The Navy revealed the embryo of an electronic computer today that it expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence. [...] Later Perceptrons will be able to recognize people and call out their names and instantly translate speech in one language to speech and writing in another language.
- The New York Times in 1958 after a press conference with Rosenblatt. ("New Navy Device Learns By Doing; Psychologist Shows Embryo of Computer Designed to Read and Grow Wiser")
We now have walking, talking, object recognizing, writing, self-replicating, face-detecting, text-to-speech converting, and translating computers. All at a scale and accuracy surpassing us mere mortals. We do not know enough about "being conscious of our existence" to measure this in other animals and digital life forms. Perhaps "humans predicting future predictive capability of machines" is fundamentally flawed. Perhaps the above article drew an unnecessary amount of ire and criticism. Probably a fuzzy combination of the two.
> A self-replicating machine is a construct that is capable of reproducing itself autonomously using raw materials found in the environment, thus exhibiting self-replication in a way analogous to that found in nature.
βIn the future, robots must be able to solve tasks in deep mines on distant planets, in radioactive disaster areas, in hazardous landslip areas and on the sea bed beneath the Antarctic. These environments are so extreme that no human being can cope. Everything needs to be automatically controlled. Imagine that the robot is entering the wreckage of a nuclear power plant. It finds a staircase that no-one has thought of. The robot takes a picture. The picture is analysed. The arms of one of the robots is fitted with a printer. This produces a new robot, or a new part for the existing robot, which enables it to negotiate the stairs.β
-2014 Kyrre Glette "Using 3D printers to print out self-learning robots"
- The New York Times in 1958 after a press conference with Rosenblatt. ("New Navy Device Learns By Doing; Psychologist Shows Embryo of Computer Designed to Read and Grow Wiser")
We now have walking, talking, object recognizing, writing, self-replicating, face-detecting, text-to-speech converting, and translating computers. All at a scale and accuracy surpassing us mere mortals. We do not know enough about "being conscious of our existence" to measure this in other animals and digital life forms. Perhaps "humans predicting future predictive capability of machines" is fundamentally flawed. Perhaps the above article drew an unnecessary amount of ire and criticism. Probably a fuzzy combination of the two.