Japanese robot with self-organizing neural net learning

Next step in robot learning?

The comments on this story are all a bit apocalyptic, but it's hard to tell how sophisticated this system actually is.

A Samsung Robot In Every Home By 2020?

Ben Goertzel posted this article about the current state of robotics in Korea after a recent trip there.

Noel Sharkey interviews Colin Allen

Noel Sharkey interviewed Colin Allen for his Sound of Science podcast on 13th March
.

Here's Noel's description of the interview:

Would you trust a machine to make life and death decisions about you. It doesn’t have to be a robot. It might be a piece of software that decides when to turn off your life support. A new book worth a read this year is Moral Machines: Teaching robots rights and wrongs (sic) by Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen. Noel talks to one of the authors, Colin Allen a Professor of Cognitive Science and the History and Philosophy of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, to find out what all the fuss is about. The book discusses many of the issues about why and how machines in the near future will make ethical decisions about our lives. They are not talking about some far fetched super intelligent machine that is conscious. They are talking about machines based on today's technology. The book is written in a very straightforward, interesting and non-technical style. Although there are parts where I don’t agree with them, it is in everyone's interest to read this. It will make you better informed about a possible future that you may want to have opinions about - it is in your own interest.

"Doombas"

Too much admin work in February has meant not enough time watching the Daily Show, and so we're only just catching up with their coverage of robots and ethics. Samantha Bee did a "Future Shock" segment that featured Noel Sharkey and Jon Stewart interviewed Peter Singer.







Wired Magazine's Scott Thill also blogged about here