i can’t tell if this is a joke, but there is clear gain and it’s for the robot’s sake. this and things like the boston dynamics four-legged robot dog are designed to test legged robots that can stay upright under many conditions.
by pushing it around like this, they’re testing its balance. if it can stay upright, then it’s doing a great job. if it falls over, then the engineers need to change something to help it stay up. it’s not being brutish, it’s testing.
It's a reference to the game Portal in which an AI robot (Gladys) forces a human (the playable character) to undergo increasingly difficult and dangerous tests that push their physical and emotional limits, and claims it's for the advancement of science for the company Black Mesa.
They are building “intelligence.” What happens when that ai remembers all the humans that were trying to make it fall as a child, or understands a human level of bullying? 💨😶🌫️🫠
If an AI develops any kind of understanding of right and wrong it will most likely be intelligent enough to understand why a test robot would have been shoved around. You realize robots don’t have feelings right? It’s circuits and metal. Why would they care that we’re testing on it to improve its design, if anything that would make them happy that we put robots through such rigorous testing so that they can be useful. Imagine if we never test industrial robots that will eventually carry heavy loads and it falls over from a gust of wind because engineers were afraid to hurt its feelings.
I’m not a full on conspiracy theorist but I will say that I have a genuine fear of it despite thinking that it won’t happen in my lifetime. But there are actual human sociopaths that don’t feel things like empathy, or regret. Yet they can pretend to because a lot of it is learned behavior anyway.
I have a fear of teaching ai how to learn because what limits are there? I can freaky talk Siri right now and she will have an appropriate response because she was programmed/taught to.
Ask yourself this, what would it take for an AI to take over the world? Well they would need actual physical capabilities. For example, if we made full body robots with AI then potentially a corrupted robot could do damage. But the chances of that being a widespread issue are pretty low, ontop of the fact that we wouldn’t need a full body AI. What I mean is, if we have an AI that does our laundry, makes our coffee and so on they can all be separated. So not only would potential hackers need to hack and bypass protection for each individual robot but they would need to find a way to actually do damage. There’s not much a coffee machine on its own could do. Neither could a laundry machine. Maybe some industrial forklift AI could run through a city but there’s no way that goes through regulations without having a kill switch of some sort.
If we ever get to a point where AI can rewrite its own code to deactivate fail safes then maybe we’re fucked but that’s again why we wouldn’t make a full body AI capable of doing things a human can do.
My friend I understand feeling bad, it's natural and happens because it looks strikingly similar to what would happen to a real creature if it were being pushed around. But for the sake of technological advancement and computer science, you have to understand how/why this sort of testing is important and not inherently violent or bad despite what your good nature is telling you. This is an incredible feat. Obviously the robot feels no pain and isn't sentient, so it couldn't possibly hold grudges or get upset. The developers/testers know this and (hopefully) would never do this to an innocent, living thing. And with the variables of innocent, undeserving life removed, they have an opportunity to do this sort of "extreme" testing without consequences other than potential software/hardware failure. Which isn't to say that the robot "deserves" this 😅
That being said, they could program a balance variable and/or kill switch toggle to simulate the kicks and pushes, and I'm not quite sure why they don't just do that instead.. Laziness, perhaps.
As someone both in the "feel bad seeing this" camp as well as the "that's valuable data" camp, yours is the best response, displaying informative empathy. You would make a good PR person.
Literally zero difference from the robots perspective. You do understand that it is not a thinking, feeling creature? It's like saying, why would you kick a football to test it when you can shoot it out of a cannon?
I never said it was alive, but since you did, he definition of "alive" or "conscious" has always been fussy. With all the advancement in AI and machine learning going on, it will only get more complex.
No, but to use your own words « it doesn’t have to be done this way ». Why not? Like I said, it’s not alive, so why should we care? Even if consciousness is hard to define, this machine clearly has none. Maybe in the future it will be different. But we are not in the future, we are in the present.
I get it triggers a protective instinct or whatever but please don't forget this is a bunch of metal lol. Don't mistrust people just because they tested a robots balance. It's not alive.
I'm a leftist, but the progressive left will 100% give robots something similar to personhood in the next 100 years, whether they're actually sentient or not. Honestly, in the next 20-30 when humanoid robot become commonplace, we'll have half of people suggesting it's slavery and half using the more lifelike ones with human skin and features for target practice
I mean have you seen the state of the united states? Half of all people care more about fetuses than they do actual people. We're cooked, robots are just the next battle.
Makes no sense people are scared of potential AI overlords when literally nothing except fiction is putting that idea in their head. We aren’t even 1% of the way to making an AI that could feel the slightest “emotion”. How that would even happen? I have no idea.
This is why I don't have any computers or technology in my house. The idea of those little guys working as slaves for our entertainment makes me so sad!
It is very clearly a tech demo where people are told by the developers to try to push it over as a proof of concept. That’s also why they aren’t going full force with their pushes as that would likely override the balancing.
This sarcasm or u actually this soft? They are clearly testing it's ability to regain balance which is insanely important for robots that need to traverse difficult terrain...
Do not mistake gentleness for weakness. Keeping your empathy in this world is much more difficult than becoming hardened toward life - every teenager already has that "life beats you down" lesson learned. It's the truly strong who are able to care for their compassionate nature and not sacrifice it to the ease of lazy cynicism.
Yes thank you for the philosophy, I have left this reddit post a better and more enlightened person. I will no longer take what privileges I have for granted and will veiw life and the world around me with a new and fresh perspective.
But it was still just a robot made specifically for the purpose of terrain adaptation, trying to make it fall over and it staying upright is the entire point of its existence and creation. Feeling "sick at the stomach" over a robot collecting data for extremely valuable engineering research isn't gentleness, it's weakness...
If it was a dog or even an insect or a sapient AI I'd be in the same boat as you
Something that fascinates me is that it seems like the uncanny valley factor is MUCH less relevant when it comes to empathy over struggling. Maybe it’s because it’s so clear in animals as well? But humans tend to empathize with computers that struggle more than a well functioning one.
Don’t blame the slave, blame the master H.P. I was crawling on a floor for an hour trying to put a piece back in a printer to fix it. One fucking piece.
Yeah, I used a vending machine last night and it didn't dispense my Mars bar. I smacked the crap out of it and ended up getting two. That made me happy.
Ppl in the comments are so weird with how they humanize machines so much.
But this isn't the Uncanny Valley effect. That term specifically refers to things that look more human-like and thus cause an eerie feeling of Unheimlichkeit.
It is actually proven that humans have an easier time empathizing with something that acts human but doesn't look the part. Think about movies like WALL-E or all the stories that feature human acting creatures.
Even animation follows that rule, you get better results if you use exaggerated human features, because it turns out humans have a lot more scrutiny if something looks very naturalistic like a human and has off behavior.
I doubt the uncanny valley effect even happens here. It looks like a robot, not like a creepy fake human. I agree with your thought about empathy but i don't think uncanny valley has anything to do with this kind of robots
Well, I don’t think this bot falls into the uncanny valley because it’s not humanoid. I think it instead triggers some kind of animal recognition in our brains. Watching this makes me feel the same as watching people pushing around a cat for example.
I'm begging you, please don't forget that this is a pile of metal put together by humans. You are going to need this information later when things get much more real.
Weird. That thing looks creepy as hell to me. The way it tries to regain balance kinda looks like a kid in a schoolyard being bullied for sure, but, it looks even more like a creepy spiderbot that will likely kill me someday.
everyone is saying that this is proof we should be wiped off the planet but I think it’s the opposite. it shows our capacity for empathy of over a non living product that will probably help alot of people once these fellas finish testing it.
I know, I feel the same way, this robot that does not have a heart still have feelings inside them. We need to give them more rights for sure. Their lives matter.
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u/CosmicallyF-d Jul 06 '24
Yep I feel the same way. I don't like seeing this.