Fudan Intelligent Robot Learns To Fit In 66
martinsslaves writes "Shanghais' Fudan University have made some considerable progress in their endeavors in learning robots, with their new 'Fudan Intelligent Robot' looking a whole lot more polished than their previous Fudan-1 model. The goal is for the robot to learn new tasks by following voice commands, which the researchers hope could eventually allow the robot to help the elderly or become a 'good household mate' for families. Among other things, the bot can currently can plot out its own map of its surroundings and remember specific locations and, of course, change TV channels at your command (or even serve as a TV itself)."
Re:They're made out of meat (Score:2, Interesting)
They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
The difference is that WE made the computers, and therefore WE know how they work. If you know how a computer works, you know it can't think.
Now, if you put me in a commercial flight simulator you could probably convince me that you'd flown me to Afghanistan, or even the moon if you could do something about that gravity thing. But a computer is only an abacus with two beads per wire, billions of wires, and mechanisms (nand gates, nor gates, shift circuits and the like) to manipulate the beads.
I would agree that, when robotics is advanced enough that you can't tell a humanoid robot from a human, you should grant it human rights until it is proven to be a robot. I'd hate to be confused with a robot!