27 March 2007

Automata and attitudes to terminal failure

Tangled during the night in a spider's line,


these struggles to stay upright lasted for about twenty minutes.

Most likely, two distinct species of humanoids will arise: those that respond to and illicit our emotions and those we wish simply to do work, day in and day out, without stirring our feelings . David Bruemmer, Humanoid Robotics: Ethical Considerations, Idaho National Laboratory

Will automata be built with the will to live past their warranty period?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In those photos, it looks almost like a complex bronze sculpture. Is it a mantis?

anna tambour said...

Yes and no!
See here:
http://www.ento.csiro.au/Ecowatch/Primary/insects/pages/Mantispidae.htm

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link! I'd never heard of them.

PS: Last night, PBS had a program about cuttlefish -- mind-bogglingly weird and sometimes gorgeous critters that *do* seem like the closest thing we have to alien life forms (as the show said).