice toward the schoolchildren or believe in the rightness of their cause.
Of course a human would have to be a motivator of some sort. Set it in motion. It's not like a robot is ever going to make itself, start a jihad and bloistering everything in its path!
"Of course a human would have to be a motivator of some sort. Set it in motion. It's not like a robot is ever going to make itself, start a jihad and bloistering everything in its path!"
A human does not 'make itself', so that is an irrelevant distinction. A robot may well make another robot. As to the remainder, the three main cases seem to be
a) The robot 'decides' to start a jihad.
b) The robot 'is told' to start a jihad.
c) The robot is remotely operated, in the initiation of a jihad.
'b' can be further sub-divided depending on how, and to what extent the robot has 'free will' to obey/disobey.
I like the bet for the pure whimsy of its premise. But I'm curious- how does one defend oneself from an attacking robot? Martial arts would be of dubious use even against today's military robots (such as the ones being used to clear out caves in Afghanistan). Or will children of the future carry ionic pulse weapons for self defense?
This is the oddest bet by far in this forum. While I do appreciate the creativity of it, I find it hard to see myself believing in the possibility of "Robot attack". However I'll be long dead by the time the terms expire, maybe killed by Robot attack, so who am I to judge?
I think perhaps the required classes is the problem with this bet. It seems much more likely that any training would come in the form of drills like the old duck in cover. Oh no Molly, here comes a big bad robot. Bend over and kiss your, well, you get the idea.
I think there will certainly be robots capable of attack in 2150, in fact I just read an article about a police robot stealing the keys to a truck from a suspect while the suspect slept in the back. How leathal will they be? They would make great suicide bombers, or ideal agents for distributing biological and chemical weapons.
It might hinge on a couple of other questions, like is there a way to program everything with the potential to be dangerous with some sort of rudimentary intelligence to prevent this, whether there are still Radio Shacks to buy robot parts, how we address issues such social inequities and diagnosing and treating people (and robots I guess) with mental illnesses that might make them use a robot to attack people.
As for the bet, specifically, are these classes designed to teach a kid how to defend themselves against robots as a kid, or at some later point in their lives?
So how do you fight a robot that probably has a rail gun or something even more powerful? My guess would be you don't try to beat on it, you probably try to hack it's security codes and reprogram it, although I suppose if you just happen to have your own robot near by you can have them duke it out. Of course, the robot may have much more sophisticated means at its desposal than something like Robocop possibly masqurading as a human. Part of the class could be learning to spot them before it's too late.
Even if artificial intelligence is created, I don't think robots will go around attacking humans. Since we (as in the human race) create the robots, i think that we will set certain moral values deep inside the hardware. A good example is Asimov's robot-books where robots exist but they work from three fundamental rules, where the first one is never to harm a human being (I am aware that i didn't work very wellin the books, but see my point).
I don't think we will let them go bananas. I think we will create them as peaceful, intelligent, and creative robots (a bit of an oxymoron).
I don't entirely agree.
Peaceful, intelligent and creative humans would probably create peaceful, intelligent and creative robots.
The human race being as it is, there's every chance we'd also be getting warlike, dim and fanatical robots. :-P
Have none of you "intellectually challanged human robots" read any of Isaac Asimov's Robot Series or Foundation series of books and realized the impossibility of your ridiculous premise and pages of digital speculation of terminator fantasies. Welcome to the Matrix kiddies !
No wonder no one has posted here since march of this year.
They are all braindead from the banality of your discussion.
Sorry folks but I do not suffer fools lightly.
denward1
To Mr. McFadden:
Isaac Asimov's writings are filled with insightful, well-articulated commentaries about physics, technology, humanity and its potential. I doubt very much that he would ever resort to calling others "braindead" or their discussion "banal" just to assert his own intellectual superiority. If anything, he would probably voice his own opinion on such a subject rather than dismiss it as "digital speculation of terminator fantasies."
Anyone remember Michael Crichton's movie "Runaway?" It was so-so to slightly below average, plot-wise, but it made some great points
(a) a robot that can do a man's job can hurt a man
(b) hacking a robot which satisfies the criteria in (a) (if it already exists) to kill a man is probably cheaper and more efficient than the usual hit man is today.
So from now to 2150 is probably more than enough time for society to develop an economy with enough robots to have a major robot attack problem.
When I was a student worker in college (the second time) the place where I worked had a "man-rated" robot - in other words, one almost as big as a man, and capable of performing a few of the same tasks. Unfortunately, Iowa Scientific, the people who made the robot, stayed in business just long enough to deliver one of the two robots we'd ordered, and not quite long enough to deliver the needed software and hardware patches to keep "Marvin, the Paranoid Android" from thumping into the wall (ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump...) when "told" to roll straight down the hallway.
I got nasty looks at work when I suggested to comply with safety regulations, we really needed someone standing by with a 10-gauge shotgun whenever we worked with Marvin, as he did NOT come with a "kill" switch. You can't rely on a robot that can't roll along in a straight line not to swing a full-sized arm into the tender parts of your body very, very hard. :-)
So lesson one in those "defense from robots" classes is going to be "guns don't kill people, robots kill people - so go out and finish your gun safety workshops before we get to lesson two."
Another poster wrote:
"Have none of you "intellectually challanged human robots" read any of Isaac Asimov's Robot Series or Foundation series of books and realized the impossibility of your ridiculous premise and pages of digital speculation of terminator fantasies."
I read the Foundation series AND all of Doctor A's robot stories before ninth grade, but I wouldn't presume to call someone who hadn't "intellectually challenged." (Unless that was a joke instead of a zinger).
I've also worked with actual mobile, man-rated robots, so I can see where the author of this bet is coming from.
There are plenty of plausible reasons why a robot might hurt people - poor AI, poor proprioceptive sensors in the robot's limbs, poor programming for motion-related tasks - we haven't gotten into "intentional" injury - just unintended consequences of exposing people to a poorly-documented, poorly understood, by its nature poorly programmed computer system which has peripherals capable of accidentally whacking people in the head (or points lower), knocking them over (or down stairs), all sorts of possible problems.
No terminator fantasies required - simply actual experience with man-sized robots.
My recurring nightmare is that the classes in robot defense are needed because Bill Gates' people did with robots what they've done to our personal computers :-)
I live in the United States, home of the Colt Revolver, the M-16 et al., and through twelve years of public education not a word was mentioned about how to protect myself against gun violence, let alone nuclear annihilation, falling anvils, et cetera. The very notion of RO-BOTS wandering about on two legs weilding RAY-GUNS is a laughable relic of early-20th-century misunderstanding of machine/computer/artificial intelligence (what M. McLuhan refers to as the "horseless carriage" stage of [mis]understanding a technology).
Furthermore, what could such a curriculum possibly include? "Sneak around the back and press the button labeled 'OFF?'" "Summon Godzilla?" If I had $200 I would gladly post a wager on this laughable prediction.
-m
Matt Lavallee said:
"I live in the United States, home of the Colt Revolver, the M-16 et al., and through twelve years of public education not a word was mentioned about how to protect myself against gun violence,"
Not my fault your school neglected to teach gun safety, a topic covered during mandatory health and first aid classes in both my wife's public school and mine.
", let alone nuclear annihilation, falling anvils, et cetera."
Well, unless you're one of the Animaniacs (a registered trademark of Steven Spielberg, Warner Bros., and who knows, Microsoft?) falling anvils are probably not a problem worth addressing, but (and I'm showing my age as a Cold War kid here) again, in health and first aid, we were given basic instruction in surviving the basic mass disaster scenario - in our neck of the woods, we dealt with hurricanes and tornadoes as the most likely events, but nuclear detonations and fallout were also covered in the textbook we used ("Standard First Aid," by the American Red Cross).
What DID they teach in your schools, anyway? :-)
"The very notion of RO-BOTS wandering about on two legs weilding RAY-GUNS is a laughable relic of early-20th-century misunderstanding of machine/computer/artificial intelligence (what M. McLuhan refers to as the "horseless carriage" stage of [mis]understanding a technology)."
As far as robotic technology is concerned, we're still IN the "horseless carriage" stage - not of understanding the technology, but of its evolution.
We've only now achieved computers which can simulate neural nets approaching the number of neurons in a large animal brain (look at http://www.ad.com to see what I'm talking about), and in these new machines the number of connections between neurons is still woefully short - 1/50th to 1/100th the number of connections per neuron in the most densely connected parts of the human brain... and this is the state of the art. The low number of connections, as well as their arrangements - how many inputs, how many outputs, how well do they model things like latency? - probably limits our understanding of where robot "evolution" (shades of "Blade Runner") will be by 2150, the time frame of the prediction.
Anyone who says that they understand AI and robotics well enough to discount the likelihood of accidental (as opposed to "intentional") injury to humans from robots is fibbing big time. AI and robotics researchers won't even go that far. I find it also entirely plausible that "viral" programming code could induce robots to attack humans.
Although the language of the prediction was perhaps unfortunate ("robot attacks"):
- no one mentioned "ray guns" but Mr. Lavallee;
- the person who is knocked into traffic or has a steel finger driven through his temple as the result of an error in programming (including modification of the robot's operating system by viral code) or manufacturing of a robot is just as badly injured or dead as though the robot been capable of entertaining hostile motives.
If Mr. Lavallee can PROVE the preposterous nature either of prediction 86 or ANY comment made in discussion of it, that would be another matter entirely. But McLuhanite dogma won't cut it, we (or at least I) want nice, logical statements, not emoting about "attacks with ray guns."
A difficulty we have in this discussion is that we seem to be thinking about different things when we use the term "robot."
Some of us apparently imagine something like "Voltron" or one of the Transformers, others something more like Arnold Schwarzenegger ("That's 'Governor Terminator' to you, monkey boy!"), and still others are obviously thinking of what Isaac Asimov's character 'Dr. Susan Calvin' said in one of his short stories - "They're a cleaner, better breed than we are."
I tend toward the minimalist definition - "a computer with peripherals, sensors, and programming which enable it to perform tasks without constant human supervision." That's the definition that industrial users of robots seem happy with.
Please notice that those big welding and assembly robots in car factories are all bolted firmly to the factory floor, and have sturdy safety railings to keep vulnerable humans out of the "danger zone" while the robot is working.
And if THAT doesn't scare anyone who can imagine Microsoft being the industry volume leader in sales of robot operating systems in 2150....
Robot Insurance. when they grab you with their metal claws, and they don't let go. because their claws are made of metal, and robots are strong.
robotman said:
"Robot Insurance. when they grab you with their metal claws, and they don't let go. because their claws are made of metal, and robots are strong... "
Anyone else see that Saturday Night Live commercial parody? I have it on tape - one of Phil Hartman's best.
Seriously, though, turn of the 1800s/1900s America was probably divided into those people who thought automobiles would never pose a danger to human life and those who thought that's all they were good for - that and throwing blacksmiths and buggy-whip manufacturers out of work. Good thing for Henry Ford that unions don't have the hammerlock on a major political party in this country they do now, huh?
300 million people in this country and NO public school requires that we learn to protect ourselves from human attacks. This might be more plausible if the prediction was changed to military schools, or just the military outright. But I believe I am not the first to make the Automata, Terminator, Matrix connection here. Don't be afraid
TRUE AI IS AT LEAST A CENTURY AWAY IF THAT. We will be killing each other for a lot longer than and more efficiently than any machine could dream to do.
If if ever comes this far, schools will no longer exist.
I disagree completly! If robots do exsit, they will not have as much experiance to be by themslevs or to distroy everything thing. Nothing good will come from robots. If so i am sure the goverment will keep them from the public to make sure they don't get into the wrong hands.
The political scenario prevalling will never let it happen. The human phychology will never accept a challenger to mankind. The AI is the most happening topics in this century and will definately grow to a large scale leading to complete dependence on machines, but giving machines brain to challenge us is different issue altogether.
The issue of Genetically modified growth of humans and plants is already such a big issue internationally, and no country has political will to give consent to the matter.
In case of AI, if engineers and scientists will be allowed to give full control to machines, it will be in a controlled manner. The last decisions will always be ours.
The big question I have over this is the poster's use of "USA and Western Europe"... I think it's unlikely that the world's political structure will be the same then as it is now, where USA and Western Europe are the only economic strongholds with access to robots!
But as far as safety is concerned we were just taught the basics in school... Electricity, don't throw water on an oil fire, don't take sweets from strangers, be careful who you have sex with, how to escape during a fire... While I can easily imagine robots being used in warfare, I can't imagine being taught how to defend against them any more than I was taught about how to defend against human soldiers...
Schools today do not given lessons in self-defense against bullying which is one of the biggest problems facing schools. Why should schools give lessons in defense against robot attack?
Schools, particularly primary schools, teach children how to avoid being hit by cars.
It is generally assumed that a person will only attack you by choice, and therefore there will be some plan and intent involved. This is dificult to train against as you don't know what type of attack they might use.
A car can hit you by accident if you run across a road. Thus we are taught to avoid running onto roads.
In the same way, people in industry are taught not to bypass machine safeties because they are likely to be injured.
People in factories where the machines are robots are told the same thing, but the areas covered by mobile robots are greater than those of static machines.
It is quite possible that robots become common enough that school children are taught how to avoid confusing a robot in such a way that they are injured (eg don't hide under a grey blanket in the grey robot hallways)
It is unlikely that students would be taught to protect themselves from rampaging robots that have chosen to attack them.
In the case of a robot model capable of robotic revolution, there are two likely outcomes as demonstrated by our treatment of large predators.
1: we wipe them out completely (eg. wolves in many parts of the world)
2: they eradicate the human threat (as we have done to other threats)
Dangerous robots clever enough to hide "sleeper" robots in populated areas are likely to use more effective and more permanent solutions than occasionally having single robots attack groups of humans.
If they did, we would hunt them down as a threat to society.
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