incub3.org

Sometimes, when its a quiet day in the news, I’ll amuse myself by imagining an improbable scenario. I was watching what is surely a modern sci-fi classic in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence today. It is an excellent film in the cyberpunk genre, exploring themes of humanity and consciousness. It almost makes one afraid of what the future might hold, almost.

However, at present, its nice to think that each of us may soon have our own robotic arm at the kitchen sink as a dishwasher.
Its touching to imagine that you could maybe talk to our babies and hear them coo from half a world away through the robotic teddy bear you bought her.
And it would be amusing to have a robotic companion after you retire who can remember your grocery list, remind you where you left your keys and tell you jokes.

All of a sudden, I don’t know whether to be afraid of the future or laugh at its child-like failings. Because even as Honda’s Asimo learns to make office clerks obsolete:

it still manages to fall quite literally flat on its face. Robots, it seems, are still a long way off from taking over our world. Genuinely intelligent robots aren’t yet a common part of our lives, but imagine for a while that you had a semi-intelligent robot for which you could buy and download operating routines off a store like iTunes, so it could cook Mediterranean food, converse with you as you practice your Portuguese, or turn your garden into a paradise out of a catalogue.

In a world where the AMD to Honda’s Intel (ASIMO) is already in town, surely the day of reckoning isn’t far away.