I once had a robotics professor who argued any definition of 'robot' broad enough to include roombas and self-driving cars and industrial robot arms (even if made narrow enough to exclude remote-control toy cars, cars with cruise control, CNC mills and washing machines) would inevitably define cruise missiles as robots. Meaning the world had 'killer robots' before we had digital computers.
Instead, he argued the definition of a robot is "I know it when I see it"
> neither versatile in its objective, nor programmable.
how programmable does it have to be for the robotic classification to stick? A cruise missile also cannot be programmed to be general - you can only program it to follow a trajectory. Just like you can only program a dishwasher to do dishes in a particular way.
Most robots are programmed to do one thing well. You could program a cruise missile to fly around in circles or chase the sun, just like you could program an industrial robot arm to wave like a music conductor, but they don't because that doesn't match the goals of their users.
A cruise missile being a robot is not far-fetched, I’d say. In Swedish both cruise and ballistic missiles (and other similar munitions) are called robots within the military.
"I know it when I see it" has to be up there in terms of useless thought-terminating clichés together with "no smoke without fire" and "if he wanted to he would"
I think the modern day equivalent is the constant huffing and puffing around where to draw the line for tech legislation, with the implicit message that 'if a line is hard to draw, we should not draw it' and a constant bad-faith battle for perfectly defined legislation.
The answer to 'where do we draw the line for this thing that has widespread negative effects' is always "somewhere".
It goes a bit further than that. If there isn't a somewhat objective definition then you can't ever be sure that two people are talking about the same thing. Sharing the same context isn't enough to reliably get a convergence of beliefs about whether something falls into a category. And it is a mistake to start legislating about it because the laws are going to be meaningless.
Roombas, self driving cars, industrial robot arms (depending on what they do), cruise control,cruise missiles, are all robots by the dictionary definition. They react to their environment. That's the classifier.
His view of I know it when I see it is nuts but he is right on many of the classifications. Some were incorrect though. But a robot is just anything that has a sensor to interact with the environment.
We have simply changed the meaning to be more human like which is not accurate.
> They react to their environment. That's the classifier.
An industrial robot arm, out of the box, only has internal sensing (joint position, torque etc) and a start/stop button - can't sense the external environment at all.
But I've got a light on my porch that turns on when it gets dark.
By the 'react to the environment' definition the former is not a robot, and the latter is.
Sorry to be pedantic - but the correct naming is "kamikaze drone" or "suicide drone" when The Bad Guys (tm) use them and "Cruise Missile" or "Precision Drone" when The Good Guys (tm) deploy them.
Robot etymology is from Czech robota, robotník, robotiti. To work, worker, to do work. I especially like "road works" signs in Poland saying "uwaga roboty drogowe" and translate/visualise it in my mind like "Danger robots on the road"
the common distinction between robot and machine is that machines are mostly stationary and don't move by themselves. (Self-driving cars sit in between, depending on further developments, they might slide into the bot category.)
I strongly advise the podcast "Robot Or Not". The hosts have very strong opinions on what exactly constitutes a robot, and readers write in with edge cases. It's been going on for a long time, so nowadays they also categorize other things.
Roomba and the likes are definitely robots. The advanced ones have cameras, map your floor, vaccuum clean, water clean, etc. You can contact them remotely (a friend uses her cleaning robot to spy on her husband while he's at home!) and give them orders.
Nobody ever said "robot" meant "machines with AGI thinking": robot, literally as defined by the person mentioned in TFA and who coined the term, meant "to work" / "forced labor". Work/labor that could be done by servants.
If cleaning my entire apartment by vaccuum cleaning, water cleaning, giving me reports about it, obeying my orders (e.g. if I tell to stop) ain't "automated labor that could have been done by a servant", I don't know what is.
"The utility of a robot is inversely proportional to how much it looks like a robot." -- Buckbee's law.
I once had a robotics professor who argued any definition of 'robot' broad enough to include roombas and self-driving cars and industrial robot arms (even if made narrow enough to exclude remote-control toy cars, cars with cruise control, CNC mills and washing machines) would inevitably define cruise missiles as robots. Meaning the world had 'killer robots' before we had digital computers.
Instead, he argued the definition of a robot is "I know it when I see it"
What's wrong with a cruise missle being defined as a robot? It is one.
Also I'd argue that a CNC machine is a robot as well, no different than a programmable industrial robotic arm.
IMHO, a dishwasher isn't a robot because it is neither versatile in its objective, nor programmable.
> neither versatile in its objective, nor programmable.
how programmable does it have to be for the robotic classification to stick? A cruise missile also cannot be programmed to be general - you can only program it to follow a trajectory. Just like you can only program a dishwasher to do dishes in a particular way.
Most robots are programmed to do one thing well. You could program a cruise missile to fly around in circles or chase the sun, just like you could program an industrial robot arm to wave like a music conductor, but they don't because that doesn't match the goals of their users.
A cruise missile being a robot is not far-fetched, I’d say. In Swedish both cruise and ballistic missiles (and other similar munitions) are called robots within the military.
An anti-tank mine is a robot.
"I know it when I see it" has to be up there in terms of useless thought-terminating clichés together with "no smoke without fire" and "if he wanted to he would"
For those unaware, this was famously stated as a test for hardcore pornography by a Supreme Court of the US justice in 1964.
Yeah. It's really bothersome.
I think the modern day equivalent is the constant huffing and puffing around where to draw the line for tech legislation, with the implicit message that 'if a line is hard to draw, we should not draw it' and a constant bad-faith battle for perfectly defined legislation.
The answer to 'where do we draw the line for this thing that has widespread negative effects' is always "somewhere".
The point is that there is no objective measure one can use and the definition at any given time is dependent on the cultural and societal context.
Something that might have been considered pornography 100 years ago might be considered tame today.
It goes a bit further than that. If there isn't a somewhat objective definition then you can't ever be sure that two people are talking about the same thing. Sharing the same context isn't enough to reliably get a convergence of beliefs about whether something falls into a category. And it is a mistake to start legislating about it because the laws are going to be meaningless.
Roombas, self driving cars, industrial robot arms (depending on what they do), cruise control,cruise missiles, are all robots by the dictionary definition. They react to their environment. That's the classifier.
His view of I know it when I see it is nuts but he is right on many of the classifications. Some were incorrect though. But a robot is just anything that has a sensor to interact with the environment.
We have simply changed the meaning to be more human like which is not accurate.
> They react to their environment. That's the classifier.
An industrial robot arm, out of the box, only has internal sensing (joint position, torque etc) and a start/stop button - can't sense the external environment at all.
But I've got a light on my porch that turns on when it gets dark.
By the 'react to the environment' definition the former is not a robot, and the latter is.
Same for “drones”: a cruise missile is as much of a drone as a Shahed 136, and remote-controlled boats or planes are also technically drones.
Sorry to be pedantic - but the correct naming is "kamikaze drone" or "suicide drone" when The Bad Guys (tm) use them and "Cruise Missile" or "Precision Drone" when The Good Guys (tm) deploy them.
Robot etymology is from Czech robota, robotník, robotiti. To work, worker, to do work. I especially like "road works" signs in Poland saying "uwaga roboty drogowe" and translate/visualise it in my mind like "Danger robots on the road"
the common distinction between robot and machine is that machines are mostly stationary and don't move by themselves. (Self-driving cars sit in between, depending on further developments, they might slide into the bot category.)
I strongly advise the podcast "Robot Or Not". The hosts have very strong opinions on what exactly constitutes a robot, and readers write in with edge cases. It's been going on for a long time, so nowadays they also categorize other things.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/robot-or-not/id9979302...
https://open.spotify.com/show/4M2AELzmQy77FxaYZMl6e9
https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/robot-or-not/b911efc0-e2f6-0...
And if you get a taste for opinionated Siracusa, look up the toaster ovens saga.
Roomba and the likes are definitely robots. The advanced ones have cameras, map your floor, vaccuum clean, water clean, etc. You can contact them remotely (a friend uses her cleaning robot to spy on her husband while he's at home!) and give them orders.
Nobody ever said "robot" meant "machines with AGI thinking": robot, literally as defined by the person mentioned in TFA and who coined the term, meant "to work" / "forced labor". Work/labor that could be done by servants.
If cleaning my entire apartment by vaccuum cleaning, water cleaning, giving me reports about it, obeying my orders (e.g. if I tell to stop) ain't "automated labor that could have been done by a servant", I don't know what is.
The Crushinator might disagree if the premise is that an appliance/machine shaped thing can't be a robot.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=futurama+...