How to Grow a Robot: Developing Human-Friendly, Social AI (The MIT Press)

Description

How to develop robots that will be more like humans and less like computers, more social than machine-like, and more playful and less programmed. Most robots are not very friendly. They vacuum the rug, mow the lawn, dispose of bombs, even perform surgery-but they aren't good conversationalists. It's difficult to make eye contact. If the future promises more human-robot collaboration in both work and play, wouldn't it be better if the robots were less mechanical and more social? In How to Grow a Robot, Mark Lee explores how robots can be more human-like, friendly, and engaging. Developments in artificial intelligence-notably Deep Learning-are widely seen as the foundation on which our robot future will be built. These advances have already brought us self-driving cars and chess match-winning algorithms. But, Lee writes, we need robots that are perceptive, animated, and responsive-more like humans and less like computers, more social than machine-like, and more playful and less programmed. The way to achieve this, he argues, is to "grow" a robot so that it learns from experience-just as infants do. After describing "what's wrong with artificial intelligence" (one key shortcoming: it's not embodied), Lee presents a different approach to building human-like robots: developmental robotics, inspired by developmental psychology and its accounts of early infant behavior. He describes his own experiments with the iCub humanoid robot and its development from newborn helplessness to ability levels equal to a nine-month-old, explaining how the iCub learns from its own experiences. AI robots are designed to know humans as objects; developmental robots will learn empathy. Developmental robots, with an internal model of "self," will be better interactive partners with humans. That is the kind of future technology we should work toward. Contents Preface Acknowledgments I. What's Wrong with Artificial Intelligence? 1. The Nature of the Problem Acting and Thinking The Social Robot The Role of Artificial Intelligence Intelligence in General Brains Need Bodies The Structure and Theme of This Book Coping with the Pace of Change A Note on Jargon 2. Commercial Robots Domestic Robots and Service Robots Field Robotics Robotic Road Vehicles Medical Robots Swarm Robotics Entertainment Robots Companion Robots Humanlike Robots? Observations 3. From Research Bench to Market Bin Picking Biorobotics Care and Assistive Robots Affective Computing Humanoid Robots Why Has Industrial Robotics Been So Successful? The Current State of Robotics Observations 4. A Tale of Brute Force Searching through the Options The World Chess Champion Is a Computer—So What? Computer "Thinking'' The Outcome Observations 5. Knowledge versus Power How Can Knowledge Be Stored for Utilization? Common Sense Knowledge Search Is a Standard Technique Symbols and Numbers Learning to Improve Feature Engineering Observations 6. A Little Vision and a Major Breakthrough The End of Feature Engineering What Happened? Observations 7. The Rise of the Learning Machines The Evolution of Machine Learning Data Mining in Supermarkets Learning Algorithms That Learn Algorithms Discovering Patterns Big Data Statistics Is Important, but Misunderstood The Revolution Continues—with Deep Zero Observations 8. Deep Thought and Other Oracles AI Is a Highly Focused Business Task-Based AI Machine Oracles Knowledge Engineering Social Conversation Observations 9. Building Giant Brains Brain-Building Projects Whole Brain Emulation (WBE) The Brain Is a Machine—So What? Basic Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) Different Approaches: AI and Brain Science More Advanced Networks Predictive Coding and Autoencoders Issues with ANNs Simulation Problems for Robots Observations 10. Bolting It All Together The Complexity of Modular Interactions How Can Computers Represent What They Know and Experience? The Limitations of Task-Based AI General AI Master Algorithms Biological Comparisons Superintelligence (SI) Integrating Deep Artificial NeuralNetworks (ANNs) Observations for Part I II. Robots That Grow and Develop 11. Groundwork—Synthesis, Grounding, and Authenticity The Classical Cybernetics Movement Modern Cybernetics Symbol Grounding The New Robotics Observations 12. The Developmental Approach—Grow Your Own Robot The Role of Ontogeny: Growing Robots Sequences, Stages, and Timelines Constraints on Development Start Small and Start Early The Importance of Anatomy The Amazing Complexity of the Human Body Autonomy and Motivation Play—Exploration and Discovery without Goals An Architecture for Growth Observations 13. Developmental Growth in the iCub Humanoid Robot iCub—A Humanoid Robot for Research Managing the Constraints of Immaturity Vision, Gazing, and Fixations Motor and Visual Spaces Object Perception Experiment 1—Longitudinal Development Experiment 2—The Generation of Play Behavior How Does It Work? III. Where Do We Go from Here? 14. How Developmental Robots Will Develop How Developmental Robots Behave Taught, not Programmed Knowing Oneself and Other Agents Self-Awareness Is Common in Animals Robot Selves Consciousness Communication Developmental Characteristics Will All This Happen? We Must Get Out More . . . Observations 15. How AI and AI-Robots Are Developing Task-Based AI Human-Level AI (HLAI) Deep AI Robot Developments Social Robots Artificial Human Intelligence (AHI) Observations 16. Understanding Future Technology Rapid Growth—It's Not Really Exponential Growth Patterns in the Twenty-First Century—So Far Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Deep Networks, Learning, and Autonomous Learning Are There Any Dead Certainties? Trust, Validation, and Safety The Product-Centered Viewpoint The Crucial Role of Humans The Ethical Viewpoint Lessons from Opaque and Unregulated Markets Observations 17. Futurology and Science Fiction Are We Smart Enough to Know How SmartAnimals Are? What Kind of World Do We Live In? Futurology, Expert Opinion, and Meta-opinions Threats on the Horizon? Superintelligence and the Singularity Transhumanism—Downloading the Brain Imminent Threats Toward Dystopia? It's Not All Doom and Gloom! Threats in Perspective Final Remarks Appendix: A Principles for the Developmental Approach Notes Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Bibliography Index