"Living robot" Escapes Lab, Makes It To...Parking Lot

jerkychew writes "This is either really cool or really scary, depending on how you look at it. According to this article, scientists in England have been experimenting with so-called 'living robots' that think and act for themselves. During an exercise that pitted the machines against each other in battle, one of the machines, named Gaak, was taken out of the competition and left alone for fifteen minutes. When the scientist returned to retrieve Gaak, he found that the machine had broken free from its 'cage', and made it all the way to the lab's parking lot before it was apprehended! Can the T-1000 be far behind?" Update: 06/20 20:36 GMT by T : Thanks to skywalker404, who points out the Magna site and Professor Noel Sharkey's web page.

Australia

[crimsontiger6]

These scientists are from England, it was only the story that was in an Aussie paper.

Heh

[ObviousGuy]

This after watching 2001 A Space Oddessy last night. Bizarre!

It didn't seem to me that HAL was necessarily crazy, as a lot of reviews imply. He was given special information that made it necessary that he survive all the way to Jupiter. Thus when the two astronauts discuss taking him offline, he reacts in the only way possible.

As for the last half hour of the movie, what was that all about? I understand that the monolith appears when great leaps in evolution are imminent, but Huh?

Re:Asimov had it right

[beebware]

You are remembering 'Runaround' which appeared in Asimov's "I,Robot [amazon.co.uk]" book (available to read online [norax.net]).

Re:FACTS, please..

[Beltza]

Its indeed one of the bots ("living robots") from the Magna show. You can find more information here [livewwware.com] , but certainly not the details you want. All that they say is that the bots use a neural network.

Re:FACTS, please..

[gini_]

From what I have heard or read about these experiments is that they (robots) are equipped with neural networks and not programmed in a sense computers are programmed novadays.

Instead, in the beginning of their life cycles the robots are equipped with certain "instincts" like need to get food (electricity from electric plugs) or need to protect themselves (not colliding with walls or other robots) etc.

Then they (robots) are just left alone buzzing around and learning about their environment like animals do. Fascinating and disturbing at the same time ...

Magna Center

[Martin Spamer]

The Magna Centre (www.magnatrust.org.uk ) is a science museum in Rotterham, south Yorkshire, UK (approx 40 miles southwest of York). It is well worth a visit.

Living Robot exhibition
http://magna.livewwware.com/acg/acgsmg 01.dll/gen/t / ews/ptxt/magna/ptxt2/e32133

Try looking at the BBC's web site search tool

[Keith_Beef]

This [bbc.co.uk] will show lots of links to sories about this AI lab...

Re:Magna Center

[Jack Hughes]

Rotherham, not Rotterham, in case any one is trying to search for it!

The nearest major city is Sheffield... Magna occupies/celebrates a part of the area where Steel is/was manufactured - this area is also the setting for the film "The Full Monty"

Lack of?

[autopr0n]

(bla bla bla, lamenes filter says I'm using too many caps even though I'm quoting...)

oh, and the COMPLETE FRIGGING LACK OF LIMBS, ARMOR, WEAPONS, OR MEANS OF DISABLING THE OTHER ROBOTS."

Um, have you seen this robot? pic [myrobots.co.uk], pic [myrobots.co.uk]

Picture of Gaak.

[dann0]

This page [myrobots.co.uk] has a picture [myrobots.co.uk] of Gaak, the robot in question.

I'd be worried too if I found this heading my way in a carpark!

Another article with a few pics.

[Leo Giertz]

link [myrobots.co.uk]

Re:I saw it in Melbourne!

[JonS]

Or Melbourne near York - in the same county.

Although all that happens there is drag racing on the old RAF Melbourne strip. :-)

Predator or Prey

[Underwaterbob]

From the Magna website: "The prey find their food from light sensors within the arena, while the predators feed off prey by stalking and chasing them before sucking away their power." So the worst thing that could happen would be this thing syphoning someone's gas tank.

Re:this article is very short on details

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly they couldn't have done it as it was run over shortly after making it to the car park (Parking lot). Luckily it wasn't seriously injured and is being repaired.

Re:Why...

[Xaoswolf]

Reminds me of Marvin, from the Hitchhikers guide

Re:A.I:

[Peyna]

Yeah, it had the "desire" the break out. More than likely it was sitting there doing nothing and started doing something and ended up outside. It has no concept of being detained or will to escape. It basically sounds like its supposed to want to suck energy out of prey, so maybe it figured there might be some in the parking lot if the sun was out.

You're giving it far more credit than it deserves. It only knows what prey is, and how to pick it up and connect with it. It doesn't know what captivity is, only that it was in a situation where it wasn't getting prey.

Re:Background on Magna and Living Robots exhibit

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually has enormous scientific value. Experiments of this sort have been done for some time now, except using a computer simulated environment instead of robots. Because there are so few variables and functions (energy, movement, location, detection), the simulation can be fairly small and fast. I don't know about the neural network part, I think it's really just a genetic algorithm. Behaviors, successes, and failures are recorded, and certain behaviors or combinations of behaviors prove more successful and are then more highly incorporated into the next "generation." Some very interesting things have come out of it. Example: If you give the prey the ability to make a noise or some other sort of alert, but don't tell them how to use (i.e.: just have them beep randomly in the first generation), then after several generations the prey will learn, completely through evolution of their own, to travel in packs and use the beep to warn each other of approaching predators, or to notify each other of nearby food, whichever proves more useful to the species.
Another example involves a simulated lake and geometric shapes. Basically, you simulate the physical conditions of water, and drop a bunch of "food" into it, and also drop some random geometric shapes into it and tell them they must eat. Each generation is automtically designed to more closely resemble the shapes that got the most food in the last generation. You know what you get after several generations? A bunch of shapes that look remarkably like a school of fish.
These types of algorithms have also been used to solve real-world problems. An average PC running a genetic algorithm can find a "good enough" or "very good" solution to a problem for which a supercomputer might take years to find the "best solution."
As for Gaak, I am very skeptical. In fact, I am pretty certain that this is hype and mostly untrue. A robot suddenly exhibiting such behavior would be like a chimp giving birth to a modern human. It just doesn't happen all at once like that, you would see gradual tendencies to these behaviors over several generation. "Forced his cage open"? More like someone broke in and stole the thing, and then dropped it when he decided he couldn't get past security. Or, even more likely is that it was just a staged publicity stunt.

Re:Robots won't be much use as guards, then

[ceswiedler]

In some of the later Foundation books, Asimov ties the Foundation world to the Robots world, and brings in R. Daneel Olivaw, the robot detective from the Robot mysteries (Caves of Steel, Naked Sun IIRC), who has survived through the millenia. Olivaw tells a character that at some point he realized that there is an implicit "Zeroth Law", which is something along the lines of:

"A robot must not harm humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."

The First law had to then be obeyed only so far as it did not conflict with the Zeroth law. Therefore, Olivaw could kill a human if it was clear that doing so would save humanity (or rather, by not doing so, would harm humanity). An interesting idea, one of the better bits from the later Asimov books.

Too bad she didn't have the insurance!

[ImaLamer]

Obligatory Link to Robot Insurance Movie If You Can't Search Google (first result) [robotcombat.com]

Funny I just changed this sig a few days ago....:

Re:News at 11

[unformed]

almost right, referring to a simpsons episode wher ethe world got taken over by a group of sadistic dolphins.