• Question: How far do you think robotic technology can progress? could the world one day look like the world from i-robot or the terminator?

    Asked by privatejonastribbonbaker to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by rosie123.
    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think machines will ever be `concious’. I think there is a fundamental limit to what machines can be capable of

    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Yeah it’s certainly possible but is a long way off in the future! We’re still doing relatively simple things with robots! Making one ‘like us’ is actually quite hard as we do such complex stuff.

      Also it does raise ethical issues I guess some of which are explored in the film i-robot so as a society we’ll have to deal with them too

    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Maybe – robots are certainly getting a lot smarter and tougher, as we are sending them to the bottom of the ocean and to other planets. It is safer and cheaper to send robots to these very dangerous environments first, and humans can follow later (like the way the USA and Russia explored the Moon in the 1950’s and 1960’s, before Neil Armstrong finally got there in 1969).

      The advances in computing and robotics are getting faster and faster all the time, so in the next 20-30 years we will probably start to see very advanced robots that can actually fully interact with humans, and have “artificial intelligence”. What we do with them, and whether we end up like Terminator, is another matter….

    • Photo: Laura Maliszewski

      Laura Maliszewski answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Probably not. Robots are way more useful as tools than as dominating super villians.

    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Its possible. Many films have been amazingly accurate at predicting new technologies. Have you seen Minority Report? In it Tom Cruise uses his fingertips to manipulate digital images around a glass screen. Sound familiar? I think the iPhone is the beginning of this and more technologies are in development to make a larger scale of this a reality.

      Anyway, back to your point. Scientists are looking to create robots that can operate autonomously, across any terrain and in our homes to help us. The global population is getting older so they think robots could enable old people to continue to live in their homes. So I think they will become more prevalent.

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