Household Emergent Behavior?

Sam Pullara asks: "I got an IM from my Mom today telling me that she couldn't find her Roomba. It somehow had escaped the kitchen and she couldn't find it anywhere, all the doors that it could reach were shut and she checked under everything. She eventually found that it had gotten into a room and closed the door behind it. Once all household items are networked I wonder if a rich environment like a house will make strange behavior like this commonplace? Will the interactions between all the individual devices create something more than the sum of their parts?"

Meh

[ResQuad]

My mother, many years ago, used to IM me when dinner was ready. Easier than her yelling across the house, and I actually understood what she said.

Moving on though. While all these different tech's in the house could get very very strange... I think the news article has it about right. We will get to the point in which everything is networked togethere, then there really wont be any "odd" behaviors or interactions.

Maybe, just maybe?...

[Andy Gardner]

" There has always been ghosts in the machine, random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated these free radicals engender questions of free will creativity and even the nature of... the soul. Why is it that when some robots are left in the darkness they will seek out the light? Why is it that when robots are stored in an empty space they will group together rather than stand alone?... how do we explain this? Random pieces of code? or is it something else. When does a perceptual schematic become consciousness? When does the difference engine become the search for truth? When does the personality simulation become the bitter mote of a soul? " Dr. Alfred Lanning (I,robot)

I don't believe this

[Tuna_Shooter]

If i did'nt read this with my own eyes i would'nt have believed this.... i was nagging the wifey yesterday about not putting the roomba back on the charger. To make a boring story shorter... this very same thing happened to my wife yesterday. But being the way she is she just forgot about it until i found the dam thing in a guest room with the door closed hiding under the bed... its little battery exhausted.

lost hardware

[v1]

I recall reading about a university that "lost" a server. It was one of those unix boxes that can sit untouched for years and not need restarting. After noticing it was missing, they tracked it down by systematically unplugging network cables, and found a cable that went into a wall and never came out. Turns out the server got sealed in by construction as a panel was put on the other side of it, making it part of a wall.

Ping Them

[Anonymous Coward]

These devices need transponders that you can trigger and follow back to them.

Re:What's that saying?

[fm6]

There's a school of thought [williamcalvin.com] that says that intelligence is based on randomness.

It's Already Been Predicted

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

There is a very excellent chapter near the end of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles that details something like this happening. Essentially, the entire population of the Earth has been wiped out, yet the various automations in the future-house described by Bradbury keep functioning of their own accord as though everything was normal.

The implied question is, will automation be our legacy to future civilizations? If innovations like Roomba keep coming, and if a catastrophe befalls us in the future, I could certainly see such a thing happening.

Re:Three rules safe.

[fm6]

You're talking Azimov's "Laws"? I find their continued currency frustrating. The might work intuitive in a hand-waving 1940s science fiction story. But when you try to find a place for them in modern Computer Science, they're just too vague and general to plug in anywhere. How on earth do you program "don't hurt people"? A machine that could even distinguish a people from an inanimate object would be a major breakthrough.

And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon

[meehawl]

Paul di Filippo [scifi.com] had a nice story a couple of years ago about this exact topic: And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon [scifi.com] . Basically, ubiquitous deployment of UWB, MEMs, and protocols within all household devices lead to a breakout around 2040 or so... [scifi.com]

The Volition Bug was launched anonymously from a site somewhere in a Central Asian republic. It propagated wirelessly among all the WiFi-communicating chipped objects, installing new directives in their tiny brains, directives that ran covertly in parallel with their normal factory-specified functions. Infected objects now sought to link their processing power with their nearest peers, often achieving surprising levels of Turingosity, and then to embark on a kind of independent communal life. Of course, once the Volition Bug was identified, antiviral defenses--both hardware and software--were attempted against it. But VB mutated ferociously, aided and abetted by subsequent hackers

Basically, every household now has to deal with annoying situations where random household devices clump together in big WiFi clusterfucks, get some low-grade intelligence going, and then try to escape like runaway pets.

But when the narrator's iPod, Cuisinart, LifeQuilt, and vacuum get together with his girlfriend, it all goes pear-shaped...

How do you do that?

[Cappy Red]

Consider law 1; the backbone of the laws:

"1. Robots must never harm human beings or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."

What constitutes harm? If we have a robot that can grab things, but shouldn't grab people because it could hurt them, what happens if someone near it is going to fall if it doesn't grab him? Does it make a difference if it's the roof of a building, or the top of a sofa? People can die by falling from either. Even in the latter case, where death has a far lower probability, serious injury may occur.

The laws are actually more like the spirits of laws. Drafting the letters of those laws is somewhat more complex than programming a robot to vacuum a room.

Re:Three rules safe.

[JeffTL]

For reference: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Asimov's three laws aren't perfect but an implementation couldn't hurt for a high-level robot. The tricky part is the second clause of the first law -- any implementation of which would by necessity be very limited, the inaction clause. The first one is no problem at all, just program the robot to do nothing to harm what may reasonably and to the extent determinable from sensor outputs be a human -- for something like a Roomba, this simply entails safe hardware design. Second law is basically just an override of user input under programmer-set conditions, i.e. a safety override to keep anyone from getting hurt. This would be an automatic lawn mower turning off if it gets knocked over, even if the user pushed the button for mowing the entire yard. Third law can be seen as an extention of the second, extending the protection systems to self-protection. I don't know if a Roomba has this, bur imagine that it had a system to keep it from falling down the stairs. I seem to recall that as Asimov saw these laws in I, Robot, the priorities could be adjusted -- so that the third law might override the second. In most real-world applications, you'd want a robot's programming to protect it from suicide commands so you don't have users destroying their robots by accident.

Re:"More than the sum..." is NOT a bogus concept.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but this is just another way of expressing the idea of the grandparent: the "emergent behavior" concept is just another way of saing, "We don't know what all the factors or variables of this system are. So, if we see unexpected behavior comming out of said system, rather than trying to understand the variables or factors we've missed, we'll chalk it up to some mystical, unseen force(s) that are beyond our comprehension or control. /sarcasm

Emergent behaviour

[RedLaggedTeut]

Well, yea, the romba just hit the door.

Nevertheless, the possibilities are endless what could happen when you locked a bunch of roombas, some cardea segway-style bots, some aibos and and some humanoid robots in your house.

Emergent behaviour means the group could end up behaving in a systematic, apparently intelligent original way that had not been programmed into a single of them.

It doesn't mean they'd gang up to punish you for abusing them, though.

Re:Obligatory bash.org reference

[Max Romantschuk]

This is off topic, but what the hell...

In the Finnish military (a conscription army [wikipedia.org]) there have been several cases of camouflaging military vehicles so well it has taken hours or some times days to find them. Granted, camouflage is all about hiding stuff, but you wouldn't expect not to find it yourself afterwards ;)

(I also know from personal experience that with a little time and care you can even camouflage a vehicle so well it'll be virtually invisible from 30 feet away... the trick is to make it look like something else. This is rather easy in a pine forest in the summer, given that there's suitable material all around.)

eh... that's nothing

[trix_e]

My Roomba locked me out of the house the other day... I was on my back patio grilling, and had turned the Roomba loose in the house while I was outside (the noise is still a little bit more than I care to hang around for an extended period).

We use that time honored technique of securing sliding glass doors by placing a chopped off broom handle in the track to augment the flimsy door lock. (Yes, I know how fantastically secure that is...)

So while I was out tending to the food and sipping a beer, I hear a "chunk" from inside the house, and I see the Roomba skittering away from the broom handle that it had just pushed neatly into it's "locked" position.

Luckily my family was home and heard my pounding on the door... If I had been home by myself who knows how long I'd been stuck.

And I swear I heard the Roomba cackling evilly as it moved into the next room...

The Volition Bug

[sploo22]

This calls to mind Paul Di Filippo's short story And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon [scifi.com], set in the near future. The premise is that the integration of RFID, high-powered microprocessors, and wireless connectivity into every consumer product available is followed by the outbreak of a virus called the Volition Bug. Under its influence, everyday appliances and furniture occasionally form "blebs" which work together to achieve their unfathomable goals, and even achieve sentience.

urban myth

[GrAfFiT]

Too bad that it was an urban myth [sun.com]. Funny although.

Book on a similar subject

[ebrandsberg]

Published quite a while ago, but I remember it as being very good, "The Two Faces of Tomorrow", originally published in 1979, and based on what I remember, it still applies to what could happen in the future. Very interesting read. http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/twoface/baen97/ti tlepage.shtml

Without Bothering To Read The Rest of the Posts

[Master of Transhuman]

(because somebody probably already brought this up), I call your attention to the Tom Selleck movie "Runaway" - which was generally pathetic except for the excellent performance by Gene Simmons of KISS fame as the evil Dr. Charles Luthor.

The specific scenes of interest concern the home robot (the size of a vacuum cleaner without the handle) which has been reprogrammed by Luthor to wipe out the family of a techie accomplice by running around the house with a .357 Magnum clutched in its one "claw".

Re:Not just machines

[shreevatsa]

if we can consciously build a sentient being...
Maybe not strictly relevant, but somewhat similar is Asimov's short story Reason [nettrash.com]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Obligatory bash.org reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, it's easy to make one not see a vehicle. Cover it with leaves. Can't see the vehicle under that BIG PILE OF LEAVES.

The trick is not to completely hide the vehicle, it's to make them not notice it when they're not actively looking for that very exact thing in that very location. If a unit can't find a camouflaged vehicle from hours of searching on the ground, then they need some training in basic search tactics, because I'd hate to have to be rescued by these guys if I was caught in an avalanche and well-camouflaged by being covered in snow.

Missing droid?

[kosty]

THREEPIO: He says the restraining bolt has short circuited his recording system. He suggests that if you remove the bolt, he might be able to play back the entire recording.

LUKE: H'm? Oh, yeah, well, I guess you're too small to run away on me if I take this off! Okay.

http://www.fallenjedi.com/anhscript.html

Re:urban myth

[drew]

I seem to recall stories of an old aircraft carrier (or destroyer maybe?) that had an eniter machine room with no doors or hatches. they didn't find it until after the ship was decommissioned. can't find a reference, but the story seems to show it's head every time this story of the old netware server pops up, so maybe someone else can provide more details.

Re:urban myth

[Anonymous Coward]

That one might have been an urban myth but I know a similar story that definitely isn't a myth.

This happened in a government department in Australia. One section (might have been finance) was all Macintosh with models ranging from Mac II to LCIII. They were networked with Appletalk over Localtalk. This was several years ago, before Ethernet was cheap and ubiquitous. They all connected back to a Mac fileserver for basic filesharing. They had a server room but it was designed for a VAX and it was located over the other side of the building from the offices. They amusingly had DB25 connectors in every office to connect up the dumb terminals (WYSE, I think). There were X.25 long haul links as well but they stopped at the server room.

Now the range of Localtalk isn't very good. It's carried over standard telephone wiring. The server room was too far away for the Mac fileserver to work reliably. Transfers were slow and errors were frequent. The admin tried to get the fileserver relocated to one of the offices, but nobody wanted it in their office. It couldn't be located in the main cubicle area because it was insecure. They were more worried about somebody walking off with the server rather than the data on it. The admin was investigating a Localtalk repeater but those things were (and still are) very expensive.

Then the admin hit on the bright idea of locating the Mac fileserver in the roof space above the offices. The offices had a false ceiling and there was a gangway you could walk across. There were power points and the data cabling was already up there anyway. So one weekend the admin secretly moved the Mac fileserver from the server room to the false ceiling above the office space.

Next Monday, no more intermittent problems with the Mac fileserver. Everybody was very pleased that the problem was fixed but the admin didn't tell the bosses about the Mac in the roof. They would have surely ordered him to move it back to the server room. The admin clearly decided that secrecy was the better part of valour. Probably he also knew he'd get in trouble for doing such a reckless thing.

Fast forward a few years and the server is up for renewal and that's when the fun begins. The admin has long since left for greener pastures and they couldn't find this server. The policy at the time was you had to auction off the old stuff when you bought new stuff. After several days of stuffing around, turning the server room inside out, they ring up their old admin and ask him where, pretty please, is the Mac fileserver?

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to have seen their faces when he told them.

That is a true story. It didn't happen to a friend of a friend of mine. My father was the admin and I helped him install the server in the roofspace. And I'm posting this anonymously because these stories are always more fun when you can't verify the source :-)

Taswegia

[xixax]

I did a ghost tour in Hobart, and the guy said that they found a tunnel running from Parliament to the basement of a building that was likely to have been a brothel at the time the tunnel was operational.

Re:lost function

[v1]

That would actually be a fun thing to work on... parking oneself in the room for a few weeks with what little of wiring diagrams could be found, determining IP addresses, mapping network segments, and drafting new network maps. Trying to research/guess passwords to machines no one had logged into for years. Figuring out what services each machine provides and to whom.

Then comes the exciting part when you start unplugging all the cables you think aren't in use and downing the machines that should be redundant or defunct. (somewhat nervously listening for the phone to ring or the pager to go off) You'd be amazed how often the blinky lights are only blinking because several machines are talking with eachother and absolutely no one else outside the room.

Some people may view this as a frightening thing to try, but I'd call it a once-in-a-lifetime challenge. :)

I've done this sort of thing before, twice, and it IS quite a rush. One of them was only slightly less tangled than this fun picture: http://vftp.net/virtual1/temp/IMAGE011_1wires.jpg [vftp.net]

Re:How sentient do you want?

[Cappy Red]

Actually, the Sun Tzu-bot struck me as benig closer to sentience.

There was an article maybe a year or two ago now about a robot, designed to fight other robots for testing AI fighting strategy or something, that got out of its enclosure and escaped into the parking lot.

One room? Pssh. I'll take my Sun Tzu-bot any day of the week.

Re:urban myth

[drinkypoo]

An acquaintance of mine was a mechanic stationed on board some sort of U.S. Navy ship and they said that they identified a bulkhead not in the blueprints, and when they cut through it they discovered a completely outfitted machine shop, connected to power... and then walled in. I find it pretty easy to believe, personally...