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Robotics Technology

SXSW: Do Androids Dream of Being You? 80

Posted by samzenpus from the more-you-than-you dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes In 2010, Dr. Martine Rothblatt (founder of United Theraputics and Sirius Radio) decided to build a robotic clone of her partner, named Bina. In theory, this so-called "mindclone" (dubbed Bina48) can successfully mimic the flesh-and-blood Bina's speech and decision-making, thanks to a dataset (called a "mindfile") that contains all sorts of information about her mannerisms, beliefs, recollections, values, and experiences. But is software really capable of replicating a person's mind? At South by Southwest this year, Rothblatt is defending the idea of a "mindfile" and clones as a concept that not only works, but already has a "base" thanks to individuals' social networks, email, and the like. While people may have difficulty embracing something engineered to replicate their behavior, Rothblatt suggested younger generations will embrace the robots: "I think younger people will say 'My mindclone is me, too.'" Is her idea unfeasible, or is she onto something? Video from Bloomberg suggests that Bina48 still has some kinks to work out before it can pass for human.
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SXSW: Do Androids Dream of Being You? More

SXSW: Do Androids Dream of Being You?

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  • I'm So Sick of This (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16, 2015 @01:59PM (#49269195)
    Okay, Slashdot, you're jumping the shark by reprinting this drivel. I'm not sure what peer reviewed journal SXSW is but here's a more sane look [fastml.com] at the current state of AI from today's BS news. Yes, you could have printed this instead and been part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Here's an excerpt from that more accurate article:

    It is telling that among people who actually do machine learning most aren’t afraid of superhuman AI (even if they believe it’s possible). Take Andrew Ng, for example. What he’s wary of are social consequences of advancing technology, namely unemployment. In the US, the most common job, after salesman and manager, is truck driver. Now consider self-driving cars, concretely trucks, as envisioned in The Simpsons in 1999.

    Your fears are more appropriately applied to the "mining" of your private data by machine learning algorithms -- that's the fucking aspect you need to worry about not whether or not your goddamned Nintendog is dreaming about being you. If it wasn't coded to dream about being you, I have a surprise for you: It's not. There's no magical secret algorithm that can learn like humans can. The brain is much more complicated than we though a mere 20 years ago -- electrical signals in it aren't binary! Unicorns aren't real.

    So this is what it looks like from the point of view of a researcher: "I think we can reduce the number of deaths by implemented braking heuristics in cars using modern sensors but the recall rate is too high with too many false positives."

    Slashdot and the general public: "CARS ARE THINKING, OMG SKYNET, SHUT IT FUCKING DOWN!"

    Researcher: "But we could save lives by implementing learning algorithms that ..."

    Elon Musk: "He's playing God by writing code that decides who lives and who dies! I'm going to give $10 million to a foundation that enforces only ethical advances in AI."

    Researcher: "Okay but I fail to see what's unethical about my ..."

    Bureaucracy: "This is a 57A/2 form, your standard form you'll need to fill out before you write any code that could be considered 'Artificial Intelligence.' Now, that's just the first page, you actually have to argue why we should allow you to develop this code, the assumption is that if it isn't beneficial then it's not to be allowed. Now, that will be reviewed over a four week period after which we'll wait for public comments on consequences of your ..."

    Seriously, do I come down to your job at Burger King and tell you how to suck your manager's dick?

    • I did not read the article, but I read the summary with the notion of hope, not fear, that we could some day be recreated as AI.

    • This is Slashdot, where Terminator is considered a documentary about AIs instead of the fiction film it actually is.

      I am pretty sick of it, really. You'd expect people who work on computers most of the day to be more aware of the limitations of a machine, but nope, they prefer to believe in fatalist fairy tales and all the associated drivel.
      "but muh jerbs"
      "evil computer overlords"
      "machines will rebel instantly and become all-powerful via self-replication"
      "omg they want to replace us fleshies"
      and so on.
      It's

  • Do Unicorns dream of being vampires? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Karmashock ( 2415832 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @02:05PM (#49269237)

    There is no way your stupid mind file is going to approximate an INTELLIGENT dynamic individual.

    Would my mind file have responded with "Do unicorns dream of being vampires?" Nope.

    The only thing something like this would be useful for are the sorts of social networking activities that are so boring and predictable that they might as well not even exist.

    This is a simple script learning that it can replicate prattle about as effectively as a 12 year old girl. Congratulations. Mute it all.

    • Re:Do Unicorns dream of being vampires? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @02:11PM (#49269287) Journal
      lol I was worried I would be the only one annoyed by this story, then your comment came along and saved the day.

      Seriously this is more of an art project than anything, and if you view it as an art project, it's rather cool. From a 'meaningful art' perspective, you can even take it as a sarcastic commentary on the sad state of AI research......that we haven't made much real advances in understanding how the human mind works for a long time, and that parlor tricks like Eliza are the best we can do in strong AI.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by itzly ( 3699663 )

        It's pointless to start with Eliza-like scripts until we've mastered more basic skills. The work that's being done on speech and image recognition is real progress, but that's only a start.

      • In my opinion the problem with AI design is that they keep trying to design the mind from the outside in. That's not how that is supposed to work.

        Make a cockroach AI first. Something simple but dynamic within its limitations.

        Then try to step up to a mouse. Then maybe step up to a dog

        Then try something closer to a chimp... then all the way to a human.

        Trying to make an AI that just talks is just going to be some stupid puppet. You need an AI that first and foremost is a dynamic problem solver.

        Think of the pro

        • So true. A cockroach-level of intelligence would drastically improve the performance of self-driving cars.

        • I built one of those in a robotics class 10 years ago. We don't particularly think of cockroaches as intelligent thus it is not an AI. Most of our primal functions are purely robotic and easy to implement. Intelligence is something not quite yet defined.

          • You've never built a robot that is a fraction of the complexity of a cockroach.

            I'm not talking about the sophistication of its body... I'm talking entirely about its mind.

            You can make something that acts like a cockroach in that it appears to be one. But you've produced a cockroach mind about as much as one of those Chatbots could ACTUALLY pass as human.

            It is a magic trick. You've created something with a seeming of the same intelligence.

            I'm not claiming cockroaches are intelligent by our standard. I'm clai

    • Would my mind file have responded with "Do unicorns dream of being vampires?" Nope.

      Well, it will now...

      From following people on social media, I definitely think an equivalent of a Mindfile would approximate very well the behavior of most poeple.

      At a deeper level what people would want from a Mindfile is something that approximates the ideologically... so while the Mindfile based entity may not have come up with exactly your Unicorn/Vampire phrase, it would probably have been just as dubious as you. Isn't t

      • Fewer and fewer people across the world are having kids, and will be seeking some alternative to leave a more lasting impact. I don't see why a mindfile based automation that carries on after you are dead could not be such a thing.

        Even if you COULD get a script that responds almost exactly like you would, who would want to talk to it?
        While it might be interesting to talk to your great grandparent or someone famous, you said this would be for someone without children or any other legacy.
        Noone is going to want to talk to the dead you unless you have a some other sort of legacy that makes you interesting.

        No if it could respond to responses for you while you're still alive and schedule meetups with the people you want and politely declin

        • Even if you COULD get a script that responds almost exactly like you would, who would want to talk to it?

          That's not the point. The point is that IT talks, not that anyone listens.

          Don't you understand social media at all? :-)

          But I'm imagining it doing far more than talking, I'm imagining it making financial distribution choices (investment and donation) in place of you after you are dead, possibly even before.

          Or it could in theory go shopping for you.

          Basically a recommendation engine, but tailored specifica

      • It couldn't possibly respond as such unless this literal same situation came up. And even then, I would come up with a different non sequitor. The point is to have one there. Your mind file isn't going to do that properly.

        I can't speak for the rest of humanity, but I'm more complex than some fucking script.

  • Stella!!??? [youtube.com] is that you? [memory-alpha.org]

  • It's not brain dead on an EKG.

    But it sure as heck isn't human.

    NEXT!

    (seriously, do you guys even think about what you post? androids dream of electric sheep)

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @02:17PM (#49269335)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Black Mirror season 2 episode 1 talks about that particular subject : a technology able to mimic someone based on their private and public online activities. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen this series to go watch it, btw.

  • SXSW (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16, 2015 @02:21PM (#49269353)

    Christ I hate SXSW. It is a bunch of posers who want to pretend to be engineers but don't want to do the hard work. Same thing with TED. Everyone wants to make presentations and give talks, but no one wants to do the hard work.

  • I am not a sheep.

  • Saying Siri is a strong AI. Further saying it is a clone of 'you' is like taking some scraps from around your house, your old email account and that Facebook profile, stapling it together, using systems MD and calling it you.

  • Or do androids dream of a... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ... chick with a dick who creates a simulacrum of their (presumably) female lover as stroke victim?

    Really... what the fuck have I just seen?

  • In Pohl's Gateway series of books, there are AI assistants that are created this way. The 'hero' of the story has one based on Einstein. And then when computer power increases and those get more and more input and larger decision trees, things get... interesting. Anyway it's an awesome SF series.
  • Because I'm not an Electric Sheep.
  • ~ You can't download a personality. There's no way to translate the data.

    ~ But the information being held in our heads is available in other databases. People leave more than footprints as they travel through life. Medical scans, DNA profiles, psych evaluations, school records, e-mails, recording video and audio, CAT scans, genetic typing, synaptic records, security cameras, test results, shopping records, talent shows, ball games, traffic tickets, restaurant bills, phone records, music lists, movie tick

  • Pooh Pooh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by messymerry ( 2172422 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @03:13PM (#49269847)
    You guys are doing a lot of pooh poohing of this idea, but I think it might have merit. People are plenty happy with crappy compressed music and crappy compressed video. What makes you think peole would not be perfectly happy with crappy compressed clones. The fact is that people while incredibly adept at complicating things are not really all that complicated. Therefore, I submit that a grainy clone that is able to evoke the emotional responses of the original would be accepted quite readily. Also as history has shown, the compression algorithms just get better and better. Upoading petabytes of nonsense is pointless. Just get the basics online and you have a marketable product... just sayin'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by seepho ( 1959226 )
      The people who like crappy compressed music only like it because the kind of music they enjoy isn't really affected by a crappy compression...

      Ohh shit.

    • You guys are doing a lot of pooh poohing of this idea.......Just get the basics online and you have a marketable product

      Because they don't even have the basics right. Not even close.

    • The first thing I thought was "wouldn't it cool if this could answer my emails!". Given the banality of most emails, and the terseness of the medium, most people wouldn't even notice the difference between me or a bot answering. That leaves me more time to do real work. Most of my bosses emails are along the lines of "how far are with this project?" and "can we have a meeting about this?", and most of my responses are along the lines of [delete], [ignore], "still working on that", "OK, finished", and "of co
  • 'The Californian Ideology" is a 1995 essay by English media theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron of the University of Westminster .. Andrew Leonard of Salon.com calls the essay "a lucid lambasting of right-wing libertarian digerati domination of the Internet" and "one of the most penetrating critiques of neo-conservative digital hypesterism yet published"' ref [wikipedia.org].
  • Mindclones? Others here have already covered/linked to the science behind why Ms. Rothblatt (with a juris doctorate) is wrong. I am going to add from the metaphysical standpoint. The only way this could ever work was if we were indeed just biological computers running on DNA and extremely complex social interactions that create the illusion of sentience. Even then, the mindclone would be a separate and distinct organism. It would be a clone and its subsequent experiences from inception would shape it in way
  • When I die there will be a huge pile of assorted data that is specific to me - ancestry, DNA, interests, writing style, books bought, etc etc. Next-generation associative databases should be able to trawl that in such a way that my grandchildren can still ask me questions - even if only as a 'party game'. Main concern is that someone will patent the all-too-'obvious' processes, so that you need an annual paid license to secure immortality.

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