Almost Human: Making Robots Think (Hardcover)

by Lee Gutkind (Author)
Key Phrases: high bay, remote science team, young roboticists, Carnegie Mellon, Red Team, Robotics Institute (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Gutkind (In Fact) spent six years as a self-described "fly on the wall" at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, watching a group of scientists—mostly grad students—try to develop human movement and decision-making capabilities. The machines he encountered came in a variety of shapes and sizes, from dog-shaped toys programmed to play soccer to a Hummer equipped with sensors that enable it to drive itself. As that Hummer indicates, the institute's research isn't confined to the lab: Gutkind follows his roboticists to abandoned mine shafts and the northern edges of Chile, where they use the world's driest desert to test machines developed to find signs of life on the surface of Mars. Gutkind's reporting captures the individual quirks of the scientists—like one researcher who only shaves on Sundays to save time during the week for his research—but his low-key tone can mute the excitement of their successes, especially given the fail-fix-try-again nature of most of their projects. Yet even though his story lacks the drive of books like Soul of a New Machine or Hackers, it gives a solid sense of what's going on in the field. 15 illus. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Creative nonfiction guru and seasoned immersion journalist Gutkind observes that just as computers changed the world in the 1990s, robots will "transform technology" in the future. To find out who is behind the growing robotic surge, Gutkind spent six years observing life at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, a "hypertechnological pressure cooker," where work is frenzied, frustrating, "inspiring, compelling," and addictive. Gutkind presents vivid profiles of roboticists, including graduate students, the "strong and vital force" behind the group's innovations. Audacious pranksters, shy geeks, and wry wits, they fall into rivalrous groups, the engineers versus the "code monkeys." Scenes at the institute alternate with entertaining reports on RoboCup competitions (soccer is an excellent mode for robot testing) and dramatic accounts of an ambitious project in Chile's Atacama Desert, a stand-in for Mars. Creating autonomous robots is a daunting task that arouses renewed appreciation for the fact that "a human being is the most sophisticated system in the universe." Gutkind's incisive and provocative dispatches from the robotic front will help prepare us for the next machine wave. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (March 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393058670
• ISBN-13: 978-0393058673
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #648,531 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Almost Science, May 3, 2007

By	E. Vershum (Oregon USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent overall, June 8, 2007

By	Vahagn Karapetyan "The King" (Burbank, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

2.0 out of 5 stars Very simple, March 16, 2009

By	Lindsey Lindgren "Meow 2 the Paw" (Sarasota, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.