Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind

by Hans P. Moravec

Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195136306

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Book Description

This is science fiction without the fiction and more mind-bending than anything you ever saw on Star Trek. Moravec, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, envisions a not-too-distant future in which robots of superhuman intelligence have picked up the evolutionary baton from their human creators and headed out into space to colonize the universe.

This isn't anything that a million sci-fi paperbacks haven't already envisioned. The difference lies in Moravec's practical-minded mapping of the technological, economic, and social steps that could lead to that vision. Starting with the modest accomplishments of contemporary robotics research, he projects a likely course for the next 40 years of robot development, predicting the rise of superintelligent, creative, emotionally complex cyberbeings and the end of human labor by the middle of the next century.

After Moravec makes this point, his projections start to get really wild: robot corporations will take up residence in outer space with rogue cyborgs; planet-size robots will cruise the solar system looking for smaller bots to assimilate; and eventually every atom in the entire galaxy will be transformed into data-storage space, with a full-scale simulation of human civilization running as a subroutine somewhere.

His last chapter, which mingles the latest in avant-garde physics with hints of Borges's most intoxicating metaphysical conceits, is a breathtaking piece of hallucinatory eschatology. Moravec concludes by reminding us that even the wildest long-range predictions about the technological future never turn out to be as unhinged as they should have been.

The New York Times Book Review, Collin McGinn

Moravec's book is ... intellectually adventurous and free with confident futuristic speculations.

From Scientific American

Moravec, founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, foresees big things for robots. "Barring cataclysms, I consider the development of intelligent machines a near-term inevitability." First- generation universal robots, with lizard-scale intelligence, will be at hand by 2010, he says. No more than 30 years later, fourth-generation robots will have human-scale processing power. "The fourth robot generation ... will have human perceptual and motor abilities and superior reasoning powers. They could replace us in every essential task and, in principle, operate our society increasingly well without us." Indeed, they should be able to carry human capabilities into the rest of the universe. And what will people do when the robots take over? They will all be able to lead the kind of life now enjoyed only by the idle rich.

From Booklist

Moravec is a pioneer designer of robots, and here extrapolates how their future and humanity's may evolve over the next century. With computer power increasing exponentially, Moravec regards the emergence of machine intelligence as inevitable, and, quite sanguine about the prospect, he clearly explains the software ideas that would allow it. Moravec opens with Alan Turing's seminal theories of computing and then describes the difficulties the first robot engineers encountered in getting simple robots to cross a room. Computers lacked common sense (and still do), but Moravec believes the monumental capacity of the future computer will allow it to create an ever more accurate, real-time simulation of its world. After outlining four possible generations of robots, culminating in "Exes" (ex-humans) that design and build themselves, Moravec releases his imagination and has them trooping off Earth, preserved as a nature refuge, and colonizing space in a Darwinian process. Moravec's vision, a bewildering but amazingly interconnected set of ideas, is enthusiastically presented and reasonably argued, and will captivate futurists.

From Book News, Inc.

The founder of the robotics program at Carnegie Mellon University proclaims that artificial intelligence and robotics are on the verge of an evolutionary breakthrough, and proposes a timeline in which robots will meet and then exceed human intelligence as soon as 2050. He predicts first massive unemployment as robots take all the jobs, then an eon of milk and honey as they do all the work, and finally the end or transformation of humans as we are supplanted by our creations. He thinks all this is a good idea.

Analog, Tom Easton

...a stimulating, provocative treat for your own mind.

Selmer Bringsjord, IEEE Spectrum, October 1999

The writing radiates a love of science and engineering that is in short supply these days....And if you are interested in the history of robotics, then htis book is an elegantly written celebration of a past you will want to know better.

Wired, Charles Platt

Robot is a dramatic, awe-inspiring prophecy of the human future ... in concise, simple, yet elegant prose.

Book Description

In this compelling book, Hans Moravec predicts that machines will attain human levels of intelligence by the year 2040, and that by 2050, they will surpass us. But even though Moravec predicts the end of the domination by human beings, his is not a bleak vision. Far from railing against a future in which machines rule the world, Moravec embraces it, taking the startling view that intelligent robots will actually be our evolutionary heirs. "Intelligent machines, which will grow from us, learn our skills, and share our goals and values, can be viewed as children of our minds." And since they are our children, we will want them to outdistance us. In fact, in a bid for immortality, many of our descendants will choose to transform into "ex humans," as they upload themselves into advanced computers.

This provocative new book, the highly anticipated follow-up to his bestselling volume Mind Children, charts the trajectory of robotics in breathtaking detail. A must read for artificial intelligence, technology, and computer enthusiasts, Moravec's freewheeling but informed speculations present a future far different than we ever dared imagine.

Ingram

Robotics expert Hans Moravec provides a mind-bending look at a future when robots will rule the world, presenting a vision far different than most have ever dared to imagine. 31 halftones.

Card catalog description

In this mind-bending new book, Hans Moravec takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride packed with startling predictions. He tells us, for instance, that in the not-too-distant future, an army of robots will displace workers, causing massive, unprecedented unemployment. But then, says Moravec, a period of very comfortable existence will follow, as humans benefit from a fully automated economy. And eventually, as machines evolve far beyond humanity, robots will supplant us. But if Moravec predicts the end of the domination by human beings, his is not a bleak vision. Far from railing against a future in which machines rule the world, Moravec embraces it, taking the startling view that intelligent robots will actually be our evolutionary heirs.

Customer Reviews

I was a little disappointed in this book. Although Hans Moravec is a leading thinker in the field of artificial intelligence and a true pioneer of robotic research, he is not an especially talented writer. Nevertheless, his knowledge is prodigious and the quality of his ideas makes the book worth reading.

One thing that annoyed me was that Moravec overuses the word "robot". He goes to pains to apply the name even to other forms of artificial intelligence that have little resemblance to what we normally think of as robots. I also found his writing style somewhat tedious, a bit like sitting through a long lecture by a brilliant but boring professor.

There are other books I would recommend ahead of this one, most notably "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil. But if you've already devoured the others and you're still hungry for more, Hans Moravec will certainly give you plenty to chew on.

Robots are now pervasive in all areas of human activity, and they are still primitive compared to what was envisioned two decades ago, at which time independent thinking machines and military-capable robots were predicted by the late 1990s.These predictions were very optimistic and way off their mark, but this book aims to set the record straight on A.I. and to make accurate predictions on the future of robotics. The author is very convincing in his arguments that artificial intelligence will accelerate rapidly in the next few decades. He backs up his predictions with empirical evidence from activities and research currently being done in A.I. and robotics, and extrapolates these into the future. Such predictions of course have been made before, and so the author inserts an elment of caution in his analysis, but he does, in his own words, consider intelligent machines an inevitability.

The tone of the book is optimistic, and this is good since many books and movies display an attitude that is threatened by robotics and artificial intelligence. The author does however predict the end of the dominance of biological humans, such beings to be replaced by highly intelligent robots. He is probably wrong here in the sense that humans will not be mere passive spectators in the upcoming age of robots. They will hybridize themselves with the chips invented for the robots, enabling them to stand toe-to-toe with these metal/silicon geniuses. Ever-growing technology implies ever-growing enhancement for the human, visual, muscular, and auditory capabilities.

Karl Marx would raise an eyebrow to the author's prediction of the end of private ownership of the means of production. Hypercompetitiveness, the author argues, will eliminate owners, replacing them by better robot decision makers. But to hold Switzerland up as an example of things to come? Hardly.

The end resulof the robotic evolution, will, the author argues, be the "Exes", beings with awesome intelligence that are able to arrange spacetime and energy for computation. The physics of time trave; os discussed in the context of general relativity, with its nonlinear field equations being solved by "Instant NP" machines, and winning chess games in the process. Some metaphysical speculation is of course included: after all, the strong AI problem is one of the most provocative in philosophical circles. Conscious robots are indeed possible in the author's eyes, or at best possible given our current understanding of it. The robots themselves, with their enhanced capabilities, will have their own arguments about this.....

You have no chance to survive make your time. You have no chance to survive make your time. You have no chance to survive make your time.

Aimed at anyone interested in possible society, technology (especially robotics) and economics in the next century (?all of us), 'Robot' provides an enjoyable and sometimes journalistic-style computer-science viewpoint.

The often globally & historically-robust chapters span: Escape Velocity (weak introduction); Caution Robot Vehicle (better history of robotics/vision); Power & Presence (better still recent state-of-art); Universal Robots (basic future robotics brainstorm including wireless networking via the Internet); The Age of Robots (basic society & markets brainstorm); The Age of Mind; and Mind Fire.

I enjoyed the contemporary exploration of Turing's rebuttals to objections against thinking machines- theological, "heads in sand", mathematical, consciousness, disabilities, Lady Lovelace's, continuity, informality to behavior, and extrasensory perception.

Strengths include: the useful global historical perspective (jumping from Babbage, to Turing, to Asimov, and onwards); the US context on 70s onwards university robotics (vision) research; depth of computer science content; good charts in chapter 3; and an entertaining view of future possibilities.

Weaknesses include: errors & seeming lack of knowledge about industrial robotics (including mystifying them as for experts when standard simple undergraduate engineering tools in 1980s industry); sometimes a "technological solution-first" rather than "appropriate-problem to solve" bias; a need for better use of tables for content- e.g. AI (including missed useful Qualitative Process Theory), adaptive software tools, cybernetics, control paradigms, taxonomy of robotics etc.. (save perhaps 25% of words); and a need for a more structured view of uses of robotics in society & markets (perhaps a rich-text /UML/whatever systems diagram with needs, resources, processes etc..).

Complimentary titles include Groover's 1986 robotics classic "Industrial Robotics : Technology, Programming, and Applications" (ISBN: 007024989X ); as well as numerous Open University (largest distance university in the World) advanced manufacturing course texts addressing robotics in a more structured and robustly applied manner.

Overall a timely, and interesting look at the last 3 decades of Carnegie-Mellon University's (and US) computer-science robotics research, with one set of intriguing possible futures in this fascinating field.

Reading the prologue of Moravec's first book (MIND CHILDREN) introduced me to his unique perspective on humanity's goals. If you look at his work as being like the Bible (which isn't such a stretch, we'll see in a hundred years or so I guess) then this is simply his version of Revelation. The beginning is slow going, but the middle and end build up beautifully to an engrossing idea of what society has been all about from the start. Humans of the Earth, don't be afraid to pass along the baton of culture, when the time comes!!

Moravec's book is a well reasoned extrapolation of the future of artificial intelligence. He is incredibly knowledgable, and very passionate about his field. Unfortunately his prose reminds one of a bad university text book. I would give it an "A+" for content, and a "D" for style. Hopefully Moravec's publisher will discover the ghost writer in time for his next book.

Moravecs schedule for the next 40years is a question of belief - for me a *good* suggestion! One negative point: He sticks to not interconnected robots. Internet is not his world. The minds of his robots have no link to each other.