Doubters in the Church of Technology

2010-09-15 (수) 12:00:00

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The promises of the robotic age, reported on with enthusiasm in the mainstream media and the technology world, envision a future where our lives are improved by our new friends made of metal, wire, transistors and imbued with artificial intelligence. These machines will help us care for elderly Alzheimer’s patients, teach children with behavioral disorders and let us manage offices from afar.

The mind meld of computer and man, known as the Singularity, has taken on religious overtones among the high priests of technology in Silicon Valley. Others are not so sure these promises are a good thing.

“The very idea of artificial intelligence gives us the cover to avoid accountability by pretending that machines can take on more and more human responsibility,” Jaron Lanier, the author of “You Are Not a Gadget,” wrote in The Times.

Mr. Lanier, who has titles like “partner architect” at Microsoft and “innovator in residence” at a university, cautions that thinking of robots as fellow creatures instead of tools is “reshaping the basic assumptions of our lives in misguided and ultimately damaging ways.”

A new generation of robots is making it possible for workers to seem to be in two places at once, The Times reported. These mobile machines, known as telepresence robots, usually have a computer monitor as the “head” and a body on wheels that allows the remote user to move around a room.

Some doctors are using these to examine patients from afar. Managers are using them to attend meetings remotely or roll the robot around an office in California when they are at a desk in Toronto. While some say these machines let them have “interpersonal connections” during meetings and interact with people as if they were in the same room, not all are convinced.

“It’s cool, but it’s a little gimmicky,” Michael Arrington, founder and coeditor of the technology news Web site TechCrunch, told The Times. Although he now lives much of the year in Seattle and manages his Silicon Valley Web site from afar, he said he would consider the robot as a stunt, perhaps for an interview, but not to run his company. “You can walk around, but you can’t really see what’s going on,” he said.

On a practical level, if robots that are now entering the classroom become popular in the teaching field the way other computing technologies have, John Markoff wrote recently in The Times, parents may have questions that go beyond ethical and practical concerns: “Does this robot really ‘get’ my child? Is its teaching style right for my son’s needs, my daughter’s talents?” RUBI, a robot which is mounted on a pair of tennis shoes with a screen in its torso, mechanical arms and a boxy head, was successful teaching children, according to tests conducted in San Diego, The Times reported.

But there were some unanticipated problems. Children flocked to RUBI when it first joined the classroom, but by the end of the day a couple of boys had ripped off its arms. “The problem with autonomous machines is that people are so unpredictable, especially children,” Corinna E. Lathan, chief executive of a Maryland company that makes a remotely controlled robot, CosmoBot, to assist in therapy with developmentally delayed children, told The Times. “It’s impossible to anticipate everything that can happen.”

TOM BRADY