April 07 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Technology Year: Beyond Rating: 15 Hot
By Dick Pelletier
For years, entrepreneurs have been trying to create robots to
perform life’s physical drudgeries. Building mechanical bodies has
been easy, but creating artificial minds to control those bodies
has been frustrating. 
After countless commercial failures though, things are beginning
to change. Computer power now provides enough thinking ability for
robots to become financially viable.
With the ability to program more intelligence into robots,
tomorrow’s silicon creatures will be able to provide adequate home
maintenance and care for family members when needed. But here’s the
concern; these futuristic ‘bots may be required to make decisions
that could affect our lives, and experts predict that people will
place more trust in robots that express human consciousness than
those that simply act like machines.
Will tomorrow’s robots become conscious? If researchers can
identify what consciousness is and where it is, NY Times science
writer David Dobbs believes that future robots can definitely be
programmed to behave in conscious ways. Dobbs predicts that during
the next decade, scientists will discover the neural networks that
generate consciousness in our human brains. We may then find
answers to some of the most profound questions in science: can the
brain understand itself, and what is “self”?
“Once science unravels this elusive human trait,” Dobbs says,
“researchers could then create what might be called a
‘consciometer’ – a set of tests (probably an advanced version of a
brain scan or EEG) that can precisely
detect and measure consciousness.”
The ability to identify consciousness in people will change how
we make end-of-life decisions, like the Terri Schiavo case, and
beginning-of-life choices involving abortion. In both instances,
religious conservatives may not be happy with the results.
After we understand more about consciousness, we will know the
brain’s capacities and limits for thought, emotions, reasoning,
love and all aspects of human life, say experts. Scientists are now
studying how groups of neurons form functional networks when we
learn, remember, see, hear, move, and love. And how these give rise
to altruism, sadness, empathy and anger.
When discussions turn to these imponderables, neuroscientist
Gerald Edelman dives right in. Nobel Laureate, physician and cell
biologist, Edelman is now obsessed with the enigma of consciousness
– except he doesn’t see it as a mystery. In his grand theory of
mind, consciousness is merely a biological phenomenon that one day
can be understood and built into our machines.
In a recent Discover Magazine interview, Edelman talked about
his research into synthetic consciousness and construction of a
brain-based device (BBD) that he believes will one day become a
superintelligent machine. Although his BBDs resemble R2D2, he says they are not robots, “because they do
not use artificial intelligence; they operate similar to mammalian
brains.”
Edelman’s team is now working on a new BBD called Darwin 12. It has wheels and legs with 100
different sensors enabling it to climb stairs and navigate unknown
circumstances. This, they hope, will bring them closer to creating
tomorrow’s intelligent household robots.
Although developing tomorrow’s super-intelligent robots poses
many challenges, futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that by as early as
mid-2030s or before, we could experience this “magical future.”
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