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Title: Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us by Rodney Allen Brooks ISBN: 0-375-42079-7 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 12 February, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (15 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Something for Everyone and Something to Skip for Everyone
Comment: Some people may recognize Rodney Brooks as the insect obsessed robot maker featured in the documentary film "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control." He seems decidedly in control as he lays out his version of the past, present, and future relationship of people and their technology in "Flesh and Machines". This control is one of the greatest virtues of the book. While other authors practically froth at the mouth as they prophesy the coming technorapture when they predict we will become immortal by downloading our minds into robots, Brooks comes to similar conclusions, but in a calm, only occasionally boring, manner. This makes me take him more seriously.
As a reader only casually versed in the science and history of robotics, I found the book informative and approachable. The first third of the book held my interest best. In this part, he recounts the early history of robotics with particular focus on a simple robot built in the 1940s nicknamed the tortoise, which combined simple electronics and sensors to create a machine with complex behavior. Brooks then goes on to use the ideas embodied in the tortoise to turn the modern world of robotics on its head. From 1950's though the eighties, robot developers tried to build robots that developed detailed world models, and thus could navigate through them with ease. That was the theory, but it did not work. Robots spent so much time building up these models that they moved slowly and gracelessly. After years of working on robot vision, Brooks wondered what would happen if a robot did not even try to create a mental model of it's environment. What if sensors linked to simple actions, a la tortoise? And what if the actions were guided by simple instructions, layered on top of each other, much the way evolution probably layered behaviors on top of each other? The results were surprisingly agile, frisky, insect shaped robots. I got a little lost with his technical description of how these robots worked, but I got most of it, and best of all I got a good understanding of his creative process. I found this first third of the book the most engaging.
.After that he bounces around between various topics, from his studies of visual perception, to Kismet (a humanoid robot designed to respond to physical and vocal cues), to his adventures in the toy industry. By the time I got to his description of household robots of the future, I was snoozing. Gadget freaks may have a different reaction.
In the final third of the book, he weighs in on the possibility of truly intelligent human made machines. While he offers little hope for people who want to cling to our specialness as human beings, he is cautious about the prognostications of futurists who think we will download our midns into machines in the near future. Brooks says there are a lot of hurdles to jump before we create emotional, conscious machines, or before we are able to port our selves into robots. and we might not have it in us to jump those hurdles ever. But in the meantime, he asserts that we will, through machine implantation and augmentation, and through bioengineering, merge with our technology to the point that we will become robot-people, so that if the machines ever catch up with us, they will find we are already them. All this is put forth in a calm, thoughtful, carefully weighed manner, which made me trust him more than the more entertaining, but frothier, Raymond Kurzweil.
I would recommend the book to a wide audience as long as they are prepared to skip around. There is something for most intelligent, curious people here: a portrait of a brilliant scientist, the basics of robotics, and a vision of the future. And for people who care about vacuum cleaner robots, that is there too. I just skimmed that part.
Rating: 3
Summary: Second tier
Comment: I was disappointed by Flesh and Machines, Rodney Brooks' rambling discourse on robotics. Unlike Ray Kurzweil's thought-provoking The Age of Spiritual Machines or even Hans Moravec's mind-bending Robot, Brooks seems to have no purpose in this book, except to write one. The material is familiar and has been covered better elsewhere.
Not that it wasn't interesting in spots. Once you get past his drawn-out autobiography, Brooks provides a good overview of the problems researchers face trying to provide robots with the capabilities humans find second-nature. Vision is a good example; while computer vision is capable of detecting and recognizing human faces from the front, it falls down when confronted by side views or when people wear a hat, shave, even as they age.
Brooks is also interesting when he discusses whether humans are special or just a biomolecular machine. As you might expect, he sees us as machines interacting with the objects of the world in accordance with physics, but he comes at it in a gentle, considerate manner. Eventually, he asserts, mankind will accept robots as emotional machines. Much as we have begun to overcome racial and gender discrimination, we will begin to accept our robots, both emotionally and legally.
Flesh and Machines is a cut below Kurzweil's and Moravec's works so start with one of these. If you enjoy the subject, pick up Flesh and Machines for a pleasant weekend read.
Rating: 3
Summary: a gentle chat
Comment: Its a decent book about Robots and AI written in a friendly and honest manner. The first 2 sections of the book are interesting but the third section dealing with the future seems very uncertain.
Rodney Brooks seems to have lost his faith in Robots slightly and instead of getting Ray Kurzweils' ranting hyper future we get crappy robot lawnmowers and robots that can open the fridge and maybe get you a beer if you install a speciak fridge. Hmmmm runs out of steam a bit.
Still though he has been at it for 20 years and anybody thats been at anything for 20 years is worth having a listen to. And thats what its like, a gentle chat!
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Title: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil ISBN: 0140282025 Publisher: Penguin Putnam Pub. Date: 01 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species by Peter Menzel, Faith D'Aluisio ISBN: 0262133822 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind by Hans Moravec ISBN: 0195136306 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Cambrian Intelligence: The Early History of the New AI by Rodney Allen Brooks ISBN: 0262522632 Publisher: Bradford Book Pub. Date: 16 July, 1999 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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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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