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1
When and how did your fascination with robots begin?
Hands
down, robots are just plain cool as hell. Ask any roboticist
why they do it, and that's the answer you get. As a
kid, I fell in love with Transformers, but all my parents
could afford were crappy Go-Bots. Did I care? No. A
robot is a robot. Around middle-school I fell in love
again, this time with Vickie, a child star who played
an android girl on the TV sitcom, "Small Wonder." There
was this episode where Vickie starts dating a computer,
sort of a "brain in a box." Instead of walking around,
this thing had to use artificial intelligence to pull
a lot of strings (you know, to kill pesky humans and
so on). Now I thought that was really cool. I suddenly
liked the idea of a smart computer, mostly because I
had a computer in my bedroom. So I started trying to
program it to make it smart -- smart enough to talk,
smart enough to do my homework, smart enough to run
amok. As it turns out, I'm still working on it...
2
Could you tell us a bit about your day job? What does
a roboticist do all day? And if I wanted to be one,
how would I do it?
Right now I am a graduate student
at Carnegie Mellon University. Oh, the life of a graduate
student! In my opinion, being a grad student is much
better than working for a living. My "robot" is actually
my house, so I usually work from home all day. That
means either goofing around my office, wading through
piles of books and hen-scratched notebooks, or climbing
around in the basement and behind walls, placing little
eyes and ears (sensors) so that the house can keep an
eye on everybody. Please keep in mind that I work for
the forces of good -- my robot house is designed to keep
elderly people safe. Now, if you want to become a roboticist,
it isn't all that hard. The field is huge and if you
can't stomach the math required for the really cool
stuff, then you can always study how children interact
with robots, or take photos of robots, or just suck
up to them in general -- they love that. I would suggest
taking the school route, instead of the amateur-destroy-your-mother's-basement
route. Besides, all the best evil geniuses are well-educated.
So, take an undergraduate degree in something nerdy,
like computer science or engineering, then go to graduate
school and focus your research on robotics. Before you
know it, you'll have a house full of metal friends and
mechanical arms the size of telephone poles.
3
You clearly believe a robot uprising is a very real
threat. Robot rebellion aside, what are your top five
fears and why?
Err... I believe the chance of a Hollywood-style robot
uprising happening is about as likely as a Hollywood-style
King Kong attack on New York City. And don't even get
me started talking about the very real threat of a robotic
King Kong uprising (another book in the making?). So,
I should confess -- I wrote this book to make fun of
all the killer robots in the popular media. I don't
believe that the robots have it together enough yet
for a revolution. They can barely walk, they can't throw
Molotov cocktails, and most importantly, they have no
berets. That puts a definite damper on la rˇvolution
robotique. On the other hand, humans are designing plenty
of all-too-real robots to do things like "neutralize
enemy combatants," or "increase troop survivability."
Is it just me, or does that sound suspiciously like
"KILL, KILL, KILL?" If I were a human being, which I
am, then I wouldn't worry about my disgruntled robot
vacuum cleaner; I would keep my human eyes peeled for
government subsidized, skyscraper-sized atomic kill-bots
with laboratory-grown artificial brains and writhing
tentacles as sharp as razor wire. But maybe a robotic
vacuum cleaner paid me to say that.
4
Is there any possibility that robots might be our friends?
Robots
are tools. If people want tools designed to be their
friends (and I suspect they do), then some enterprising
business-person will build one and turn a great profit.
So, I think plenty of robots will become our friends.
I mean look at me, most of my friends are complete tools.
5
Are there any public figures you strongly suspect may
be robots? And if so, why?
Television
newscasters. I'm convinced that every television newscaster
is really a humanoid robot. It's the way their mouths
snap open and shut on cue, all day long. Newscasters
may have powdered faces and manicured little hands from
the front, but the view from behind must be a mess of
humming wires and leaky hydraulic pumps. At least, that's
what I heard.
6
Has Hollywood got the future right or wrong? Which
film about the future do you think really tells it like
it will be, and why?
Which
film about the future do you think really tells it like
it will be, and why? Paramount Pictures recently optioned
the film rights to HOW TO SURVIVE A ROBOT UPRISING,
and I firmly believe that Paramount is completely on
top of the robot uprising scene -- especially because
they hired a couple of extremely goofy comedians to
write the screenplay. As for existing films, it is hard
to say whether anybody in Hollywood has the future predicted.
Luckily, Hollywood's job is not to predict the future,
it's to put peoples' butts into movie seats. Oddly enough,
in the United States robots usually entertain humans
by mercilessly slaughtering them in movies. In Japan
the robots are nicer. I think they are both ridiculously
fun to watch, but I wouldn't believe a bit of it. On
the other hand, science fiction movies (even the worst
ones) shape peoples' perceptions of robots, including
the people who make robots. So, you'll have a guy with
thick glasses and a lab coat walking out of the theater
thinking about how to make a robot that can rip open
the top of a car like a can opener. I don't believe
Hollywood has it right or wrong. Instead of looking
for predictions, I'll just keep watching movies by night
and building metal monstrosities by day. You know, building
the future.
7
Do you have a favourite robot in film or TV? And why?
I love Bender from Futurama. Did you know that he's
a Mexican-born love-bot with an outrageous in-your-face
attitude?
8
And who or what is your most loathed film or TV robot?
First
of all, robots should not be hairy. But that is strictly
my personal opinion. So, although I have nothing against
the actor, I am filled with loathing when I think of
Robin Williams as that awful robot from "Bicentennial
Man." In this movie, a vastly superior humanoid robot
painstakingly transforms itself into a grotesque parody
of a (hairy) human being -- all so that he can marry
a human woman and then kick the bucket. I suppose that
I'm just bothered by the assumption that people are
somehow better than robots, and that it is worth crippling
yourself to conform.
9
Who are your favourite futuristic writers? And why?
I'm
into all the standard fare: Dick, Vonnegut, Asimov,
Niven, Heinlen, Clarke. I really dig this novel called
Sea of Glass by Barry Longyear. Outside of sci-fi, there
are a lot of contemporary roboticists who are busy predicting
the future and drawing lines in the sand. Silicon versus
gray matter, winner take planet, as they say. My pal
Hans Moravec (who sits across the hall from my office
at Carnegie Mellon University) has decided that mankind
should eventually hand the keys over to superior robots
and then hope not to be exterminated. Rodney Brooks
at MIT predicts that people will physically meld with
the robots and become mega-cyborgs. Sydney Perkowitz
seems to agree. On the other hand, Ray Kurzweil judiciously
observes that we're clearly going to upload our digitized
brains into robot bodies and live forever as a race
of super-human robo-men. When that overly talkative
guy hanging around the bus stop makes the same predictions,
no one will listen. It kind of makes you want to be
a roboticist, doesn't it?
10
Finally, do androids dream of electric sheep?
Yes,
they do -- right up until they retire (or are retired).
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