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Title: Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind by Hans P. Moravec ISBN: 0-19-513630-6 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.63 (19 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Fascinating scientific read!
Comment: Hans Moravec does an outstanding job of waking society up to a very real potential road that humans may one day soon take; "mechanization".
Many cringe at the thought of using computers to do anything but send e-mail or surf the net. However, after reading this, I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that computers won't continue to bleed closer and closer into our personal lives until one day there may actually be some kind of union between the two.
And that brings me to my principal beef with this book. Perhaps H. Moravec has been working at arms length building robots for too long, because to me (a younger tech-savvy reader), if there ever is a "union" between man and machine, it won't be so much a union, but an "augmentation" of humanity. I will never become "part computer", but may use a computer to augment my life (enhanced bio-capability, enhanced intelligence, perhaps even immortality). The "us AND them" contrast Robot seems to paint never sat well with me.
Anyway, an informative and entertaining read.
Enjoy.
Rating: 4
Summary: A fascinating but troubling future
Comment: Hans Moravec is both a practical robotics engineer and a transcendent dreamer. Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind is a work of pessimism delivered by an optimist. It's complex, compelling, naïve and frightening. Is this the world we're building for our children? I mean human children, not mind children.
Robot begins with a good overview of robotics, outlining the work of cyber-pioneers such as Alan Turing, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky; then progressing into the late nineties. Moravec is a first-class robotics scientist and engineer, explaining technical issues and solutions in a concise, interesting manner. Good stuff, if you're interested in understanding robotics (why else would you be reading this book?).
Moravec then projects the growth of robotics and artificial intelligence employing a model similar to that of Ray Kurzweil in The Age of Spiritual Machines. Both men base this growth on the exponentially increasing power of inexpensive computers, which they believe will match the computing power of the human mind by approximately 2020. They both present strong arguments that the human mind is fundamentally a complex machine; therefore, it's not a stretch to believe an equally complex mind can be developed in silicon. Moravec then provides his assessment of robot capabilities for each decade of the twenty-first century. It's fascinating and not unreasonable.
Okay, we all know the future is not going to look like Star Trek, but Moravec's vision for the coming centuries is just too unbelievable: robot corporations in outer space, some planet-sized, virtually all of humanity living on a dole provided by taxing robot corporations, "execs" with almost supernatural powers ... you get the idea. Who knows - maybe he will be right - but these speculations don't fit well with the practical, science-based tone of the bulk of the material.
Nevertheless, this is an excellent work if you enjoy thinking about the near-future. Read Kurzweil and Moravec back to back - throw in Flesh and Machines by Rodney Brooks - and you'll have a persuasive picture of what the next few decades may hold.
Rating: 5
Summary: A truly first-rate book of speculative science.
Comment: ____________________________________________
Robot begins quietly enough, with a pithy reprise of the history of
robotics and artificial intelligence, and some nifty short-term
projections: robot cooks and houseboys, coming soon! Then it turns
to a strange, cool, unblinking vision of a future where ordinary
biologic humans are confined to a reservation/retirement home on
cozy old Earth, while their "mind children", advanced machine
intelligences, go out to conquer the Universe in a "bubble of Mind
expanding at near-lightspeed."
Moravec's mind-bubble will absorb and digest every physical entity in
its path, from ancient Voyager spacecraft to entire alien biospheres.
("I am vast. I contain multitudes.") These absorbed entities, he says,
"may continue to live and grow as if nothing had happened, oblivious
to their new status as simulations in cyberspace." Data-storage
capacity won't be a problem -- the atoms that make up your body,
Moravec tells us, "could contain the efficiently encoded biospheres of
a thousand galaxies."
With the entire cosmos transformed into cyberspace, it would be
possible for not just our "original versions," but every variation on
them, to "live" as massively-parallel simulations, playing out all of
the possibilities of Alternate History, perhaps as entertainment for
the vast, cool Intellects that have supplanted us. As Moravec notes,
we could already be living as simulations: We might well wonder
whether we're the "true" original, or just one of many reruns. "There
is no way to tell for sure," he writes, and since we can never know,
"the suspicion that we are someone else's thought does not free us
from the burdens of life."
And Moravec's not done. Now things gets *really* weird, as he
moves into a"what is reality?" windup that invokes Frank Tipler's
Omega Point, anthropic cosmology, parallel universes, and life after
death. He does get a little flaky here [note 2], but what a grand
Stapledonian blowoff!
Science fiction readers will recognize concepts from many of the
finest hard-SF novels of the past few decades: Gregory Benford's
universe-conquering machine intelligences, Greg Egan's lives-as-
simulations, Vernor Vinge's Singularity, Robert Forward's fractal-
bush robots. Robert Charles Wilson's current Darwinia
could almost be a novelization of Robots. Moravec's book is an
excellent guide to the science behind a lot of recent SF -- and an
exciting (if disturbing) preview of what's next.
These connections to SF are no accident: Moravec, who co-founded
the robotics program at Carnegie-Mellon University, grew up reading
science fiction, built two robots for high-school science-fair projects,
and first published his robot/AI speculations in an Analog essay in
1978, while a student at Stanford. He expanded that piece into a
popular-science book, Mind Children (1988, also excellent), which the
present book extends and updates. (He promises the next update in
2008.) Moravec has also written Omni articles with Robert Forward
on space elevators (1981), and with Frederik Pohl on uploading
people to computers (1993). Plus he's been a Hollywood consultant
for science-fiction movie-makers. Reading through his CV, I wonder,
does the man ever sleep?
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.
Interested readers can find much more information at Moravec's
excellent website: [google]
__________
1) -- if for no other reason than to supply empathetic characters for
hard-SF set in the far future -- a challenge that's tough enough
without using a Moravecian ultimate-AI for a protagonist...
2) To his credit, Moravec recognizes that this chapter has problems.
He's promised (and has started) a rewrite on his website.
review copyright 1999 Peter D. Tillman
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Title: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil ISBN: 0140282025 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence by Hans P. Moravec ISBN: 0674576187 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1990 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Flesh and Machines : How Robots Will Change Us by Rodney Brooks ISBN: 037572527X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence (Helix Books) by George B. Dyson ISBN: 0738200301 Publisher: Perseus Book Group Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I. by Jay W. Richards, George F. Gilder, Ray Kurzweil, Thomas Ray, John Searle, William Dembski, Michael Denton ISBN: 0963865439 Publisher: Discovery Institute Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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