Holy crap! The Age of The Machines is nigh: a bunch of scientists in Switzerland have created learning robots that can lie to each other. Okay, so they don't swill beer or put bends in girders--they just communicate to each other with benign flashing lights, thank goodness, instead of using lasers to destroy humans:
The team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Federal Institute of Technology created the little experimental learning devices to work in groups and hunt for "food" targets nearby while avoiding "poison." Imagine their surprise when one generation of robots learned to signal lies about the poison, sending opponents to their doom.
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There's been a lot of news about robots lately, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to synthesize what's going on in this field and offer a bit of speculation about where robotics is headed.
Kids love robots. I have a three-year-old friend who can identify the 1950s cult icon Robbie the Robot at 20 paces. My own son Jim could do an impressive multi-voiced impression of R2D2 by age five.
OK, now I believe we're really making progress in AI. :)
Throw me a bone here! Is it too much to ask for a frickin' robot shark with a laser on its head?