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Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind
Machines will attain human levels of intelligence by the year 2040, predicts robotics expert Hans Moravec. And by 2050, they will have far surpassed us.
In this mind-bending new book, Hans Moravec takes the reader on a roller coaster ride packed with such startling predictions. He tells us, for instance, that in the not-too-distant future, an army of robots will displace workers, causing massive, unprecedented unemployment. But then, says Moravec, a period of very comfortable existence will follow, as humans benefit from a fully automated economy. And eventually, as machines evolve far beyond humanity, robots will supplant us. But if Moravec predicts the end of the domination by human beings, his is not a bleak vision. Far from railing against a future in which machines rule the world, Moravec embraces it, taking the startling view that intelligent robots will actually be our evolutionary heirs. "Intelligent machines, which will grow from us, learn our skills, and share our goals and values, can be viewed as children of our minds." And since they are our children, we will want them to outdistance us. In fact, in a bid for
immortality, many of our descendants will choose to transform into "ex humans," as they upload themselves into advanced computers. We will become our children and live forever.
In his provocative new book, the highly anticipated follow-up to his bestselling volume Mind Children , Moravec charts the trajectory of robotics in breathtaking detail. A must read for artificial intelligence, technology, and computer enthusiasts, Moravec's freewheeling but informed speculations present a future far different than we ever dared imagine.
In this mind-bending new book, Hans Moravec takes the reader on a roller coaster ride packed with such startling predictions. He tells us, for instance, that in the not-too-distant future, an army of robots will displace workers, causing massive, unprecedented unemployment. But then, says Moravec, a period of very comfortable existence will follow, as humans benefit from a fully automated economy. And eventually, as machines evolve far beyond humanity, robots will supplant us. But if Moravec predicts the end of the domination by human beings, his is not a bleak vision. Far from railing against a future in which machines rule the world, Moravec embraces it, taking the startling view that intelligent robots will actually be our evolutionary heirs. "Intelligent machines, which will grow from us, learn our skills, and share our goals and values, can be viewed as children of our minds." And since they are our children, we will want them to outdistance us. In fact, in a bid for
immortality, many of our descendants will choose to transform into "ex humans," as they upload themselves into advanced computers. We will become our children and live forever.
In his provocative new book, the highly anticipated follow-up to his bestselling volume Mind Children , Moravec charts the trajectory of robotics in breathtaking detail. A must read for artificial intelligence, technology, and computer enthusiasts, Moravec's freewheeling but informed speculations present a future far different than we ever dared imagine.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published December 3, 1998
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About the author
Hans Moravec
17Ìýbooks53ÌýfollowersHans Moravec (born November 30, 1948 in Austria) is an adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He is known for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and writings on the impact of technology. Moravec also is a futurist with many of his publications and predictions focusing on transhumanism. Moravec developed techniques in computer vision for determining the region of interest (ROI) in a scene.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 4, 2007
EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS CREATED BY ITS TITLE
With high praise from such giants as Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Doctor David Brin on the dust jacket, I asked myself where I, unlettered and relative to those men barely conscious, think I'm going trying to write a review. I have a friend who likes to say he never lets ignorance stop him from expressing his opinion on a subject. Guess I remember that one `cause it fits me so well, so here goes.
In his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Alan Turing grouped the arguments opposing the possibility of machine intelligence into the following nine categories:
1- The Theological Objection - thinking is a function of the soul. Machines have no souls, so cannot think.
2 - The "Heads in the Sand" Objection - Thinking machines cannot be possible because the consequences would be too dreadful.
3 - The Mathematical Objection - Mechanical reasoning has certain provable limitations that human thought may not share.
4 - The Argument from Consciousness - Machines have no inner experiences to give meaning to their utterances, actions, or internal operations.
5 - Arguments from Various Disabilities - Machines will never be kind, moral, joyous, perceptive, original, etc.
6 - Lady Lovelace's Objection - Computers do only what we program them to do.
7 - The Argument from Continuity in the Nervous System - Nerves respond to arbitrarily tiny signal differences, while computers work in fixed-size steps.
8 - The Argument from Informality of Behavior - It is not possible to specify for a machine what to do in every possible circumstance a human might encounter.
9 - The Argument from Extrasensory Perception - Humans sometimes sense remote or future information unavailable to deterministic processes in computers.
Moravec provides current arguments countering each item above, but central to all seems to be this: the principle difference between human and machine is we are conscious. This state, however, is so complex we are unable to explain it. Neither do we understand how or from where it arises in our brains.
The author offers a compelling posit; If as of Robot's publication (1999), the most powerful computers could process a million MIPS (million instructions per second), computers capable of a billion MIPS should be just over the horizon. It will be then, Moravec projects, that the mysterious and exclusively human state we call "consciousness" will be revealed to be not exclusive at all, but merely the capacity to accumulate, process, and interpret sufficient amounts of data in the span of each instant of time - and that when this is achieved, computers will sense the state of their surroundings and thus become "conscious" in the same way we are.
He lays the groundwork for this leap carefully, detailing his personal experiences in robotics and the pace of advances in the field. Arriving at the present day situation, he then takes us step by careful step into the future. It's all completely understandable and reasonable.
Eventually though, his vision of the future exceeds my ability to absorb. I confess to less than a complete understanding of his universe of the future. One thing I did get loud and clear: there were no humans there.
Consider robots an intellectual mutation. These creatures we make will first surpass and then replace us, become us, probably in very much the same way we ourselves replaced the less capable lifeforms we arose from in the distant past. It's not a grim future the author envisions for humanity; it's a comfortable even spiritual retirement. Refuse to accept this, and you'll need to deny Darwin's theories too. Think about it.
Art Tirrell is the author of the underwater adventure novel "The Secret Ever Keeps" which does not contain robotics but does contain "...Simply put, the best underwater scenes I've ever read..." Meg W, reviewer. See the full review:
With high praise from such giants as Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Doctor David Brin on the dust jacket, I asked myself where I, unlettered and relative to those men barely conscious, think I'm going trying to write a review. I have a friend who likes to say he never lets ignorance stop him from expressing his opinion on a subject. Guess I remember that one `cause it fits me so well, so here goes.
In his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Alan Turing grouped the arguments opposing the possibility of machine intelligence into the following nine categories:
1- The Theological Objection - thinking is a function of the soul. Machines have no souls, so cannot think.
2 - The "Heads in the Sand" Objection - Thinking machines cannot be possible because the consequences would be too dreadful.
3 - The Mathematical Objection - Mechanical reasoning has certain provable limitations that human thought may not share.
4 - The Argument from Consciousness - Machines have no inner experiences to give meaning to their utterances, actions, or internal operations.
5 - Arguments from Various Disabilities - Machines will never be kind, moral, joyous, perceptive, original, etc.
6 - Lady Lovelace's Objection - Computers do only what we program them to do.
7 - The Argument from Continuity in the Nervous System - Nerves respond to arbitrarily tiny signal differences, while computers work in fixed-size steps.
8 - The Argument from Informality of Behavior - It is not possible to specify for a machine what to do in every possible circumstance a human might encounter.
9 - The Argument from Extrasensory Perception - Humans sometimes sense remote or future information unavailable to deterministic processes in computers.
Moravec provides current arguments countering each item above, but central to all seems to be this: the principle difference between human and machine is we are conscious. This state, however, is so complex we are unable to explain it. Neither do we understand how or from where it arises in our brains.
The author offers a compelling posit; If as of Robot's publication (1999), the most powerful computers could process a million MIPS (million instructions per second), computers capable of a billion MIPS should be just over the horizon. It will be then, Moravec projects, that the mysterious and exclusively human state we call "consciousness" will be revealed to be not exclusive at all, but merely the capacity to accumulate, process, and interpret sufficient amounts of data in the span of each instant of time - and that when this is achieved, computers will sense the state of their surroundings and thus become "conscious" in the same way we are.
He lays the groundwork for this leap carefully, detailing his personal experiences in robotics and the pace of advances in the field. Arriving at the present day situation, he then takes us step by careful step into the future. It's all completely understandable and reasonable.
Eventually though, his vision of the future exceeds my ability to absorb. I confess to less than a complete understanding of his universe of the future. One thing I did get loud and clear: there were no humans there.
Consider robots an intellectual mutation. These creatures we make will first surpass and then replace us, become us, probably in very much the same way we ourselves replaced the less capable lifeforms we arose from in the distant past. It's not a grim future the author envisions for humanity; it's a comfortable even spiritual retirement. Refuse to accept this, and you'll need to deny Darwin's theories too. Think about it.
Art Tirrell is the author of the underwater adventure novel "The Secret Ever Keeps" which does not contain robotics but does contain "...Simply put, the best underwater scenes I've ever read..." Meg W, reviewer. See the full review:
January 23, 2023
A truly first-rate book of speculative science
"Robot" is among the few truly first-rate books of speculative science --books in which respected scientists extrapolate their ideas into the future with some rigor. Other such books include K. Eric
Drexler's Engines of Creation (1986); and Freeman Dyson's Disturbing the Universe (1979), Infinite in All Directions (1989), and From Eros to Gaia (1992). Books such as these provide a sense of awe
and wonder equal to the very best of science fiction -- perhaps the more wondrous for being, quite possibly, true.
1998 book, and Science Marches On . . . I don't have any re-read plans for this one.
Moravec's wikibio:
He's done a lot of interesting work! Born 1948. Still a youngster?
My 2004 review:
"Robot" is among the few truly first-rate books of speculative science --books in which respected scientists extrapolate their ideas into the future with some rigor. Other such books include K. Eric
Drexler's Engines of Creation (1986); and Freeman Dyson's Disturbing the Universe (1979), Infinite in All Directions (1989), and From Eros to Gaia (1992). Books such as these provide a sense of awe
and wonder equal to the very best of science fiction -- perhaps the more wondrous for being, quite possibly, true.
1998 book, and Science Marches On . . . I don't have any re-read plans for this one.
Moravec's wikibio:
He's done a lot of interesting work! Born 1948. Still a youngster?
My 2004 review:
February 20, 2023
THOUGHTS AND SPECULATIONS ABOUT ROBOTS AND COMPUTERS
Author Hans Moravec wrote in the first chapter of this 1999 book, “Barring cataclysms, I consider the development of intelligent machines a near-term inevitability� machine intelligences will be direct imitations of something already existing biologically� by performing better and cheaper, the robots will displace humans from essential roles. Rather quickly, they could displace us from existence. I’m not as alarmed as many by the latter possibility, since I consider these future machines our progeny, ‘mind children� built in our image and likeness, ourselves in more potent form� they will embody humanity’s best change for a long-term future. It behooves us to � bow out when we can no longer contribute. But� we can probably arrange for a comfortable retirement before we fade away� ‘tame� superintelligences could be created and induced to protect and support us, for a while� It is the ‘wild� intelligences, however, those beyond our constraints, to whom the future belongs…� (Pg. 13)
He notes, “Computers have played grandmaster chess since the 1980s, and IBM’s ‘Deep Blue� machine defeated Garry Kasparov, probably the best human player even, in a May 1997 match. But Deep Blue needed a human assistant to see and physically manipulate the pieces. No robot existing could have done it in the wide range of circumstances Kasparov, or any child, finds trivial. For machines, calculating is much easier than reasoning, and reasoning much easier than perceiving and acting.� (Pg. 21-22)
He observes, “The most powerful experimental supercomputers� composed of � tens of thousands of the fastest microprocessors and costing tens of millions of dollars, can do a few million MPIS. They are within striking distance of being powerful enough to match human brainpower, but they are unlikely to be applied to that end. Why tie up a rare twenty-million-dollar asset to develop one ersatz-human, when millions of inexpensive original-model; humans are available? Such machines are needed for high-value scientific calculations, mostly physical simulations, having no cheaper substitutes. AI research must wait for the power to become more affordable.� (Pg. 54) Later, he adds, “Machines with human-like performance will make economic sense only when they cost less than humans, say, when their ‘brains� cost about $1,000. When will that day arrive?� (Pg. 57)
He suggests, “Most people� are likely, after a period of suspicion, to begin taking machines that interact like intelligent, decent persons at face value� So, it may be appropriate to say ‘God� has granted a soul to a machine when the machine is accepted as a real person by a wide human community.� (Pg. 77)
He points out, “Human hands are much � harder to imitate in robots. Most industrial robot grippers work like miniature vises� More elaborate hands, humanlike and otherwise, with multiple individually controlled fingers, have been demonstrated by robotic researchers� they tend to be heavy and expensive, and controlling them� is a difficult area of ongoing research� Given the difficulties, the first generations of universal robot will probably make do with simple, imprecise hands, leaving fine dexterity for the future.� (Pg. 96-97)
He states, “It seems obvious to many that a dad mechanical process cannot by itself give rise to our own mental experience� Hubert Dreyfus� argues that computers may imitate the conscious surface of thought, but can never capture the ineffable intuitive subconscious� John Searle says that computers may SIMULATE thought, but will never actually think meaningfully � How can a dead mechanical process produce our vivid mental life?� (Pg. 121-122)
He speculates, “In the next century inexpensive but capable robots will displace human labor so broadly that the average workday would have to plummet to practically zero to keep everyone usefully employed. Already, much labor services questionable ends---gargantuan government bureaucracies, cosmetic medicine, mass entertainment, and speculative writing, to give a few examples. In time almost all humans may work to amuse other humans, while robots run competitive primary industries, like food production and manufacturing.� (Pg. 131-132)
He suggests, “Ex-humans, from the start, will be free of any mandatory law. Both kinds of Ex (to coin a new term), joined by escaped experiments, errant spacecraft, and other cybernetic riffraff, will grow and restructure at will, continually redesigning themselves for the future as they conceive it. Differences in origins will be obscured as Exes exchange design tips, but aggregate diversity will increase as myriad individual intelligences pursue their own separate dreams, each generation more complex, in more habitats, choosing among more alternatives. We marvel at the diversity of Earth’s biosphere� but the diversity and range of the post-biological world will be astronomically greater. Imagine balks at the challenge of guessing what it could be like.� (Pg. 144-145)
He asks, “But what is consciousness? The prescientific suggestion that humans derive their experience of existence from spiritual mechanisms outside the physical world has had notable social consequences, but no success as a scientific hypothesis� Human consciousness may be a by-product of a brain evolved for social living. Memort, prediction and communication � evolved to classify and communicate the moods and relations of tribe members� Our consciousness may be primarily the continuous story we tell ourselves� about what we did and why we did it� On the one hand, our consciousness may be an evolutionary fluke, telling an unreliable story in a far-fetched interpretation of a pattern� On the other, o0ur consciousness is the only reason for thinking we exist� Without it there are no beliefs, no sensations, no experience of being, no universe.� (Pg. 194-195)
He concludes, “When we die, the rules surely change. As our brains and bodies cease to function in the normal way, it takes greater and greater contrivances and coincidences to explain continuing consciousness by their operation. We lose our ties to physical reality, but, in the space of all possible worlds, that cannot be the end. Our consciousness continues to exist in some of those, and we will always find ourselves in worlds where we exist and never in ones where we don’t� Does physical reality simply loosen just enough to allow our consciousness to continue?... Perhaps we are most likely to find ourselves reconstituted in the minds of superintelligent successors, or perhaps in dreamlike worlds (or AI programs) where psychological rather than physical rules dominate. Our mind children will probably be able to navigate the alternatives with increasing facility. For us, now, barely conscious, it remains a leap in the dark.� (Pg. 210-211)
Research and development in robotics, computers and AI has obviously progressed greatly since 1999; but this book remains a very interesting series of thoughts on such topics.
Author Hans Moravec wrote in the first chapter of this 1999 book, “Barring cataclysms, I consider the development of intelligent machines a near-term inevitability� machine intelligences will be direct imitations of something already existing biologically� by performing better and cheaper, the robots will displace humans from essential roles. Rather quickly, they could displace us from existence. I’m not as alarmed as many by the latter possibility, since I consider these future machines our progeny, ‘mind children� built in our image and likeness, ourselves in more potent form� they will embody humanity’s best change for a long-term future. It behooves us to � bow out when we can no longer contribute. But� we can probably arrange for a comfortable retirement before we fade away� ‘tame� superintelligences could be created and induced to protect and support us, for a while� It is the ‘wild� intelligences, however, those beyond our constraints, to whom the future belongs…� (Pg. 13)
He notes, “Computers have played grandmaster chess since the 1980s, and IBM’s ‘Deep Blue� machine defeated Garry Kasparov, probably the best human player even, in a May 1997 match. But Deep Blue needed a human assistant to see and physically manipulate the pieces. No robot existing could have done it in the wide range of circumstances Kasparov, or any child, finds trivial. For machines, calculating is much easier than reasoning, and reasoning much easier than perceiving and acting.� (Pg. 21-22)
He observes, “The most powerful experimental supercomputers� composed of � tens of thousands of the fastest microprocessors and costing tens of millions of dollars, can do a few million MPIS. They are within striking distance of being powerful enough to match human brainpower, but they are unlikely to be applied to that end. Why tie up a rare twenty-million-dollar asset to develop one ersatz-human, when millions of inexpensive original-model; humans are available? Such machines are needed for high-value scientific calculations, mostly physical simulations, having no cheaper substitutes. AI research must wait for the power to become more affordable.� (Pg. 54) Later, he adds, “Machines with human-like performance will make economic sense only when they cost less than humans, say, when their ‘brains� cost about $1,000. When will that day arrive?� (Pg. 57)
He suggests, “Most people� are likely, after a period of suspicion, to begin taking machines that interact like intelligent, decent persons at face value� So, it may be appropriate to say ‘God� has granted a soul to a machine when the machine is accepted as a real person by a wide human community.� (Pg. 77)
He points out, “Human hands are much � harder to imitate in robots. Most industrial robot grippers work like miniature vises� More elaborate hands, humanlike and otherwise, with multiple individually controlled fingers, have been demonstrated by robotic researchers� they tend to be heavy and expensive, and controlling them� is a difficult area of ongoing research� Given the difficulties, the first generations of universal robot will probably make do with simple, imprecise hands, leaving fine dexterity for the future.� (Pg. 96-97)
He states, “It seems obvious to many that a dad mechanical process cannot by itself give rise to our own mental experience� Hubert Dreyfus� argues that computers may imitate the conscious surface of thought, but can never capture the ineffable intuitive subconscious� John Searle says that computers may SIMULATE thought, but will never actually think meaningfully � How can a dead mechanical process produce our vivid mental life?� (Pg. 121-122)
He speculates, “In the next century inexpensive but capable robots will displace human labor so broadly that the average workday would have to plummet to practically zero to keep everyone usefully employed. Already, much labor services questionable ends---gargantuan government bureaucracies, cosmetic medicine, mass entertainment, and speculative writing, to give a few examples. In time almost all humans may work to amuse other humans, while robots run competitive primary industries, like food production and manufacturing.� (Pg. 131-132)
He suggests, “Ex-humans, from the start, will be free of any mandatory law. Both kinds of Ex (to coin a new term), joined by escaped experiments, errant spacecraft, and other cybernetic riffraff, will grow and restructure at will, continually redesigning themselves for the future as they conceive it. Differences in origins will be obscured as Exes exchange design tips, but aggregate diversity will increase as myriad individual intelligences pursue their own separate dreams, each generation more complex, in more habitats, choosing among more alternatives. We marvel at the diversity of Earth’s biosphere� but the diversity and range of the post-biological world will be astronomically greater. Imagine balks at the challenge of guessing what it could be like.� (Pg. 144-145)
He asks, “But what is consciousness? The prescientific suggestion that humans derive their experience of existence from spiritual mechanisms outside the physical world has had notable social consequences, but no success as a scientific hypothesis� Human consciousness may be a by-product of a brain evolved for social living. Memort, prediction and communication � evolved to classify and communicate the moods and relations of tribe members� Our consciousness may be primarily the continuous story we tell ourselves� about what we did and why we did it� On the one hand, our consciousness may be an evolutionary fluke, telling an unreliable story in a far-fetched interpretation of a pattern� On the other, o0ur consciousness is the only reason for thinking we exist� Without it there are no beliefs, no sensations, no experience of being, no universe.� (Pg. 194-195)
He concludes, “When we die, the rules surely change. As our brains and bodies cease to function in the normal way, it takes greater and greater contrivances and coincidences to explain continuing consciousness by their operation. We lose our ties to physical reality, but, in the space of all possible worlds, that cannot be the end. Our consciousness continues to exist in some of those, and we will always find ourselves in worlds where we exist and never in ones where we don’t� Does physical reality simply loosen just enough to allow our consciousness to continue?... Perhaps we are most likely to find ourselves reconstituted in the minds of superintelligent successors, or perhaps in dreamlike worlds (or AI programs) where psychological rather than physical rules dominate. Our mind children will probably be able to navigate the alternatives with increasing facility. For us, now, barely conscious, it remains a leap in the dark.� (Pg. 210-211)
Research and development in robotics, computers and AI has obviously progressed greatly since 1999; but this book remains a very interesting series of thoughts on such topics.
October 5, 2010
This sisactually one of the best books I have ever read. Moravec has a sense of humor and is clearly very literate. The sometimes uncomfortable depth of his geekness is revealed when he explains how it doesn't matter that robots will replace humans since they are our true progeny.... but the life of imagination and mind is of the essence here.
July 20, 2018
The first part was very technical, it was a bit hard for me to go through, I really enjoyed when he started to imagine the future (with a great base of scientific facts) rather than describing the deep technical side of things. I know, people with other backgrounds than me ( perhaps scientists, computer engineers) will love those passages that were a bit boring for me. A great read nonetheless
October 24, 2024
Even though the book is 25 years old, it still feel current and relevant. The chapter near the end on theories of time travel was dense, hard to read and seemingly out of place.
December 29, 2024
Great visionary, mind bending second half. Skip the first chapters that are outdated and discard the timelines and see the big picture.
May 22, 2008
The less speculative majority of this book is good, and even the discussion of time-traveling signals to solve difficult problems is wortwhile- but references to Frank Tipler's Omega Point tune me out. The more conservative parts of the book lay a time line for robots achieving human level cognitive abilities in the next 50 years, though Moravec doesn't give much insight into whether progress in materials, actuators, or power systems will match increases in computing power over that time period.
Almost everything in here should be familiar to hard science fiction readers, Baxter has made use of the time-travel computing in Exultant, and much else is in Accelerando and other books dealing with the Singularity or post-humanism. It's much easier to digest a specific science fiction time-line that is not attempting to predict the future exactly than deal with the vague generalizations in this kind of non-fiction book.
Almost everything in here should be familiar to hard science fiction readers, Baxter has made use of the time-travel computing in Exultant, and much else is in Accelerando and other books dealing with the Singularity or post-humanism. It's much easier to digest a specific science fiction time-line that is not attempting to predict the future exactly than deal with the vague generalizations in this kind of non-fiction book.
Read
December 20, 2011Stuck painfully in 1998 at first, it blossoms to become surprisingly imaginative. In 1998, a program could beat a human chess champion, but it couldn't see the chessboard or move the pieces. Still, robots will become smarter and more able than we, at which point we'll be able to use our laws to protect ourselves and get them to support us. People might opt to give up their legal personhood in order to be uploaded into a device or augmented in certain ways.
Once they surpass us, we won't have a clue what they're up to. They'll launch outward using the matter and energy of the universe for their own ends, perhaps leaving earth to us. They might actually understand quantum mechanics, create new forms of matter, or travel through time.
Once they surpass us, we won't have a clue what they're up to. They'll launch outward using the matter and energy of the universe for their own ends, perhaps leaving earth to us. They might actually understand quantum mechanics, create new forms of matter, or travel through time.
February 20, 2011
Too bad I lent this book to Carson!
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