Wuh-oh. When does it officially become time for the human race to pack it in? How about when a group of scientists make a robot capable of deceiving humans? Seriously, friends, we’re getting into Hall 9000/Blade Runner territory, here. Since when did creating the perfect vacuum cleaning robot become an unacceptable option? Now it’s got to lie to us about which room it cleaned?
Okay, I’m probably overreacting here. Here’s the actual quote from Ronald Arkin, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing, who was directly involved with the project,
We have developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and we have designed techniques that help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to reduce its chance of being discovered.
Nope, I stand by my original statement, Stanley Kubrick references and all. This is scary stuff. The scientist are attempt to soothe our fears before they go completely out of control (put your torches away–for now). Says, Alan Wagner, a co-author,
Most social robots will probably rarely use deception, but it’s still an important tool in the robot’s interactive arsenal because robots that recognize the need for deception have advantages in terms of outcome compared to robots that do not recognize the need for deception.
Sure Alan. That’s what they want us to thing.
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