Customer Reviews

Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind

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In his latest book, Hans Moravec predicts that robots will take over Earth sometime in the next century. Although his predictions appear highly speculative and implausible, he grounds his speculation in current research and technology. When followed step by step, his predictions make internal sense, though many readers are sure to argue with some of the critical steps. Moravec, for example, insists that computers have, or at least will have, intelligence and something akin to consciousness. These assumptions are not central, however, to his predictions about the future of robotics. Although readers may disagree with his conclusions, Moravec's thoughts are worth reading for their insights into technology policy making and some of the possibilities of robotics. As a robotics researcher, he has valuable background knowledge, and he provides crisp reasoning behind his philosophical arguments.

Robots are now pervasive in all areas of human activity, and they are still primitive compared to what was envisioned two decades ago, at which time independent thinking machines and military-capable robots were predicted by the late 1990s.These predictions were very optimistic and way off their mark, but this book aims to set the record straight on A.I. and to make accurate predictions on the future of robotics. The author is very convincing in his arguments that artificial intelligence will accelerate rapidly in the next few decades. He backs up his predictions with empirical evidence from activities and research currently being done in A.I. and robotics, and extrapolates these into the future. Such predictions of course have been made before, and so the author inserts an elment of caution in his analysis, but he does, in his own words, consider intelligent machines an inevitability.

The tone of the book is optimistic, and this is good since many books and movies display an attitude that is threatened by robotics and artificial intelligence. The author does however predict the end of the dominance of biological humans, such beings to be replaced by highly intelligent robots. He is probably wrong here in the sense that humans will not be mere passive spectators in the upcoming age of robots. They will hybridize themselves with the chips invented for the robots, enabling them to stand toe-to-toe with these metal/silicon geniuses. Ever-growing technology implies ever-growing enhancement for the human, visual, muscular, and auditory capabilities.

Karl Marx would raise an eyebrow to the author's prediction of the end of private ownership of the means of production. Hypercompetitiveness, the author argues, will eliminate owners, replacing them by better robot decision makers. But to hold Switzerland up as an example of things to come? Hardly.

The end resulof the robotic evolution, will, the author argues, be the "Exes", beings with awesome intelligence that are able to arrange spacetime and energy for computation. The physics of time trave; os discussed in the context of general relativity, with its nonlinear field equations being solved by "Instant NP" machines, and winning chess games in the process. Some metaphysical speculation is of course included: after all, the strong AI problem is one of the most provocative in philosophical circles. Conscious robots are indeed possible in the author's eyes, or at best possible given our current understanding of it. The robots themselves, with their enhanced capabilities, will have their own arguments about this......

Like danny hillis once said, if you gave me the chance to upload my brain into a robot, i'd do it in a minute. This book takes a while to get going. It takes you on a tour of the authors trevails with primitive robots. but when it hits the future, and lays our the next one hundred years, you can't help but feel excited and giddy with anticipation. I wish he spent more time on nanotechnology, but what there was was excellent. I thought I had just about read it all, but he turned many of my notions about the future inside out. a powerful vision of the future.

I was a little disappointed in this book. Although Hans Moravec is a leading thinker in the field of artificial intelligence and a true pioneer of robotic research, he is not an especially talented writer. Nevertheless, his knowledge is prodigious and the quality of his ideas makes the book worth reading.

One thing that annoyed me was that Moravec overuses the word "robot". He goes to pains to apply the name even to other forms of artificial intelligence that have little resemblance to what we normally think of as robots. I also found his writing style somewhat tedious, a bit like sitting through a long lecture by a brilliant but boring professor.

There are other books I would recommend ahead of this one, most notably "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil. But if you've already devoured the others and you're still hungry for more, Hans Moravec will certainly give you plenty to chew on.

Moravec's book is a well reasoned extrapolation of the future of artificial intelligence. He is incredibly knowledgable, and very passionate about his field. Unfortunately his prose reminds one of a bad university text book. I would give it an "A+" for content, and a "D" for style. Hopefully Moravec's publisher will discover the ghost writer in time for his next book.

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Robot begins quietly enough, with a pithy reprise of the history of
robotics and artificial intelligence, and some nifty short-term
projections: robot cooks and houseboys, coming soon! Then it turns
to a strange, cool, unblinking vision of a future where ordinary
biologic humans are confined to a reservation/retirement home on
cozy old Earth, while their "mind children", advanced machine
intelligences, go out to conquer the Universe in a "bubble of Mind
expanding at near-lightspeed."

Moravec's mind-bubble will absorb and digest every physical entity in
its path, from ancient Voyager spacecraft to entire alien biospheres.
("I am vast. I contain multitudes.") These absorbed entities, he says,
"may continue to live and grow as if nothing had happened, oblivious
to their new status as simulations in cyberspace." Data-storage
capacity won't be a problem -- the atoms that make up your body,
Moravec tells us, "could contain the efficiently encoded biospheres of
a thousand galaxies."

With the entire cosmos transformed into cyberspace, it would be
possible for not just our "original versions," but every variation on
them, to "live" as massively-parallel simulations, playing out all of
the possibilities of Alternate History, perhaps as entertainment for
the vast, cool Intellects that have supplanted us. As Moravec notes,
we could already be living as simulations: We might well wonder
whether we're the "true" original, or just one of many reruns. "There
is no way to tell for sure," he writes, and since we can never know,
"the suspicion that we are someone else's thought does not free us
from the burdens of life."

And Moravec's not done. Now things gets *really* weird, as he
moves into a"what is reality?" windup that invokes Frank Tipler's
Omega Point, anthropic cosmology, parallel universes, and life after
death. He does get a little flaky here [note 2], but what a grand
Stapledonian blowoff!

Science fiction readers will recognize concepts from many of the
finest hard-SF novels of the past few decades: Gregory Benford's
universe-conquering machine intelligences, Greg Egan's lives-as-
simulations, Vernor Vinge's Singularity, Robert Forward's fractal-
bush robots. Robert Charles Wilson's current Darwinia
could almost be a novelization of Robots. Moravec's book is an
excellent guide to the science behind a lot of recent SF -- and an
exciting (if disturbing) preview of what's next.

These connections to SF are no accident: Moravec, who co-founded
the robotics program at Carnegie-Mellon University, grew up reading
science fiction, built two robots for high-school science-fair projects,
and first published his robot/AI speculations in an Analog essay in
1978, while a student at Stanford. He expanded that piece into a
popular-science book, Mind Children (1988, also excellent), which the

present book extends and updates. (He promises the next update in
2008.) Moravec has also written Omni articles with Robert Forward
on space elevators (1981), and with Frederik Pohl on uploading
people to computers (1993). Plus he's been a Hollywood consultant
for science-fiction movie-makers. Reading through his CV, I wonder,
does the man ever sleep?

Robot is among the few truly first-rate books of speculative science --
books in which respected scientists extrapolate their ideas into
the future with some rigor. Other such books include K. Eric
Drexler's Engines of Creation (1986), and Freeman Dyson's
Disturbing the Universe (1979), Infinite in All Directions (1989), and
From Eros to Gaia (1992). Books such as these provide a sense of awe
and wonder equal to the very best of science fiction -- perhaps the
more wondrous for being, quite possibly, true.

Interested readers can find much more information at Moravec's
excellent website: [google]

__________
1) -- if for no other reason than to supply empathetic characters for
hard-SF set in the far future -- a challenge that's tough enough
without using a Moravecian ultimate-AI for a protagonist...

2) To his credit, Moravec recognizes that this chapter has problems.
He's promised (and has started) a rewrite on his website.

review copyright 1999 Peter D. Tillman

Hans Moravec does an outstanding job of waking society up to a very real potential road that humans may one day soon take; "mechanization".

Many cringe at the thought of using computers to do anything but send e-mail or surf the net. However, after reading this, I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that computers won't continue to bleed closer and closer into our personal lives until one day there may actually be some kind of union between the two.

And that brings me to my principal beef with this book. Perhaps H. Moravec has been working at arms length building robots for too long, because to me (a younger tech-savvy reader), if there ever is a "union" between man and machine, it won't be so much a union, but an "augmentation" of humanity. I will never become "part computer", but may use a computer to augment my life (enhanced bio-capability, enhanced intelligence, perhaps even immortality). The "us AND them" contrast Robot seems to paint never sat well with me.

Anyway, an informative and entertaining read.

Enjoy.

Hans Moravec is both a practical robotics engineer and a transcendent dreamer. Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind is a work of pessimism delivered by an optimist. It's complex, compelling, naïve and frightening. Is this the world we're building for our children? I mean human children, not mind children.

Robot begins with a good overview of robotics, outlining the work of cyber-pioneers such as Alan Turing, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky; then progressing into the late nineties. Moravec is a first-class robotics scientist and engineer, explaining technical issues and solutions in a concise, interesting manner. Good stuff, if you're interested in understanding robotics (why else would you be reading this book?).

Moravec then projects the growth of robotics and artificial intelligence employing a model similar to that of Ray Kurzweil in The Age of Spiritual Machines. Both men base this growth on the exponentially increasing power of inexpensive computers, which they believe will match the computing power of the human mind by approximately 2020. They both present strong arguments that the human mind is fundamentally a complex machine; therefore, it's not a stretch to believe an equally complex mind can be developed in silicon. Moravec then provides his assessment of robot capabilities for each decade of the twenty-first century. It's fascinating and not unreasonable.

Okay, we all know the future is not going to look like Star Trek, but Moravec's vision for the coming centuries is just too unbelievable: robot corporations in outer space, some planet-sized, virtually all of humanity living on a dole provided by taxing robot corporations, "execs" with almost supernatural powers ... you get the idea. Who knows - maybe he will be right - but these speculations don't fit well with the practical, science-based tone of the bulk of the material.

Nevertheless, this is an excellent work if you enjoy thinking about the near-future. Read Kurzweil and Moravec back to back - throw in Flesh and Machines by Rodney Brooks - and you'll have a persuasive picture of what the next few decades may hold.

Fascinating predictions on the possible course of human and machine evolution by one of the world's foremost experts in the field. Whether or not one agrees with Moravec and shares (or does not share) his optimism is beside the point. He definitely sparks discussion! Myself, I just remember that it is extremely difficult to predict the future beyond the short term and yet...

Moravecs schedule for the next 40years is a question of belief - for me a *good* suggestion! One negative point: He sticks to not interconnected robots. Internet is not his world. The minds of his robots have no link to each other.