
Meat-Eating Furniture - iamwil
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/02/07/133432897/meat-eating-furniture?sc=fb&cc=fp
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jerf
While this may superficially sound like a problem if they get too involved in
an evolutionary arms race, I actually don't think this will be a problem. It
is extremely unlikely that a robot that is powered on flesh will be able to
outcompete robots that get their power much more efficiently and rapidly.

No, the real danger is them deciding they don't need us, or worse, that we are
actively in their way, (or worse that our neurons can more productively be
used to do something else other than "be a human") not that they are going to
_digest_ us.

~~~
roc
Humans have stuck with flesh long after it was strictly necessary in an
evolutionary sense. So I wouldn't be at all comfortable assuming we needn't
ever worry about robot _taste_ over-riding _necessity_.

Personally, I've yet to hear a convincing argument for why machine
intelligence would naturally act in a way consistent with its underlying
machinery in the first place. But even if we were to assume it would
_naturally_ act in such a way, I've also heard no convincing argument for why
it wouldn't _choose_ to act in ways counter to that nature, for entertainment,
sport, variety or any reason of personal 'taste'. Further, I've yet to hear a
convincing argument for why a group of such intelligences would all come to
the same conclusions about such topics, even those as seemingly open-and-shut
as "whether we should eat other thinking beings, despite a surfeit of better
alternatives".

Even if _almost all_ robots decided against eating humans, humans would still
have plenty to be concerned about, with regards to those who dissent. Even the
dissenters have merely taken a dispassionate stance toward humans accidentally
gathered in their metaphorical nets, in a "humans are to robots as dolphins
are to humans" analogy.

~~~
sliverstorm
_Humans have stuck with flesh long after it was strictly necessary in an
evolutionary sense._

Sure, it's not a _strictly necessity_ , but have you payed attention to how
hard it is to be strictly vegan? Evolution isn't going to pick what's morally
right, it's going to pick what works best.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I think you're confusing veganism with vegetarianism. Vegetarians don't eat
meat, which is doable. Vegans try not to consume or use any animal products at
all, which is near impossible. For example: dairy, honey and chewing gum are
out of the question, as well as the use of beeswax, leather and products
tested on animals.

Veganism is a recent, Western, movement. Vegetarianism has been around for
millennia and is practiced by hundreds of millions around the world. In India
alone, 40% of the population is vegetarian.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_in_specific_count...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_in_specific_countries)

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burgerbrain
Those pieces of furniture are glorified fly and mousetraps (really _really_
cool ones...), why is the author of this article so disturbed by them?
Personally I would find the idea that my house has enough mice to keep my
coffee-table well-fed far more disturbing than my coffee-table eating mice.

~~~
maxharris
The mousetrap table disturbs me. They've got a right to make and sell it, but
I won't buy or condone it. That's because it causes too much pain on the
animal's part, with not enough gain on the human's. Just look at another, more
detailed picture of the design: <http://dvice.com/archives/2009/02/mousetrap-
table.php> Clearly, this thing goes beyond a sensible mousetrap, which is
something that acts quickly and is not designed to _celebrate_ death.

Before you start to think that I'm some kind of nutty animal rights/eco
person, I should say this: animal research makes human life better (by making
us more knowledgeable about all kinds of things, from neurophysiology to
pharmaceuticals to cosmetics), and they usually get anesthesia while we're
doing it. I'm all for that. Likewise, eating (large, edible) animals is
awesome because they taste good, improving the human gain enough to justify
killing them.

But powering furniture with mice? It's legal (and must remain so, or we lose
the legal right to use animals for the aformentioned proper uses), but not
ethical.

~~~
thret
It seems to me that putting the death of an animal or insect on display, as
entertainment, is also unethical. I don't like the idea of people cheering for
the guillotine.

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julian37
Reminiscent of the 2001 SlugBot: "A prototype robot capable of hunting down
over 100 slugs an hour and using their rotting bodies to generate electricity"

<http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/Robots/slugbot.htm>

[http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2001/10/4715...](http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2001/10/47156)

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guynamedloren
Maybe I'm a bit out of the loop here, but from a purely technological
standpoint, was anybody else's world just flipped upside down? Prior to this
article/video, I had absolutely no idea that biomass could be converted into
useful and readily available energy, nor has the thought ever crossed my mind
in even the faintest of ways.

A life-like humanoid robot comes to mind, that flawlessly mimics human traits
including breathing, speaking, and moving, and to top it all off, they don't
have to roll back to their charging station at the end of the day, because
they got all of the energy they needed for the next day while sitting next to
you at the dinner table munching on some beef. Suddenly this all seems so very
attainable.

~~~
sesqu
Biomass is old hat. Wood, peat, ethanol, methane - plenty of energy comes from
that stuff. However, I had never heard of non-plant biomass use before, so
this is interesting indeed.

The trouble with biomass is that we're not great at extracting the energy yet,
so it's not good for energy transport. For the same reason, I don't think
we'll be seeing taco-powered robots anytime soon - although vegetable oil and
ethanol do show promise as a swap-in for petrol, and cars have been adapted
for straight-up biomass in times of crisis.

Here, you might be interested in this:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/juan_enriquez_wants_to_gro...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/juan_enriquez_wants_to_grow_energy.html)

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moomba
I'm hoping they make one that eats humans. That would be a fine piece of
furniture to put on my mantle. I wonder if you were to breed organisms, would
they be able to produce a plentiful amount of energy for our electrical grids.
I'm not necessarily talking about humans. It may make sense to breed dogs or
rats, whatever gives the best bang for the buck.

~~~
sliverstorm
The best bang for buck is always plants. Trophic levels are typically ~10%
efficient, meaning an herbivore that consumes 1 BTU per hour needs to eat 10
solar BTU per hour's worth of plants. The same generally holds as you go up
trophic levels- which means 1,000 BTU of sunlight provides a 3rd trophic level
predator with 1 BTU.

Though, this is an ultimate efficiency answer. For short-term small-scale,
herbivores/predators could be a better answer, because they gather energy from
all over the place, so harvesting them is sort of like harvesting plant life
from your entire block.

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radu_floricica
I wonder if the "microbial fuel cell" they mention is actually any better then
a normal battery pack of the same size. If it does't do any kind of waste
disposal, I imagine it has a limited lifespan - so we have to ask if it is
longer or shorter then the non-flesh-eating kind.

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sudhirc
Killer tech for tropical countries where lamps are needed and flies are hated
:)

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wybo
Reminds me of Blood Car, a film about oil running out, and somebody
retrofitting his car to run on blood :)

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780485/>

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syaz1
Self-sustaining pest control robots. No need to bother about their
maintenance. Just let it loose and have a lot less pests.

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markneub
It's all fun and games until your armchair decides it wants a more realistic
set of arms for itself.

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JoeAltmaier
Matrix!

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ajmurmann
I am sure the clock would get all the energy it needs if it were to use
Soilent Green instead of flies.

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kemiller
Robots that get their energy from flesh. What could possibly go wrong? Can we
teach them to regard eating humans as cannibalism?

