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South Korea to Build Robot Theme Parks

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Nov 14, 2007 02:58 AM
from the a-robot-may-not-let-a-human-ride-unless-they-are-at-least-this-tall dept.
Robotics Science
coondoggie writes "South Korea officials today said they hope to build two robot theme parks for $1.6 billion by 2013. The parks will feature a number of attractions that let visitors interact with robots and test new products. "The two cities will be developed as meccas for the country's robot industry, while having amusement park areas, exhibition halls and stadiums where robots can compete in various events," the ministry said. The theme parks are not a big surprise because South Korea loves its robots. Earlier this year the government of South Korea said it was drawing up a code of ethics to prevent human abuse of robots — and vice versa."
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Submission: WestWorld? S. Korea to build robot theme parks by coondoggie (973519)
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  • oblig (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i for one welcome our fun loving robotic overlords!!

    • Re:oblig (Score:4, Funny)

      by Propaganda13 (312548) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:32AM (#21347221)
      "The two cities will be developed as mechas for the country's robot industry, while having amusement park areas, exhibition halls and stadiums where robots can compete in various events," the ministry said.

      fixed the spelling error
    • By my calculations the robots should turn on their human masters sometime in the next 24 hours.

      Oops, forgot to carry the decimal point.

      • By my calculations the robots should turn on their human masters sometime in the next 24 hours.
        I'll put a $1000 on the table -- I bet the first message to appear in the control room when the bots take over "Hello Gentlemen. All your parks are belong to us."

        On the bright side, we may have finally found the team that can beat the South Koreans at Starcraft.

  • So...Many...References... (Score:4, Funny)

    by KiraFace (987099) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:05AM (#21347095)
    Nothing can possibl-y go wrong.

  • Please, people! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:13AM (#21347131)
    No flash photography.

  • Robot Ethics? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cynicsreport (1125235) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:19AM (#21347163) Homepage
    From TFA:

    ...drawing up a code of ethics to prevent human abuse of robots-and vice versa.

    Is this a serious issue in South Korea? I am no robotics expert, but I did read a lot of Asimov, and I'm not sure we are quite to that point yet. What we currently call "machine intelligence" is not quite up to the intelligence level of a cockroach. It is more pattern matching and optimization than anything; not much room for ethical standards.

    • I'm not sure we are quite to that point yet. What we currently call "machine intelligence" is not quite up to the intelligence level of a cockroach.
      There's no harm in being prepared.
      When our 22 feet cybernetic robot masters come I have my "Welcome" banner allready painted and prepared.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by holywarrior21c (933929)
      Korea to make robot abuse illegal http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2007/03/07/South-Korea-to-make-robot-abuse-illegal// [umbc.edu]
      **The original charter draft** This page is in Korean. But i am sure you will find a way to the pdf file.
      First click on the http://cafe.naver.com/roboethics/ [naver.com]
      click on the the text 'koreanrobotethicscharter070403.pdf' on the right side in the middle.

    • Laziness trumps Ethics (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NetSettler (460623) <kent-slashdot@nhplace.com> on Wednesday November 14 2007, @05:08AM (#21347561) Homepage Journal

      What we currently call "machine intelligence" is not quite up to the intelligence level of a cockroach.

      Indeed, the ethics requirements should be on the makers of the robots, not on the robots. Even very stupid (i.e., lacking in any semblance or even attempt at artificial intelligence) computer programs can have ethical issues--transmitting or storing inappropriate information, computing faulty values, or giving bad advice are simple examples.

      And fanciful notions of the unique nature of positronic brains aside, the set of things you can program for robots is pretty much the same as the set of things you can program for other computers, only the peripherals are different. And like their less animated counterparts, most robot ethical issues, for now, are things that need to be handled at design, development, and debugging time... not at runtime. And most responsibility for problems needs to be traced back to there.

      The actual area where we're likely to see problems won't be in the robots themselves, it will be in our propensity to want to give up our judgment to computers. Computer viruses were largely not enabled by people who wrote them--programs didn't originally just start on their own on a computer--you had to manually start them. But people got tired of that. They didn't like pressing buttons that said "Show me the picture in this email message" or "Run the installation program on this disk." and they wanted it done for them. That desire to yield responsibilty for judgment to a mindless computer is what got us in trouble, not the computer's desire to do us harm.

      The first car to run over a pedestrian while parking it won't have done so because the robot was too eager to drive before it had been properly trained. It will be because the robot was too stupid to know it isn't just a toaster (see The Measure of a Man [wikipedia.org]), coupled with the fact that some programmer was too eager to show off his toy, or perhaps because some park guest was too willing to try untested technology, or because some quality assurance person was too afraid to hold up the opening of the park, or because some politician thought it was cool to talk of computer ethics instead of human ethics.

      Ethics and laziness don't go well together. And we're a pretty lazy lot, we humans. I'd rank the probability that any lawmakers anywhere will ever require that robots not be built until they have ethics built in as so close to 0% as to be indistinguishable from it. People with cool toys to show off in the marketplace are not going to stand for that kind of thing.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ChrisMP1 (1130781)
      Whatever point of intelligence robots get to, people need to come back to earth. It's still artificial intelligence, even if it seems so real that nobody still calls it so. They might appear to have intelligence, feelings, etc., but they don't. And never will. They don't care how you treat them, they're just programmed to appear like they do.

      • Re:Robot Ethics? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pipatron (966506) <pipatron@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 14 2007, @07:05AM (#21347971) Homepage

        They might appear to have intelligence, feelings, etc., but they don't. And never will.

        Much like humans.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by charlieman (972526)
        Robot Ethics is not about robot feelings! It's about other humans feelings of how you treat the robot.
        • you can no more abuse a robot than you could abuse a brick. The brick doesn't care and neither does a robot or vacuum cleaner. Passing laws to pander to stupid people is dangerous and takes a way proper freedoms and rightful liberties.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by somasynth (1088691)
        There's always someone who tries to push that argument but never an explanation to go along with it. Nature wasn't just being nice by giving us the ability to enjoy our lives while we live them, these things would have never made it through natural selection have they not been necessary for us to function. It's a solid demonstration that two creatures with similar behavior must necessarily exhibit similar experiences. To me you're only pretending to feel pain when I poke you with an icepick just the same,

        • Nature wasn't just being nice by giving us the ability to enjoy our lives while we live them, these things would have never made it through natural selection have they not been necessary for us to function.

          Is this necessarily the case though? As I understand it, natural selection generally weeds things out when there's a net competitive disadvantage. If "enjoying your life" has a negative impact on survival, but is more than overcome by some other positive attribute that happens to be present in the same

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by somasynth (1088691)
            Makes sense, but I didn't suggest the AI will necessarily enjoy their life, they will likely feel what cannot be described in human terms, perhaps a liking of sorts, or not. What I did suggest was that subjectivity is derived from the processes that allow the being to function rather than being a function in itself, and it isn't limited to meat.

    • I'm not sure we are quite to that point yet. What we currently call "machine intelligence" is not quite up to the intelligence level of a cockroach. It is more pattern matching and optimization than anything; not much room for ethical standards.
      No problem, all this means is that it's impossible and nonsensical. When making laws about technology, when has impossible and nonsensical ever stopped a legislator?
    • Would you rather people think about these issues before it is needed or after?

    • There are already automatic sentry guns, robots in essence, but these don't guard against missles on open sea, they guard a border in what is still a war zone.

      I think that is a very good time to start thinking about the ethics around robots. Not just how we treat robots, but how we allow them to treat us. What exactly should a robot confirm too before it can be allowed to harm a human being?

      This doesn't require ethics. Currently we have dumb machines, if a car runs you over it is either because it has gon

  • look, that's what I like, ok? (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 (568564) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:20AM (#21347171) Homepage
    The parks will feature a number of attractions that let visitors interact with robots and test new products.

    Either "new products" means "interactive tentacle hentai", or I'm not interested.
    • Whatever turns you on, dude, although, personally speaking, being greeted by a ten-tentacled monster by having those metallic arms plunged into various of my external orifices isn't the sort of interactive experience I would seek!

  • Discrimination (Score:3, Funny)

    by vga_init (589198) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:43AM (#21347261) Journal
    This is just plain offensive. I don't see any parks opening up where robots can go to interact with humans and test new robot products. It just makes me sick, you know... what do they think robots are, anyway? Our Slaves? Ugh.

  • Oblig Simpsons Quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by thehatmaker (1168507) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @03:58AM (#21347307)
    "See all that stuff inside, Homer? That's why your robot never worked!"
  • Will these theme parks have stairs and will the robots try to protect us from the terrible secrets of Space?

  • Content (Score:4, Funny)

    by halcyon1234 (834388) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @04:17AM (#21347381) Journal
    Will it have hookers? And blackjack?
  • The Powers That Be have announced that the coming 4th season is the last season of Battlestar Galactica. Maybe...they have something to hide. Something they don't want people to think about.

    Now we know why. The Cylons DO have a plan. It's to build a theme park.

    A robotic themepark? Do people really want to go to a park to hang out with robots or are they all just hoping for a ride on the Number Six?
  • South Korea builds Meccas!

  • Oblig. (Score:5, Funny)

    by HungSoLow (809760) on Wednesday November 14 2007, @07:52AM (#21348163)
    You've got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.

  • Enclosures (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Please do not feed the robots"
  • You know what this means? The Koreans is gearing up to invade China and Japan to pay them back for the millenia of oppression and invasions in the past!! They'll probably start off with North Korea just to test their powers as mecha warriors.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted House, Hall of the Presidents, Haunted Tiki Room, Its a Small World, just to name a few. Tehse are continually refurbished.
  • Up in Wisconsin Dells, there's a place called the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory [tommybartlett.com] (formerly, Robot World), which has been around since the 1980s. Back when I was there in the early 90s, the place had a huge tour guided entirely by robots. Of course, to keep the kiddies interested, some of the "robots" featured were more or less a novelty crossing of Chuck E Cheese automation and the bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000. However, the place did feature a lot of legitimate robots and plenty of scientific stuff to
  • But 5 years ago, it would've only been $1.2B dollars. And this is ignoring the time value of money, so it likely would've been lower yet. In the past five years, the USD is roughly 3/4 of what it used to be compared to the South Korean Won (KRW). So $1.2B for two theme parks? $600Mil for one? Doesn't seem that outrageous to me....

  • Michael Crichton wrote and directed this precursor to "Jurassic Park" that, while showing some of it's age, is still effective and was undeniably influential. The story concerns a unique and expensive vacation resort called Delos in which customers can choose from one of three "worlds"--Roman World, Medieval World or Western World (as it is referred to in the film.) Here, customers can indulge their fantasies of conquest (violent or sexual) among a host of ultra-realistic robots who are programmed to promote the experience while not allowing the participants to become hurt. Benjamin stars as a newcomer to the place with his buddy Brolin along for his second visit. Brolin shows Benjamin the ropes at Western World (how to shoot villains, seduce dance hall girls, etc...) One of the bad guys they encounter is icy Brynner who they dispose of more than once. Eventually, things start to come unglued as the men note that things aren't working as properly as expected and promised. The controllers of the park are unable to prevent the robots from hurting or even killing the guests! The film begins with that once-cutting-edge, but now amusing, sense of high-tech awe as the guys enter the park. Benjamin is an acquired taste and borders on annoying for much of the film. More at ease is Brolin who doesn't have a great deal to do. The most striking performance is that of Brynner. He has almost nothing to say, but he doesn't need to talk. His steely stare and mechanical gait wind up being quite relentless and terrifying. The highlight of the film is his non-stop pursuit of Benjamin. ("The Terminator" owes a lot to this section of the film.) There are several other supporting roles, but, aside from Van Patten, the actors create little interest in their exploits. "Star Trek" fans will note the presence of Barrett as a robot madame. There were rumors of a remake with Arnold Schwarzegger, but Arnie's already done the indestructible robot thing and no one's going to outglare Brynner. His bid as Governor seems to have quashed these plans anyway.

    Just don't let the Japanese in the park or else you'll get rogue tentacle rape monsters.

  • Theme park FOR robots? (Score:3, Funny)

    by MMHere (145618) on Thursday November 15 2007, @07:08PM (#21372373)
    I initially thought this was going to be a theme park where robots
    can go to spend their free time and 'wind down.' They could have fantasy
    rides where robots are allowed to simulate, in a non-harmful way, egregious
    breaking of Asimov's Three Laws...

    • all of a sudden I want to watch I robot, read hitchhikers guide, watch the simpsons and futurama.... you guys are great

      Go watch "Westworld" first, and the gags will be funnier afterwards. Then ask yourself, "Hmm, isn't 'Jurassic Park' just 'Westworld' with dinos?"

    • Obligatory Futurama quote: Screw you guys! I'm gonna build my own theme park! With Blackjack! and Hookers! ... In fact! Forget the park and the blackjack!

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