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This site contains depictions of
robots as they might
someday live on our planet or elsewhere. The pictures are accompanied
by
ruminations on the nature of living robots and unearthly ecologies.
Robots are pure machines. They are neither cyborgs nor androids. Many robots exist today. But none of them is alive. Now, on Earth, there are robots that adapt. There are robots that mimic some of the simple elements of insect behavior. There are robots that duplicate a few human facial expressions. But all of these are trivial machines. None of them is alive.
A robot that could exist without aid of any human or other biological entity might be considered alive though. Are humans smart enough to create such machine? Would such machines consider humans to be alive?
There
are many definitions for the term robot, but here we are interested in
what
might exist independent of humans in the distant future, or in other
places in
the universe. The definition we will
consider is the following: Living Robots are entities who owe their
beginnings to
another form of life that existed previously to them who created
their
ancestors. Further, living robots are self propagating. They
reproduce or build offspring that are also capable of reproducing.
Robots
that exist and reproduce in an environment after their creators have
ceased to
exist may start to integrate themselves with their biological post
civilization
environment. They may use other living things as material or even
include other
living things as part of their structure.
In time, as traces of their creators disappear, these robots
might take
on a natural non-modular and organic appearance. They will need to eat.
Robots
that build themselves and their offspring might still be considered
true
machines, but entities
that depend on biological elements for their
procreation
should be considered cyborgs. Cyborg creatures are part machine, part
biological
entity.
It is likely that humans are smart enough to build
machines that might someday lead to real living machines. It is
not clear that humans are smart enough
to directly build living machines.
Current research into fully autonomous robotic systems remains at a
very
low level, at least in terms of something that might be considered
alive.
Humans are not very smart. The largest
part of our intelligence is contained within our society. We are
educated with this intelligence, and
are able to do moderately complex things.
Without this, we would be reduced to a rudimentary level similar to
other biological entities. Robots
however, might be able to develop intelligence from scratch just by
experience. Perhaps a living robot could
learn about its world, and then create symbolic representations for
itself, and
then derive a deep understanding of nature, all without the aid of
others. Eventually, such a living robot would acquire
the knowledge to design and build its own offspring. Its children
would spring from pure though,
develop from direct experience with the universe. Humans cannot
do this.
Many human researchers have given up entirely on the goal of building a thinking robot. A common statement reflecting this is “a human must be in the loop”. These people have given up on our future.
