blog




  • Essay / Robots: the art of synthetic humanity

    Robotic art (1096)The term robotic art was coined by Eduardo Kac in 1997 to “describe artistic projects based on or developed around robotic technologies. “Kac himself is an artist, mainly interested in bio-art and transgenic art, integrating biotechnology, politics and aesthetics into his art. He notes his thoughts on contemporary changes in art in Foundation and Development of Robotic Art. “As artists continue to push the very boundaries of art, traditionally defined by discrete, inert handmade objects, they are introducing robotics as a new medium at the same time as they challenge our understanding of robots.” The general civilian view of robotic art too often focuses on the concept of the robot as the artist or creator of the work of art, and less on the robot itself as a work of art or part of an art installation. Robots designed as works of art differ from “traditional” robotics – whether anthropoid robots trying to imitate and improve upon humans, or non-humanoid robots created for the purposes of war, d surgical assistance or simple household chores. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get an original essayThe idea behind considering the robot as an artist is that it tries to achieve the ultimate aesthetic ideal by creating a work of art with the code integrated into its software. The most direct example of the robot being both the artist and the work of art, or rather the robot as artist being part of this particular robotic art installation, is "5 Robots Named Paul" by Patrick Tresset. In this particular installation, five robots were placed in a gallery or museum space on a table, with a chair in front of them where the visitor could sit and observe the sketch of their face made by “Paul”. The general public desire to observe the robot as an artist is not as widespread among artists, because, as Christopher Kroos explains in "The Art in The Machine" – "Even in a technoscientific context and not contemporary religious, the The ability to create a robot (in the sense of an autonomous machine) is much more exciting, not to say enchanting, than the product of the robot's activity. “Many artists, unlike the public, agree with Kroos that creating a robot is an art in itself. Additionally, creating a robot in an artistic sense differs from creating a robot in a purely technological sense, as artists tend to focus not on the practicality and precision of a machine that would replace and would improve human work, but rather on the relationship between a human. individual and a biotechnical machine. The relationship between science and art in robotics is further developed by Penny, who states that "the central theoretical problem of the digital art era has been the radical opposition between the culture of computer science and arts culture on this specific subject. “He believes this is because computing deals with the displaced abstract world of matter and time, while art encompasses the human experience. This is where the importance of art shows itself – it deals with both the abstraction of the machine and the materiality of human existence. Further, Penny notes that robotics in art encourages the design of interaction modalities and the need for a theory of robotic art. While robots in engineering are modeled to operate with the greatest capabilities of efficiency, optimality, speed, safety and survival, robotic artwork is more concerned with the aesthetics of thebehavior. This is particularly notable in his work Petit Mal, a robot which does not have a humanoid form but which works on the idea of ​​the aesthetics of behavior – it is intended to "charm" the viewer. The robot has two wheels and a camera, and cannot communicate verbally with humans, but the way it moves in space – its “sense-think-act” skills remind the viewer of something familiar in the 'otherness. It is less of a speech and more of a dance of human and machine, a non-verbal interaction of the senses in an environment. Nevertheless, non-humanoid robotic works do not necessarily have to be interactive with humans or their surroundings – they can also be a representation of an environment, such as one of the first contemporary robotic works Homage to New York by Jean Tinguley. It's made from collapsed pieces of metal, pipes and the like, it's a piece of unintentional robotics, a sort of scrapyard that reflects not humanity itself but the way a society moves and interacts in a hodgepodge city like New York. Another piece of robotic art that deals with creating the environment, rather than simply interacting with it, is The Telegarden, a robotic art installation designed by Ken Goldberg with help from Joe Santarramana and a team of collaborators at the University of Southern California in 1994. a follow-up to an installation earlier that year under the title Mercury Project. The principle of The Telegarden combines web cameras with a telerobotic arm operated via the Internet. “The Telegarden juxtaposes the historical and natural rhythm of planting and cultivation with the desire for “instant gratification” and immediacy promised by the Internet. “Visitors to the installation could register with a password that would allow them to participate in watering the garden and planting their own seeds. “The garden was a metaphor for the promise of new communities made possible by the Internet; it also raised philosophical questions regarding the nature of telerobotics and introduced the concept of telepistemology, the study of knowledge acquired at a distance. 49” The question, when it comes to humanoid robots, is whether this is the highest form of narcissism and arrogance of the human race. PW Singer, in the book Wired for War, writes that the humanoid form, for now, may well be the most practical in terms of field combat in wars. There really are no limits to imagining some form of robot – for now, some possibilities only exist in movies and video games, because the cost of building them is too high and, due to the complexity of their shape, the time it takes to build them. still too long, but who can say what kind of robotics humans will create in the next century. The humanoid form, in a way, could be humans trying to play Prometheus; a benevolent god creating biomechanical beings in his own form, but the current understanding of AI, its potential and the different levels of intelligence it could acquire is still unknown. Robotics in Science Fiction Based on Three Examples of Anthropoid Robots (1000)Robots in science fiction often take anthropoid forms – this is what future authors of the 18th century imagined. There are different types of robots, from autonomous robot cars from Transformers to omnipotent ones. computers in Space Odyssey: 2001, however this essay focuses on the androids and gynoids featured in the HBO series Westworld, juxtaposed with their representation in the BBC series Humans and Phillip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This guyrobotic science fiction is often classified in the cyberpunk genre. WESTWORLD “The one-hour drama series Westworld is a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin. Set at the intersection of the near future and the reimagined past, it explores a world in which all human appetites, no matter how noble or depraved, can be satisfied. » Westworld is a futuristic amusement park for people with different types of desires and frustrations, which are often illegal in the real world. This park is populated by AI robots, called hosts. Each host is assigned a position, a background story, and a daily itinerary. The series is presented from two angles: the laboratories where the robots are created and tested, and the park where we follow the stories of several robots and visitors along the way. Westworld is also, in both the first and second seasons, presented in distorted timelines – it does not follow a linear narrative and it is up to the viewer to decipher what belongs where and, importantly, when. According to this, one of the most important concepts in Westworld is memory. The robots' memories are erased after each loop is completed or after they die in the park - they are reset, with no memory of it being any other day than today - they are given backstories, implanted false memories in their brains, which guarantee The problem is that some hosts start to remember certain things. At first one wonders if this is due to a memory write fault, but it becomes clear that this is due to "a flaw in the code" that has allowed some older hosts to begin to develop a form of awareness. Rayhert Konstantin analyzes the philosophy of artificial consciousness as it appears in Westowrld and argues that this possibility lies in the way the two scientists who created the hosts, Arnold Weber and Robert Ford, imagined their AI. Their theory is based on the hypothesis that "consciousness really exists and that human consciousness can be a prototype for modeling consciousness in an artificial intelligence carrier." " He further explains that Arnold Weber modified his AI based on "Julian Jaynes' conception of consciousness as the basis of artificial consciousness, which means that the artificial consciousness must have the following characteristics: 1) the artificial consciousness must be the result of the collapse of artificial consciousness. the bicameral mind (apparently modeled by artificial intelligence), a state of mind in which cognitive functions are divided into two parts, a “speaking” part and a “hearing” (“obeying”) part, until the the collapse that makes the bicameral mind the unified mind; 2) artificial consciousness must be a language-based mental space characterized by introspection, concentration, suppression, consilience, and an analog “I” narrating in the mental space. » In relation to this, the focus can be placed on the bearers of two “main” narratives of the story – Dolores and Bernard. Both Dolores and Bernard are hosts, but Dolores is a host in the park and Bernard is the head of the programming division and, as will be shown later, an exact replica of Arnold Weber, who personally created Dolores and Bernard as hosts. experience the mutual growth of AI. Both Dolores and Bernard have a certain code that allows them to question each other in the same way that the humans who work for Westworld question the hosts when reviewing their performance. Their stories differ, and as they evolve, their opinions on what should be done in terms of the park and the guests "trapped" there do not always agree.Stephen Garner reviews the theme of "humanity" in his essay "Vision: Altered Carbon and Westworld" saying: "If the human beings of Westworld are depicted as giving up something of their own humanity, then the robot characters attempt to acquire it, or more precisely, to become real people. Some robots discover that they are creations, while others simply want to be able to make sense of the world they find themselves in. In both cases, the robots strive to discover how much free will they actually have, and how much of their lives are predetermined by their programs and the narratives in which they unfolded. The questions they ask are the same questions we ask ourselves: how much freedom do we have to tell our own stories? How do our nature and culture shape our character and our future? And what is the relationship between us, creatures, and our creator? " Westowrld juxtaposes human degradation with the evolution of AI, such that it appears that the humans inside the park are becoming machines trapped in their own loops of inhuman behavior, while the Hosts who begin to develop their consciousness become increasingly concerned about "human" things, such as their universal rights or the injustice in their existence dependent on the will and desire of human visitors. This can lead to introduction. of another type of loop that Singer talks about in Wired for War. This particular "loop" focuses on war, but can also be applicable in this scenario. The "loop" is seen as the relationship between human and nature. machine – the human who creates an AI machine and teaches it how to act and behave, which leads the AI ​​machine to evolve into something beyond human possibilities and functions, and thus the AI ​​machine becomes the new “creator”, from which humans must now learn, or rather which they must study to understand their actions. The role of the human controllers “in the loop” was to veto power, and when that power is suddenly transferred into the “hands” of the machine, the human is free. Therefore, current engineering has not yet confronted the human being “out of the loop”, it is simply a larger loop. But the question remains: what happens when the machine gets autonomous power? In a way, Westowlrd is the answer to that question. HUMANSThe BBC series Humans offers a similar narrative, but more “realistic”, in the sense that it seems less “other” to imagine – with the boom in iRobot vacuum cleaners, we already have robot helpers in our homes. The premise of the series is that humans have developed robots that are aesthetically pleasing and, in all respects, useful; they become the tireless housekeeper, the caretaker, the bartender, the mechanic, the driver. These robots, called "synths" in the series, help humans in every way imaginable and, as their advertising claims, they become part of your family. Therefore, when a family buys a synthesizer, it turns out that this particular synth synthesizer was a special series created by the original synth creator, designer and engineer who wrote code that allowed synths to become conscious. He did this after the death of his wife, when the only way to keep his son alive was to implant pieces of synthetic technology into his brain, creating a sort of cyborg. He later created a family for his son, five sentient AI forms that all took on roles as family members and guardians in his son's life. Unlike Westowrld, which keeps its guests in a secure and limited space under a.