Storybots

<!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:JA;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-fareast-language:JA;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style>  <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qhI5_pJVs20..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qhI5_pJVs20..." width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; color: black;">The first television science fiction program ever broadcast was produced by </span><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC" title="BBC"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">BBC</span></a><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; color: black;"> on this day in 1938. The program was a thirty-five-minute adaptation of part of the 1920 </span><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white;">play <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R._%..." title="R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">R.U.R.</span></a>, </i>also known as <i>Rossum’s Universal Robots</i>, by the Czech author Karel <span style="color: black;">Čapek. It was Čapek (or his brother) who coined the term <i>robot</i>to describe the manmade humanoids in the play, from an old Slavic word meaning “work” or “servitude.” </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; color: black;">The artificial beings in the play are not really robots in our contemporary sense of mechanical devices that can perform human tasks. They are made of a synthetic protoplasm.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">The idea of mechanical servants goes back much further than 1920. There’s a reference in Homer’s <i>Iliad </i> to female servants made of gold who assist Hephaestus, the god of metalwork: “Handmaids ran to attend their master, all cast in gold but a match for living, breathing girls. Intelligence filled their hearts, voice and strength their frames, from the deathless gods they’ve learned their work of hand.” (Book 18, translation by Robert Fagles). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">These days we have robots that vacuum our floors and work as bomb disposal devices. We have artificial intelligences that can beat us at chess. There’s a Murasaki storytelling robot in Japan (the country which has the most robots in the world). The Murasaki is actually just a device that simulates the actions of someone telling a story, while the story itself comes from an MP3 player hidden inside it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wrote the story <a href="http://storylands.blogspot.ca/2011/10..." target="_blank">“Machine vs Snot-Monster”</a> after pondering the thought of an artificial intelligence that could really tell stories. It seems to me (though I’m certainly no expert on AI) that a machine could really be called intelligent only when it developed to the stage where it <i>wanted</i> to tell stories, or needed to. When robots reach this stage, and are able to look back at the stories that human beings have been telling about them (since the <i>Iliad</i> or even longer), one has to wonder what kinds of stories they’ll tell about us.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img alt="StumbleUpon" src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/images/stu..." border="0" /></div>