Robopets, Coming Soon

from the not-quite-roborover dept

As a child I remember dreaming of having robotic pets whilst flicking through my favourite sci-fi books. Amusingly enough it always seemed to a long way off. Then I heard of Aibo (assuming it was just another form of radio controlled robot), I was delighted to find that it was actually an autonomous, simple robot. Now it seems that this one product has sparked off an interest in consumer robotics again, dog.com is the latest of these creations. With a nice low price tag and some pretty advanced emotional displays. Will this be the way that we humans will embrace robots initially, as pets?
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  1. identicon
    mhh5, 6 Sep 2000 @ 1:31am

    Robots are our servants...

    Humans have already embraced robots as our slaves. Pets are just a subset of the slave-category... The real question is when will *we* be the slaves to the computers...? :) If humans ever co-exist with robots as "equals", it won't be long until they become our masters....

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Ryan, 6 Sep 2000 @ 3:20am

    Re: Robots are our servants...

    Hmmm.... possibly that goes along with the whole Bill Joy scenario. We have to be really careful to about giving biological motives to machines, they don't have the same drives that we do so terms such as master and slave in my opinion don't really apply. They perform a task, that's it. As they get more adaptive and "intelligent" it is possible that they will out compete us. It's not a future that scares me because we will at some point probably have a chance to shed our biological skins and join them (in one way or another). Pretty freaky, eh? The only problem comes for those unwilling to change.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    mhh5, 6 Sep 2000 @ 2:20pm

    Re: Robots are our servants...

    Well, if robots out compete us, and we have to turn into them (can't beat 'em, join 'em), what about the people who aren't unwilling to change but *can't* change for whatever reasons? What if the robots don't *let* us change? What if they need us to remain human to do their maintenance? Or we all (cough) turn into coppertops...? :)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Ryan, 7 Sep 2000 @ 5:39am

    Re: Robots are our servants...

    umm...being a coppertop isn't that bad after all Neo will come and save us!

    I sort of view change as a gradual death and rebirth so it death seems unescapable (it's just the means that will differ gradual which is fine to most humans or instant, without rebirth which isn't). I believe that we will as a society gradual become one with our artificial creations, so those who don't or can't will probably just be left to their own means (quite literally). If a superior intelligence emerged why would they need to destroy us or enslave us, just leave the planet but I'm sure a lot of us would want to join them. Okay, that's enough of the unfounded craziness that I occasionally cook up.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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