STUPID ROBOT ARTICLE OF THE WEEK, INHUMAN EDITION

Everything I Need to Know About (Real) Robots I Learned From Transformers (Wired, via AAAI)

Transformers don’t care about people, period… With their blatant disregard for people, Transformers burned into my psyche the idea that robots didn’t have to depend on—or be limited in the same ways as—humans. That was the kind of robot I wanted to build.

It’s a subtle but important lesson: Ballsy independent robots designed to sense, think, and act according to their own, nonhuman rules can transcend human abilities rather than pathetically imitate them. Real-life examples of this abound today: In 2001, the Deep Space 1 smart probe used an AutoNav system to choose its own path to Comet Borrelly; the Seahorse autonomous underwater vehicle from the US Navy can search unmanned for submerged mines; and in recent military demonstrations, bullet trackers like iRobot’s RedOwl can pinpoint camouflaged snipers in milliseconds. None of these robots want to be a human, hurt a human, or even ask a human for directions.