Customer Reviews

Almost Human: Making Robots Think

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

An example of what goes wrong when an author without any expertise in a field attempts to write a "popular" science book. This is about the robotics program at CMU. It follows the "popular" format - focus on the personalities as a framework for the science. But the spark and drive of the people doesn't come across at all, because the author has no feel for the subject. There is no larger context, since the author was only at CMU to observe, and knows nothing about any other robotics work besides what the people there may have said. There is no bibliography or index.

An egregious error 1/2 way through the book was nearly a showstopper for me ("Linux is the language in which some of the robotics programs are written. The reason Apple computers are not used extensively here is because Apple's can't interface with Linux."), but I plodded through the rest.

The book might be a bit misleading with its title because you don't really get the impression how the robots described in the book are even remotely close to being human but it does an excellent job when it comes to describing the world that roboticists live in. It portrays their struggles and frustrations and then their celebration at even the slightest hint of success.

However, if you are someone that expects a book that mainly focuses on the concept of artificial intelligence and discusses all the abstract theories associated with the concept then you might be looking for the wrong book. There are little bits of info on the aforementioned topic throughout the book but the main focus of the book is about the experiences of the roboticists, not the theories behind the kind of work they do.

Overall, it is a great way to get a good picture of the robotics culture in the United States and get to know some famous individuals and institutions in the field.

It seems poorly written, and it is not what I expected. The author talks far too much about people rather than "making robots think". There is not all that much on actual robots and a lot of filler. There has to be a better book on this subject.

This book has cured me of my interest in building robots in the wild.

I've been a professional computer scientist for 25 years and worked in several different R&D arenas. I read "Almost Human" thinking I might want to work in robotics. Now that I've read the book... Well... I'm having second thoughts.

Gutkind does a competent job of reporting the work of students and staff in CMU's Robotics Lab as they develop several robotic systems, primarily the Mars rover robot Zoe. While half of the projects Gutkind describes are more appealing (e.g. RoboCup soccer team play using Aibo kit robots), the book devolves into a protracted slog to finish the development of Zoe in the desolation of the Chilean desert. Not surprisingly, the boredom and exhaustion that eventually envelop the team is vicariously shared by the reader after plodding through page after page on the team's soul-deadening 'race' to build the robot before the desert's isolation destroys their will to live. In the end, the CMUers seem not to have enjoyed nor benefitted from the experience except to be one step closer to earning their degrees. Likewise, this reader shared their sense of boredom and lost passion. Instead of accompanying a team of intellectual explorers on an odyssey of discovery, I came away feeling that I had survived a Death March.

In my opinion, the 'Zoe' half of this book will not be a fun or illuminating read for most folks interested in robotics. But for me, 'Almost Human' was worthwhile nonetheless.

Easy, fascinating read! If you are interested in what is being accomplished in Robotics, and where it is being done...buy this book.

"Back in my day, we didn't have these fancy icons. All we had were 1's and 0's and sometimes we didn't have any 0's....". Yes, I'm a dinosaur who has been developing software-based products for almost 30 years and although the hardware has changed, and the languages have evolved, the creators still devote their lives to their creations. In this book, Lee has captured the essence of what we geeks refer to as the "zone". The willingness to forsake everything else to bring life to their silicon offspring. Whether an autonomous mobile robot or the latest "killer app", there is no linear path to a successful outcome (so eloquently described in the title of chapter 15).
I especially recommend this book to managers who may not understand the way software is produced and have uttered the phrase "when will that program be finished?". (LOL!)

Consider the following passage from pages 5 and 6: "Today, ten minutes of wild, bumping, swerving, backbreaking, jaw-crunching, roller-coastering later,with our backs aching and our knees bruised, we are all about to puke our guts out, when, at an invisible marker, Finch suddenly takes a wild turn right, skids on the salt-laden sand like a downhill skier, and streak up a steep hillside in an explosion of red dust."
If this is the kind of prose that floats your boat, then you may love this book. As for me, this passage instilled a great desire to avoid anything that this author has written. I am very glad that my copy is a library book which will be returned tomorrow.

At the cutting edge of science and technology are discussions over what constitutes a human being, and what elements of humanity may translate into robot functions. ALMOST HUMAN: MAKING ROBOTS THINK is part of this discussion, reflecting the author's investigation into the realm of robotic developments and science and its concurrent search for a language to talk to machines and enable machine/human communications. While ALMOST HUMAN could also have been reviewed in our science section, it's featured here for its challenging insights into the thinking process and how it differs between machine and human.

I can say that this was very drab. My taste of reading is far from this genre, but I read this and have to say that this book was a miss for readers. This just did not float my boat so to say.

Many years ago, I attended a "robot party" at Carnegie Mellon. Munchkin-sized bots scooted around serving drinks. Nerds wearing special shoes boinged twenty feet into the air. Out in front of the building, scientist-revolutionaries used a remote-controlled car to spraypaint anit-imperialist messages all over the asphalt of the parking lot. Gutkind's book is fantastic; he brings to life one of the weirdest and most compelling scientific communities in the world. Read it and you'll never see machines the same way again.