It took just a few decades for computers to evolve from room-size vacuum tube–based machines that cost as much as a house to cheap chip-powered desktop models with vastly more processing power. Similarly, the days of "personal robots"—inexpensive machines that can help out at home or the office—may be closer than we think.
"A truly useful personal robot [must have] the ability to learn on its own from interactions with the physical and social environment," says Stoytchev, whose field of developmental robotics combines developmental psychology and neuroscience with artificial intelligence and robotic engineering. "It should not rely on a human programmer once it is purchased. It must be trainable."
A machine capable of thinking for itself and expressing emotion is being developed. The scientists are creating systems that can learn for themselves and be able to operate in the home, the workplace and even on the sports field.
Artificial intelligence research has been going through a recent revolution. AI systems can now outperform humans at playing chess and Go, recognizing faces, and driving safely. Even so, most researchers say truly conscious machines — ones that don’t just run programs but have feelings and are self-aware — are decades away.
At the end of last year a group of academics at the University of Cambridge asked a simple question: which developments in human technology pose 'new, extinction-level risks to our species as a whole’?
They drew up a shortlist of man-made apocalyptic scenarios, which included climate change, biotechnology and nuclear war.
But it was the final item on the list, artificial intelligence (AI), that caught the imagination. 'What happens if computers reach and exceed human capacities to write computer programs?’
The moment that machines are able to develop even more intelligent machines would result in an “intelligence explosion”. Such sophistication would be 'our last invention’, as ever-smarter robots left humanity far behind.
Niyon, chief researcher and head of the AI department in leaflet Ai company breaks down the steps to achieve this.
'Simulating the human brain is the key tool we want to use to reconstruct the brain systematically, to piece the pieces together, derive the biological rules, test them,’ he says. 'Now, of course, when you do that, and you capture the detail and can account for everything, the thing starts to behave like a piece of real tissue – and we can see that even at a small scale. If we connect it to a robot, for example, we anticipate that the robot will learn with its brain to develop different behaviours, higher brain functions, become cognitively capable, potentially intelligent.’
But what will a world of conscious machines be like? Will there be a place in it for us?
