Page 35 - Anatomy of a Robot

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20 CHAPTER TWO
Every toilet has a control mechanism for refilling the tank with the appropriate
amount of water, and reliability is paramount.
The average toaster is great at browning bread in a repeatable manner.
You can probably walk through a completely dark room, touch a few well-known
milestones, reach out with your hand, and find the light switch almost every time.
We all take the existence of such control systems for granted. Let’s assume we’ve
already built a large, strong robot body with the power, agility, strength, speed, and dex-
terity we believe it needs. Now comes the hard part. Here’s a dream list of intangibles
that might be really nice to have in the robot:

Intelligence
Wisdom
Compassion
Love
Perception
Communication skills

That’s a long list, with many critical characteristics (that a good “person” should
have) left off. How many of these things should we try to cram into the robot?
Carl Sagan, the noted astronomer and author, once commented on the intellectual
horsepower inherent in the control system of an interplanetary probe. He said the
probe’s computer was roughly the intellectual equal of a cricket. To tell the truth, I think
he sold crickets short (see Figure 2-1).
So here’s a word of caution. If you hope to build a machine with wisdom and com-
passion, you have a huge, impossible task before you. Here are some of the profound
problems you’ll have to wrestle with. Forgive me for not explaining myself with all of
these statements. I’d encourage you to consider each for yourself and delve into the rea-
sons for these problems and their implications.

FIGURE 2-1 Crickets are “smarter” than many computers.