Artificial Intelligence examples in Robots 

There are lots of different types of robots; insect robots, animal robots, jellyfish robots, toy robots, cooking robots, military robots? An android is a human-like robot...it look like a human, talks like a human; it acts like a human.  

 Androids are the pinnacle of robotics and artificial intelligence. Successfully building an android is essentially like creating synthetic life in our image. So how close are we to building an android? Right now, there are only a handful of robots that are anywhere close to passing themselves off as human. 

Not only do these 'bots look and feel weird, their artificial intelligence systems... aren't that intelligent. But roboticists and computer engineers are working on humanoid, intelligent robots all over the world. Why? Because who doesn't want a robot cook, butler, or driver? But making science-fiction a reality is way harder than it looks. Even just attempting to make robots look and move like humans is hard. 

AI has gotten very smart in specific aspects, most recently in perception. Well, you have speech recognition, as well as image recognition software on your cell phones. 

One of the pieces that AI is not still very good at is things like grasping and manipulation of physical objects. Things like cooking require enough excellent motion skills that it will be at least need ten years. 

You now have more sophisticated robots that can pick and move around and help you, more as a complement to the human capabilities rather than replacement. So robots can't physically cook you dinner and clean up afterward - yet. 

Even though most of the robots that you see online are more like this, we're not that far from robotic limbs that perform basic movements. 

In the last ten years, bionic prosthetic arms have come a long way. Many models have decent grip strength and individual finger articulation. But, they're still controlled by people. 

We don't fully understand how our muscles work. It's a complicated system that robotic technology can help to unravel. 

So, that's where we are with movement, but right now, that's the best we've got. And when it comes to the looks department, we're far away. Synthetic robot skin is made of things like silicone and polyurethane. 

It still can't bounce back or feel something. As you probably know, it doesn't even look real. Realistic, synthetic skin will need to be sensitive to different tactile experiences like heat and cold, and no one is even close. 

As for a humanoid robot with smart AI, a robotic skeleton, artificial limbs, and flawless skin? That could take decades, or longer.

We'll have better sensors, sensor meaning cameras, smaller, higher resolution, faster, detecting what's out there, but it's not only visual. It will be auditory. It will be tactile, fingers, hands.

 

Maybe we're overthinking this, do we want or need robots to be humanoid, like the replicants in Blade Runner? 

Or would we be happy with them being out of sight, like the disembodied voice on Star Trek?

If you want a household robot that walks from one room to the other, then you're probably looking for something that looks humanoid. Still, if on the other hand, you're looking for a smart home, and food appears in front of you, that's a smart home, not an intelligent robot. In terms of the challenges, they're the same, it's as to which one you prefer is an issue.

What it's really about is the task. Androids are great for working around the house, but several companies are already proving we don't necessarily need a humanoid robot to drive a car. Perhaps the more significant obstacle to overcome isn't physicality or looks. If we want intelligent robots to work for us, we're going to need them to learn to work with us. 

To be a competent assistant, you need to be able to read the other person's mind. That's the whole direction that' happening right now. And there is this entire saying that the reason humans have the large brains that we have is not to run away from the tigers in the savanna but to be with each other. 

So what we need is to find a way to not only make robots act human but, for them to understand and even anticipate what' son our minds entirely. And is that what we mean by intelligence? 

What is knowledge anyway? How do you test it? How do you know when a thing is intelligent? 

Intelligence involves things like perception, things like the ability to manipulate the world, emotional intelligence, social intelligence. That process of how you deal with the never seen before, never heard before, never experienced before, and still, you somehow know how to react is something that we don't understand. 

It'll be at least 25 years or more before we reach human-level intelligence, and we do contact human-level knowledge, that we will have also passed the Turing test. Alan Turing is often referred to as the father of modern computing.

He said, "a computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human." But anyone who's ever chatted with a bot online knows they're not great. They don't always understand. The repetitive; they don't respond in the way a human would -- or they know things that no human would know off the top of their heads! 

There was this one human being who knew so much about all the arcana of Shakespeare that people essentially decided that it must be a machine because nobody with a real-life would know so much about Shakespeare. 

Robots are a-common', and while they may not be in humanoid form, they will be replacing the work of humans across our society. Blue-collar, white-collar, nobody is safe. 

The reality is that anything routine, whether it is cognitive or non-cognitive, is going to be replaced. So, for example, truck driving is something that within five years, it's probably going to be gone. Radiologists: you got five years. Psychologists: we have an app for that. Sports and economics reporters: Too late, computers already do that job. 

So, how close are we to creating androids? 

Smart AI systems already exist, and we' rea decade away from building robots that move like us, though, aesthetically, we've still got some significant challenges to overcome. There's no incentive to put all the pieces of the intelligent humanoid robot puzzle together, at least, not yet. 

But in reality, we're not building toward a future where one type of artificially intelligent robot will exist. For better or for worse, we're heading toward a world where a whole fleet of specialized robots will be developed, each taking over its little world.