From: Chris Capel (pdf23ds@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 17 2005 - 15:24:48 MDT
On 10/17/05, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> wrote:
> Brian Atkins wrote:
> >
> > Wasting time on robot engineering is not high on our agenda.
>
> That's a bit harsh. Robot engineering is an acid test of difficult
> capabilities, with realtime response being the most obvious example.
> Generalizable computer science tricks come out of robot engineering. I
> agree that SIAI would probably not venture into robot engineering unless
> we already had AI strong enough to meet that test without a lot of
> special-case special-purpose engineering.
By robot engineering, do you mean taking an existing and functional
robot and providing it with operations software, or do you also
include the mechanical engineering aspects of it? I can see where the
latter would be very low priority, whereas the former might offer some
interesting (and compelling) demonstration opportunities if it weren't
too big of a distraction, and if the AI were already mature enough to
handle it cleanly, as you say.
Chris Capel
-- "What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?" -- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet)
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