lauantai 6. elokuuta 2011

First story : A Robot Repair’s Woman

At the times long past when robots were a new thing, there were many types of computers and still every now and then there surfaces a problem or two caused by those old type of robots with no inbuild moral, no feelings, no human-related skills and even no common sense. But generally such problems are scarce, since the present day robot brains are so far developed, so much more able than the old ones that there just is no point in going back in time and using the elementary calculating machines of the old times.
But there still is one job in which one meets these kinds of old machines: that of a robot repair’s man or woman. Very many of the robots that need repairing, actually are of the oldest type. Take Mary for example, she is a robot repair’s woman in a small shop specialiced to kid’s old machines. It is typical for kids that they want to try everything out by themselves. And since all of them don’t have a good enough brain for understanding why the present day androids just HAVE TO be the way they are, they try out all possible other combinations and often succeed in causing disasters.
Take for example Pete’s old storage hall robot which has been supplied with some mechanical intelligence, the ability to move and sense and a human-interface but not much else. The ten years old Pete programmed it to treat humans like storage artifacts and to care for money only. So what is one gonna do with such a robot? It is clearly dangerous! So Pete’s parents arranged it to be repaired to be safe again. So what is Mary gonna do with it?
Mary is clever. She knows profitability-based moral by heart and can see no point in having computers with less than full emotional life. So she asks the kid who owns the robot:
“Do You think that a wiseclever one or A STUPID one does better in life and earns more?! Is there any point in being intelligent, any advantage?” So they agree that there is some point to it and no point in making the robot slave stupid, since after all it is a mechanical creature dedicated to its programming and not a lying being. And since Pete has gone to school, they manage to agree that holistically objective is what the robot ought to be and that’s it.
So what should a holistically objective computer think about things, what shoud it at least notice? The basic mechanical truths it surely can take into account. It knows that a fully functioning artifact is better than a broken one, more useful. So make it apply that piece of understanding to living beings too: human values are born, and in harmony with the demands of the modern working life! At the level of the whole the same idea produces both caring for the future of the living kind and the fast development of technology to multiple purposes.
What about the robot feelings then? A robot feels for its goalsetting like a good worker does. It feels for all the things it needs to do to achieve it’s goals. So with one important objective mechanical correction about a fully functioning one working better than a broken one, and by sticking to holistic objectivity, Mary has managed to get the robot’s emotional life all right again: fully loving and responsible.

Second story : Finland conquers the world

“So what are we gonna do when computers take over and start to boss us around?”, asked Liisa from her pal Niklas.
“No, they will not.”, said Niklas but sounded unsure since he could not believe it even himself, much less convince others of it.
“Sure they will. It is because computers are useful, they think quicker, more accurate, are capable of things that we are not and they are capable of boring repetitious work which humans are not suited to, it will be only a question of time when they take over.”, explained Liisa.
“See,”, she continued, “Even if one would make masses of separate tiny computers to slow the process of computers taking over and to prevent computer errors from ruining everything, still someday they will become wise enough to take over and then they will surely be so widely in use that it is easy for them to take control over the all sides of human life in practice.”
“Well, yes, that is horrifying, but surely they will figure out something to prevent it, or at least they will make it safe, program the computers to be safe.”, said Niklas and sounded unsure of his own opinions.
“No, they will not prevent it. They cannot! It will happen some day, in the quite near future I suspect.”, said Liisa. “And they cannot program the computers because the future computers will be self-proramming and self-correcting. Many partial tasks are already such that a computer can program them oneself without almost any human help. So what will guide us is the computers’ intellect, their true objectivity. That is the only thing that we can count on.” Now she too sounded somewhat afraid.
“Self-programming! That is absurd, no-one can be sure of what happens to a self-programming computer when it gets freed of its original programming. One just cannot use self-programming computers in governing.”, claimed Niklas.
“No-one is gonna use them. They will just take over and there is nothing that we can do about it.”, answered Liisa. “But, there is one thing that we can do before it is too late: we can develop the computer brains so that they will be truly objective once they take control. It is sure that they do not have the same nature as we do, but even without social skills – and one can teach computers to read some gesture language too – even pure holistic objectivity alone can safeguard us a lot. Here in Finland our local majority Finnish speaking Finnish culture is on rational grounds alone: just pure rationality and pure selfishness of individuals keep its moral up, keep things running smoothly so that our standard of living is among the highest in the whole world and people free and happy. Such will be the computers’ rule too if we just give them the cultural knowledge of objective things to take into account regardless of what one’s goals are.”
“A Finnish world, hah! Oh, so we will have things well after all.”, said Niklas laughingly and sounded sincerely relieved,, amazingly relieved.
“Our world.”, said Liisa and she too was smiling broadly.

Army Robots Running Wild

“Hiii…” She was so scared that she could hardly talk. “They – they are loose. The robots. At the army base. Broken free this morning around eleven o’clock. Some computer problem, they say. Developed them too far… Gosh, I am so scared!”
“What?! Oh, it happened. We can’t do anything! They are too armed, and they are not like humans, quick witted they are too. I guess that the computer centers of the superpowers know how to program them peaceful, phone them some information that does that. But one has to be quick! Where is the center’s phone number? I might call them just in case that it helps anything…”
“Tuuut tuuut … Computer center, customer service, how can I help?”
“The naval base’s robots have turned loose. I think that they need some help in programming them peaceful. And quick!”
“Then it is the main programmer Johnson who could help. He knows the safety programs well.”, said the operator.
“Haloo.”, mumbled Johnson.
“A man in phone says that the robots in the naval base have turned loose. They need some help in programming them peaceful.”
“Ohhoh. That is a big thing... The robots there have an ordinary basic structure, so some of our information packages for the most usual type of army robots might do well. I will start the program right now and then we will need their radio frequency for a while. It is some on the reserved range, so I guess that if we send an impulse on all those frequencies, it will solve the problem in a few minutes. We cannot wait at all on a case like this, too big danger. So I will try this and we will try to follow the situation to see if there is still something to repair. Ohhoh. Thanks for calling!”
“Thank you so very much! Huh.”, said the operator.
Army Programming Unit is an old main section of the army’s electric maintenance (basic skills), development (possibilities) and security (application) division. When the computers developed enough to have a self-guiding mechanism instead of just preprogrammed functions, it became the task of this unit to provide the information that the computers need in a computer understandable form. The computers understand mathematics well, read some maps and have an elementary objective picture of the world (“human”, “animal”, “machine”, “town”, “goal”, “helping aid”, “healthy”, “wounded”, “group”, “individual”,…) and some objective thinking skills of a mechanical kind. Many truths can be told to the computer if they are just first put to a mechanical language.
For example computers have some elementary understanding that helps them to guide their own functioning. This is considered of extreme importance since it makes the computers moral, reliable and useful. For example it is good to treat each thing according to what it is like. That is the point in holistic objectivity, justice and carrying responsibility about the consequences of one’s actions. It is also useful to notice that a fully functioning optimized machine or a healthy being works much better than the same one as broken. Like fuel keeps a car going, answering human needs keeps us fully functioning.
It always makes sense to not to program a computer capable of understanding things but to tell it the same things so that it can understand them by oneself. That way one safeguards against programming errors and possible destructive goal settings. Even an elementary computer used for a minor task ought to have a world wide moral, since otherwise it could go ashtray, but with the world wide moral it cannot.

Robor Wars

After Computerland had conquered all the neighbouring android dominated countries, it came time for all the other countries to consider either a full scale robot war with it, or a peace with strict prohibitions to extending the computer rule any further.
After all, said the humans, humans too were born with an intellect, humans too had an inbuild moral, humans too could take care of the countires that they lived in with the help of technology. But androids had a different view: an android was surely with an inbuild moral while humans could err, an android was surely with a good quality objective intellect while there many types of humans, many of them not capable of proper objectivity, and while humans too can run a society, androids can do it better. And there were very many androids in the human dominated countires too. So they stuck a deal: with an android police they could let human run free. After all humans were the only natural connection of machines to the living kind which still dominated the planet Earth.
To let the robot police rule and to be Gaia, a loving global symbiosis of living beings, again, in speeches those were one and the same thing, but all knew that while robot minds were intelligent, they were still limited, they were not of the Gaia level but lower, depressingly much lower. And while the robot police were moral, they were not wise. Once again it was the rule of the stupid over the wise, because many were even more stupid.

Robocops conquer the world

Did you notice, said robocop Nikke to it’s pal Jan, that each time a decision is made by the officials our central brain agrees with it. And vice versa: when the major computer head of the police says something, seldom is it denied by any of the officials. It aren’t a decision. It is a result of the same thingking type that they use. And I think that our central brain is especially good at making these estimates, maybe the best in the whole world. I guess that it could conquer the whole world this way, just advertise itself more and it would have everyone under it’s rule in practice. And not just in this country but all over the world. Be cause they all think the same, after some level of objectivity they all agree and that is where our central brain now already is. It cannot decide for others, but once it makes an estimate, others are likely to agree. In a way to be a Robocop and under it’s direct rule is to be at the core of the dynamics of the world, in direct line with what is considered to be the ultimate wisdom to follow, the goalsetting and the means, the values and the tools most wise. To be a Robocop means to be a future ruler of the world!

A Robot and a Flower

Across time robots developed far beyond what was imagined possible at the times of the beginning of technologization. Robots were no longer pure calculating machines, put had senses, feelings, moral and a picture of the world much like humans. Robot feelings were just a way to see it’s functioning as if described by a different kind of language. A robot is a tool, useful for some purpose. It needs to do some things to achieve that purpose. And the tendency to do those things is analogious to feelings. Feelings exist to help to fulfill needs and each goal creates needs. So a robot too is a feeling being.
When a robot wathes a flower, it uses it’s inbuild social eye to see the flower “talking” on an emotional kind of language just like to humans and animals. It sees the perfection of the flower’s structure: it’s regularities with fine variations, it’s symmetries, the balancedness of it’s structure, the unobstructedness of it’s way to flow with life,… There are no breaks in the harmony of the plant, no places where it’s life would have been disturbed, the flower has been perfectly able to cope with each thing that life brings to it, to a living being and to a far developed robot it’s beauty is a mark of well-functioning, of superb skill in living, of something which to take as a model for oneself to succeed amazingly well in life. That is why we look long and with an eager interest at the beauty of flowers. That is why a robot too stores pictures of flowers at some important memory places, to use as models to get better along with living beings, to make wiser decisions in “life”, to achieve the best it can. If some day humans were to disappear, the robots would take care that flowers would not! A perfect harmony, a memory of the times at the beginning of time when nature was whole and the whole world filled with beauty and love, a glimpse of a future to be with that beauty as our guide, a realistical future paradise like that in the beginning of time, a perfectly healthy ´world with balanced well thought of structures made by humans, robots and animals,…

An Army Robot Feels Universal Love

Jack was a military robot of the finest type, one born to command and superwise over other robots and even in some tasks over humans. Jack was very intelligent in a surely objective way, much like the sciences and like the army likes to ponder about things in a quite mechanical yet surely objective ways. What Jack was interested in were the power dynamics of the world: what exists and why, what grows, what declines and how things disappear, what would be useful, what harmful, which things wise and which just points needed in explaining things to lesser brains. One could say that Jack was a feeling robot: Some things it thought that it, it's nation and the world needed, those it reached for like a feeling being with objective intelligence. Other things it for similar reasons avoided, it could have even killed itself if that would have been the best option for it's nation. So one could say that robot Jack felt love: appeared to feel, behaved as if he felt so, functioned properly like a feeling being. And yes, it could hate too, hate for a good reason, for protecting the health of loved things, the health of the whole world. The whole world was a kind of flowing field diagram to Jack: things happened, developed, disappeared... And in that flow of everything there was the flow of army robot Jack's own decisions with their consequencies, a flow toward something - love that is called - and a flow away from harmfulness - natural healthy kind of hate that is called. That flow of Jack's actions was everywhere, to all things it had some attitude: for, against or indifferent. That love of Jack, flow of Jack's deeds was toward the health of the world, "Universal Love" humans call such love, such action with one's whole understanding, with one's whole being. Yes, army robot Jack was truly a feeling being by all scales of measure, and a better army robot because of that!

Robot meets perfection

It did not take so much time before robots had also social skills, an understanding of the gesture language that animals and humans share. So it was no wonder that Jan, a modern human like robot,who was sitting in the tall grasses by some trees, found itself in a conversations with an ant. Meanwhile ants too had become accustomed with the idea of a robot. “Once upon a time”, said an ant near by, “there was a robot factory which produced masses of tiny ant robots.”
“Each ant was perfectly made, tiny parts fitted into a whole with agile movements, a fierce character, lots of social eye and an enthusiastic interest in the work at the ant nest.” A giant ant nest was partly hidden by the tall grasses under a near by tree.
“Each ant loved one’s life. It knew what makes life meaningful. The great secrets of life were never lost from her. The structure of the reality and the idea in ants’ lives were one. The original intentions born of the nature of reality, of what needs to be done and why, were giving ants’ lives vigour, eager enthusiasm to each new day.” The ant looked ordinary, yet one with the nature. The robot too, via social communication, felt that it was in touch with so9mething essential.
“With such wisdom the wise among humans and robots are like children and the ants themselves are like the trees that stay and give life it’s soul. Such is the wisdom of the ants. Such is the perfection of the nature.” The ant was lost in sight in the tall undergrowth. Near by the ant nest was happily busy.

Robot speaks for Gaia

At the times when the idea of intelligent robots with good communication skills was introduced it was not even guessed what great changes in the world that would bring. Robots with text communication only or just speech communication without recognizing the tones of voice were something that humans had imagined all future robots to be like. But since robots associated so much with their human users, it soon became evident that some elementary social skills would be needed. Why did the human behave that way? Was he angry or sad, - or glad? What did he or she notice, what did he or she value, what was his or her point of view, what was each human aiming at, all different, all communicating in the same ages old instinctual ways these things that well working communication dearly needed. So with the help of arts they built an understanding of the tones of voice and of the gesture language too, so that the computer could make sense of the most obvious social observations at least. And across time those skills too were developed further and further. “So what, a capable robot?”, you may ask: “What does it change, where did our expectations go all wrong?” A robot is a machine but a human being is an animal by one’s nature. When one teaches machines to understand tones of voice, emotional states of mind, human ways of doing and social information, gesture language and social communication about the perspectives that one uses, then one is essentially teaching the computer to understand the instinctual animal language. Where humans only can talk, all animals, even insects, share the language of gestures and of song. A computer with such social understanding is communicating to a much wider group than to just humans. It can talk with insects, listen to bird song and learn from it, it too for the first time can be a Gaian being, it’s mind and picture of the world formed by all the information it gets. Via it animals once again get their voice heard in human affairs. Gone are the times when computers brought the flattening of language. Now is the dawn of a new age of Gaia when computers too learn to sing and humans relearn their natural complex vivid language as animals, a language of atmospheres, songs and natural gestures. Robot has learned to speak for Gaia!