Robot Love Goes Bad 101
hundredrabh writes "Ever had a super needy girlfriend that demanded all your love and attention and would freak whenever you would leave her alone? Irritating, right? Now imagine the same situation, only with an asexual third-generation humanoid robot with 100kg arms. Such was the torture subjected upon Japanese researchers recently when their most advanced robot, capable of simulating human emotions, ditched its puppy love programming and switched over into stalker mode. Eventually the researchers had to decommission the robot, with a hope of bringing it back to life again."
Re:The lesson (Score:3, Informative)
Hoax (Score:1, Informative)
http://i.gizmodo.com/5164841/robot-programmed-to-love-traps-woman-in-lab-hugs-her-repeatedly [gizmodo.com]
Re:Scientifically Speaking ... (Score:5, Informative)
Update: The story is a fake, and the robot shown is actually of a Japanese medical robot. Thanks tipster!
Re:Nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The lesson (Score:4, Informative)
In the short-story collection, "I, Robot", the story "Liar" is about just that situation. Through some deviation in the manufacturing process a robot has the ability to read minds.
This leads the robot to have a more expansive interpretation of the first law because it can perceive emotional harm in addition to mere physical harm. Hilarity ensues. Actually not...
But it's a good story. This concept also plays out in one of the novels, I think, "Naked Sun".
A non-mind-reading robot wouldn't be able to perceive emotional harm so would not be inhibited from doing things emotionally harmful until they manifest in some way detectable by the robot.
If you happen to like audiobooks, there is a great version of "I, Robot" read by Scott Brick. I highly recommend it. (http://www.amazon.com/I-Robot-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0739312707/) [amazon.com]
Re:The lesson (Score:4, Informative)
The way Asimov wrote it, less advanced robots weren't smart enough to see the subtler "harms". More advanced ones could weigh courses of action to take the one that would inflict the least amount of harm possible. Although deadlock and burnout of the positronic brain could and did happen.
Actually, RTFT (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The lesson (Score:4, Informative)