The story is almost unbelievable, but it sure shines the light on the mechanical dragonfly spies that were caught flying around protest gatherings.
You sure those are roaches in your apartment?
"Led by Robots, Roaches Abandon Instincts" by KENNETH CHANG and JOHN SCHWARTZ
Many a mother has said, with a sigh, “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?”
The answer, for cockroaches at least, may well be yes. Researchers using robotic roaches were able to persuade real cockroaches to do things that their instincts told them were not the best idea.
This experiment in bug peer pressure combined entomology, robotics and the study of ways that complex and even intelligent patterns can arise from simple behavior. Animal behavior research shows that swarms working together can prosper where individuals might fail, and robotics researchers have been experimenting with simple robots that, together, act a little like a swarm.
José Halloy, a biology researcher at the Free University of Brussels and lead author of a paper describing the research in today’s issue of the journal Science:
“We decided to join the two approaches.”
Dr. Halloy and his colleagues worked with roaches because their societies are simple, egalitarian and democratic, with none of the social stratification seen in some other insect societies — no queen bees, no worker ants.
Dr. Halloy: “Cockroaches are not like that. They live all together.”
They also have weak eyes, which allowed the researchers to create a robotic roach that resembles a miniature golf cart more than an insect. In the roach world, however, looking right is not as important as smelling right, and the scientists doused the machines with eau de cockroach sex hormones.
They set up a cockroach arena one yard in diameter. Two six-inch-wide plastic discs were suspended over it, providing the dark shelters that cockroaches prefer to congregate in. But one disc was darker and a more likely cockroach hangout.
When 16 cockroaches were placed in the arena, they naturally gravitated toward the darker disc, following what the researchers believe is an internal calculation of the amount of light and the number of other roaches, finding comfort in company.
Dr. Halloy then replaced four of the cockroaches with four robots equipped with sensors to measure light and the proximity of other robots. When the robots emulated the real roaches, the group continued to seek the dark and crowded place.
When the four robotic roaches were reprogrammed to prefer the lighter disc, however, the real roaches followed them about 60 percent of the time, in essence deferring their own judgment as the preference grew more popular. (The other 40 percent of the time, the robotic roaches succumbed to peer pressure and headed for the darkest place.)
Stephen Pratt, a professor of life sciences at Arizona State University:
“It’s a cascade of imitation, so a small effect can become quite large. This one is a real step forward. They’ve developed these theories about what kinds of individual behavior rules would have to follow to generate a collective intelligence. I thought it was very gratifying they could get the roaches to do what they normally would not do.”
The scientists plan to extend their research to higher animals. The next creation: a robotic chicken, which will look a little like a ball on tank treads with loudspeakers. Newly hatched chicks, which bond to the first thing they see, will do so with the robot as if it were their mother. The researchers say they hope to explore the chicks’ behavior with the false mother as leader.
The current research did not test whether the robots could lead the cockroaches to something they really disliked, like broad daylight or insecticide. The results also apply only to cockroaches.
Dr. Halloy: “We are not interested in people.”
Really? The NYT just can't help lying in its reporting, can it, readers?
Don't believe me?
Read the Globe story on the same thing, and see how the NYT lies right to your face:
"With robotic bugs, larger ethical questions; Advances affect ties of human, machine" by Colin Nickerson/Boston Globe November 16, 2007
Here's a first: Bug-size robots have been used to coax cockroaches into unnatural acts.
Research reported yesterday in the journal Science described how a team of European scientists placed tiny robots in a colony of laboratory cockroaches. Using behavioral modification methods, the whirring, partly-disguised faux insects were able to induce the real creepy-crawlies to follow their lead in seeking shelter in bright spaces. Bent behavior, indeed, for critters famous for lurking in dark, moist cracks.
No one cares too much if cockroaches can be hoodwinked into acting against their own interests. Still, it's surprising that robots can insinuate themselves into colonies of living things, however wee-witted, and more or less take charge.
Although not designed to address major philosophical issues, the research nonetheless points to how robot science appears headed in weird and unpredictable directions. Some scientists say it is inevitable that advances will ultimately affect the fundamental relationship between humanity and its machines.
And many analysts say it is high time that societies start seriously considering the ethical dimensions of the technological advances, although others contend the dangers are exaggerated.
Already, Asian countries that represent the gold standard in robotic research are pondering unprecedented new laws that would regulate how much independence robots should be given by programmers and even what "rights" should be accorded the clever devices, which one day may possess something approaching wills of their own, according to robotic gurus.
Machines with "rights?" WILLS OF THEIR OWN?! I no like this one bit!
A particular issue is whether robots will be permitted to make life-or-death decisions involving humans in, say, hospitals or on the battlefield. Just two months ago, a quasi-robotic drone, or unmanned aircraft, deployed by US forces in Iraq racked up its first "kill." The machine was controlled by humans, but robotic warriors may eventually be programmed to literally call their own shots.
Killer Robots, huh? Calling their own shots? Hope it doesn't have a glitch.
Robert J. Sawyer, renowned science fiction author, wrote in an essay that accompanied the cockroach findings and other robot research in the journal:
"As we make robots more intelligent and autonomous, and eventually endow them with the independent ability to kill people, surely we need to consider how to govern their behavior and how much freedom to accord them - so-called roboethics."
I don't want these kind of robots around.
What is wrong with these madmen?
This is SICKENING, readers!
Other articles examined the use of "thinking" robots to explore outer space; robots possessing physical agility that would be impossible for creatures of flesh and blood; and also robots copying nature's designs for locomotion - slithering like salamanders, zipping like flies, or using tiny foot fibers to scale walls like geckos.
Many analysts say robots will soon be thinking for themselves in ways no smart machine does today - acting as minders for the infirm or ill. Or making critical judgments during deep sea and far-space journeys.
Listen to this.
They are going to make the robots into killers, yet they are trying to tell us how good this will all be.
This is fucking WARPED and SICK, readers!
Some prognosticators see robots as sinister devices of doom, noting that the United States is already spending multiple billions of dollars to develop robot soldiers and other intelligent war devices. The upside, of course, is that robots don't come home in body bags.
Wars of the future!
Robots will fight the wars after all the people are gone -- just like in the "Terminator" movies!
Alex Jones is right.
These globalist mind-sets running this world are FUCKING SICK!
Starrier-eyed futurists see robots as potential lovemates, even spouses - one day, they say, robots will be cuddly, emotionally responsive, and programmed to meet our every ardent whim. Plus take out the trash and mow the lawn.
David Levy, a London-based artificial intelligence researcher and author of the new book "Love + Sex With Robots.":
"Love with robots will eventually revise our thinking on relationships and morality."
This is SICKENING!!!
Gonna MARRY and FUCK a ROBOT, huh?
This man is a PERVERTED SICKO!!!
He needs help, ladies and gentleman!
By midcentury, Levy predicts, robots will have become so humanlike that there will be a political groundswell in liberal, secular democracies to accord them rights and legally-protected dignity:
Levy wrote in an e-mail: "I expect Massachusetts . . . will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages [of humans] with robots."
I guess that's a joke, but considering the gay marriage and such, probably right.
That's why "liberal" Massachusetts sucks.
Just a test lab for perversion!
Within decades, other analysts say, robots could come to represent a sort of species - able to replicate and even to evolve without human tinkering.
They are going to make a robot that gives birth? To what? The "Demon Seed?"
Sawyer, in an interview: "We are embarking on the process of creating the first intelligent species to share the earth with humans since the time of the Neanderthals. We're racing past the era of robo-vacuum cleaners into someplace quite different and more complex."
Wow, is that ever a species-centric statement!
Yeah, dolphins, gorillas, and elephants aren't intelligent, huh?
Talk about your arrogant asshole human!
Scientists in Japan and South Korea are already busily designing human-like androids to care for the sick and perhaps walk a police beat. Robots might bring medications, help frail patients move about, change bed linens, or simply provide company.
Or kill you!
Skeptics say visions of robots giving comfort or imposing rule of law are pretty speculative, given the state of present technology.
Jordan B. Pollack, professor of computer science and complex systems at Brandeis University:
"We are already surrounded by robots - bank ATMs, computer printers, industrial devices. But it's a much bigger leap to truly autonomous robots."
Those kind of robots are fine.
They aren't independent thinking, and they won't decide to kill you!!!!
And I sure as hell don't want to be fucked by a robot. Ouch!
"Can we make a 'soldier' that's programmed to kill people wearing different uniforms? Sure we can. And all the enemy has to do is change uniforms. Not exactly a high-tech countermeasure, but it will fool robots. The best of them have the brains of a one-month-old baby . . . We remain a very, very long way from making general purpose humanoids with real decision-making intelligence."
So you say! WhoTF really knows!
But South Korea says such robots are close enough to reality that this year it began drafting a "Robot Ethics Charter," aimed at defining how much willpower and decision-making capability robots should be allowed.
The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, in a statement:
"The move anticipates the day when robots, particularly intelligent service robots, become part of daily life."
Think we will survive that long?
The Seoul government predicts that "smart" androids will be a part of every South Korean household by 2020. Japan makes similar predictions.
Human ambitions for robots have clearly evolved since the word was coined in 1921 from the Czech word for drudgery. The idea of using smart machines to undertake abhorrent, repetitive, and dangerous tasks has been around for centuries. It's been reality in industrialized nations for decades. The military uses robots to defuse bombs and detect enemy hiding places.
The cockroach research introduced insect-size robots - little, wheeled, white boxes scented like roaches - into a lab colony. Over time the robots used motions and other ploys to persuade the real (and near-sighted) roaches to choose shelter in more lighted areas.
Jose Halloy, professor of social ecology at Belgium's Université Libre de Bruxelles:
"Our study shows that it is possible to use . . . robots to modulate and induce new collective patterns in group-living animals."
And spy on protesters, too!
Conceptually, at least, the cockroach study points to how robots might someday be used to make higher organisms dance to robotic tunes. Preliminary research is underway in Europe to see whether "artificial intelligences" might be employed to direct human behavior in panic situations - to use robots to impose calm and order during fires, natural disasters, or terrorist attacks, for example.
Sawyer (the sicko): "What's weird is how biological entities change their behavior when in the company of robots. When robots start interacting with us, we'll probably show as much resistance to their influence as we have to iPods, cellphones, and TV."
Those things aren't independent machines that may decide to kill you!
I don't think I'll ever get used to a android, sirs.
The fact scares me, especially when the robot can be programmed to kill.
So is it Science Fiction, readers, or SCIENCE FACT!
Wham! Owwww!
I just slammed my hand down on a bug and cut it.
Hey, is that bug metal?
So they are not talking about people, huh, Times?
Pffffffffttttt!
