Let's face it-we've long worried about robots taking over the world, what with all these giant leaps they've been taking. Turns out, we might be right. We're apparently approaching a Technological Singularity with every passing day-a point where we will have advanced so much that the tools (read robots) we create will be able to improve themselves, eventually creating robots whose intelligence far surpasses our own. Trouble is, we will likely build these beings to be cold, calculating machines, which means that they may not have consciences. Which, in turn, means we will all likely be terminated.

It is this fear of psychotic robots that prompted roboticist David Hanson to found Hanson Robotics and create Zeno, the 17-inch "friendly" robot that will help us save the future world. Zeno connects wirelessly to a bunch of computers, so while he has only a basic computer in his body, he can draw on the computing power of whatever he's connected to. In the future, this will likely be a huge grid of computers. The idea is to get Zeno to "know you", empathize with you, and even be your friend in the way other humans are your friends. Right now, though, Zeno will just have a photo of you with some information about you. The next step is to get him to use that information to figure out what kind of person you are.

The general idea seems to be that if we start building more "human" robots than just machines, we might just avoid the whole Skynet situation. Vhich ve aah all in favoh of. But is it just me, or does Zeno look intensely creepy?



Source: Wired