Sunday, January 24, 2010

Honda Dreams: Living with Robots

Honda has been putting together a series of quite short award winning films. They just released a film called Living with Robots in which Wendell Wallach is featured along with various scientists and with the robot Asimo.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Sharkey on Robots in the Military, Childcare, and Eldercare


There is also an article at silicon.com titled, Artificial intelligence: The robots are coming but are we ready for them?, which discusses the ideas of Noel Sharkey, Alan Winfield, Kevin Warwick, David Levy, and others.

War and Sex with Robots


On January 22nd Noel Sharkey interviews David Levy on ethical issues arising from robots designed as sex toys, including the newly released Roxxy (pictured to the right).

Next week Noel will be interviewing Peter Asaro about Roxxy and other sex robots of the future.

These interviews can be accessed at The Sound of Science website.

Houston police also conducted "no media" test of spy drones

Noel Sharkey points out in response to my previous post that it's not just the UK police looking to use drones for surveillance, as reported in Houston, Texas

US to Sell Drones to Pakistan


The New York Times reports that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is offering Pakistan its own Shadow drones as an incentive to encourage cooperation in the fight against the Taliban. Of course the Pakistan government might elect to use these drones to target political enemies other than those with whom the U.S. is at war. The story titled, U.S. Offers Pakistan Drones to Urge Cooperation, was published on January 21st.