Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind [Paperback]

This is science fiction without the fiction--and more mind-bending than anything you ever saw on Star Trek. Moravec, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, envisions a not-too-distant future in which robots of superhuman intelligence have picked up the evolutionary baton from their human creators and headed out into space to colonize the universe.

This isn't anything that a million sci-fi paperbacks haven't already envisioned. The difference lies in Moravec's practical-minded mapping of the technological, economic, and social steps that could lead to that vision. Starting with the modest accomplishments of contemporary robotics research, he projects a likely course for the next 40 years of robot development, predicting the rise of superintelligent, creative, emotionally complex cyberbeings and the end of human labor by the middle of the next century.

After Moravec makes this point, his projections start to get really wild: robot corporations will take up residence in outer space with rogue cyborgs; planet-size robots will cruise the solar system looking for smaller bots to assimilate; and eventually every atom in the entire galaxy will be transformed into data-storage space, with a full-scale simulation of human civilization running as a subroutine somewhere.

His last chapter, which mingles the latest in avant-garde physics with hints of Borges's most intoxicating metaphysical conceits, is a breathtaking piece of hallucinatory eschatology. Moravec concludes by reminding us that even the wildest long-range predictions about the technological future never turn out to be as unhinged as they should have been. --Julian Dibbell --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Here come the free-roaming robot vacuum cleaners, self-driving cars, robot chess champions, robots that fly and swim. If these machine intelligencesAalready tooling around or on the drawing boardsAleave you blas?, consider this: Robotics pioneer Moravec predicts that if the present exponential growth rate of computing power continues, super-robots that perceive, intuit, adapt, think and even simulate feelings much like human beings will be buildable before 2050. Mixing broad speculations and practical suggestions for speeding up robotics research and development, Moravec, a founder of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, picks up where he left off in Mind Children (in which he suggested the uploading of human minds to software). In this new mind-bending futurist scenario, he predicts that advanced robots will perform all essential manufacturing and food production, pushing humanity into greater leisure and the sharing of wealth. Moravec's hypothetical robots also launch into the cosmos as colonizers, transferring whole industries to outer space. Yet, as these super-minds repeatedly restructure themselves, physical activity will increasingly give way to pure thought; cyberspace will become the inhabited universe and, in a science fiction-like twist, our robotic progeny may turn away from us in behavior and motive. Moravec dares to dream of a trillion-fingered medical robot whose molecular interventions allow it to act as diagnostic instrument, surgeon and medicine, and of quantum computers that make time travel conceivable. In this remarkable report, Moravec may have looked deeper into some aspects of the future than anyone else. Illustrated.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Given the ever-increasing speed and memory size available to computer scientists, Moravec, who founded Carnegie Mellon's major robotics program, predicts that artificial intelligence will exceed human intelligence by 2050. He argues further that it is only a matter of time before we have computer simulations that will substitute for human functionality. (Yes, robots will take over the work force, but ultimately humans will benefit from a fully automated economy.) Moravec considers the various arguments, philosophical and otherwise, that have been made regarding whether computers can "think" and devotes a fair amount of coverage to questions Turing raised 50 years ago. His comparison of libraries to knowledge bases is simplistic?apparently, Moravec doesn't see any intellectual component to cataloging?but overall his interpretations are imaginative and his arguments interesting if not always convincing. There will probably be a fairly broad audience for this work.?Hilary Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Moravec is a pioneer designer of robots, and here extrapolates how their future--and humanity's--may evolve over the next century. With computer power increasing exponentially, Moravec regards the emergence of machine intelligence as inevitable, and, quite sanguine about the prospect, he clearly explains the software ideas that would allow it. Moravec opens with Alan Turing's seminal theories of computing and then describes the difficulties the first robot engineers encountered in getting simple robots to cross a room. Computers lacked common sense (and still do), but Moravec believes the monumental capacity of the future computer will allow it to create an ever more accurate, real-time simulation of its world. After outlining four possible generations of robots, culminating in "Exes" (ex-humans) that design and build themselves, Moravec releases his imagination and has them trooping off Earth, preserved as a nature refuge, and colonizing space in a Darwinian process. Moravec's vision, a bewildering but amazingly interconnected set of ideas, is enthusiastically presented and reasonably argued, and will captivate futurists. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"Stop worrying about the Millennium Bug and read how we'll be replaced by our electronic creations before 2050. Robot is the most awesome work of controlled imagination I have ever encountered: Hans Moravec stretched my mind until it hit the stops."--Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Chancellor: International Space University and University of Moratuwa

"Intellectually adventurous and free with confident futuristic speculation."--International Herald Tribune

"Robotics pioneer Moravec predicts that if the present exponential growth rate of computers continues, super-robots that perceive, intuit, adapt, think and even simulate feelings much like human beings will be buildable before 2050.... Moravec dares to dream of a trillion-fingered medical robot whose molecular interventions allow it to act as diagnostic instrument, surgeon and medicine, and of quantum computers that make time travel conceivable. In this remarkable report, Moravec may have looked deeper into some aspects of the future than anyone else."--Publishers Weekly

"Robot is a dramatic, awe-inspiring prophecy of the human future by Hans Moravec....Wired readers sampled Moravec's vision in 'Supehumanism'. His new book amplifies and substantiates that vision in concise, simple, yet elegant prose. Robot is an uncompromisingly radical synthesis of sociobiology, computer science, and philosophy. Robot paints a headbending but persuasive picture of our next 50 years, augmented with fascinating fragments from the more distant future." --Wired

"Moravec's vision, a bewildering but amazingly interconnected set of ideas, is enthusiastically presented and reasonably argued, and will captivate futurists."--Gilbert Taylor,Booklist

"Moravec's book is...intellectually adventurous and free with confident speculation. This is good knockabout stuff, a heady and unnrving glimpse into a possible future."--Colin McGinn, NYTBR

"Moravec elaborates on his vision in bold, and surprisingly compelling detail... no reader will want to miss out on Moravec's clairvoyant perception of tomorrow's universe."--The Lingua Franca Review

"A well-written and fascinating study of robot/human relations."--Science and Technology

In this compelling book, Hans Moravec predicts that machines will attain human levels of intelligence by the year 2040, and that by 2050, they will surpass us. But even though Moravec predicts the end of the domination by human beings, his is not a bleak vision. Far from railing against a future in which machines rule the world, Moravec embraces it, taking the startling view that intelligent robots will actually be our evolutionary heirs. "Intelligent machines, which will grow from us, learn our skills, and share our goals and values, can be viewed as children of our minds." And since they are our children, we will want them to outdistance us. In fact, in a bid for immortality, many of our descendants will choose to transform into "ex humans," as they upload themselves into advanced computers. This provocative new book, the highly anticipated follow-up to his bestselling volume Mind Children, charts the trajectory of robotics in breathtaking detail. A must read for artificial intelligence, technology, and computer enthusiasts, Moravec's freewheeling but informed speculations present a future far different than we ever dared imagine.

40 b/w line illus

BHans Moravec, one of the leaders of robotics research, was a founder of the world's largest robotics program, at Carnegie Mellon University. The author of Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Moravec lives in Pittsburgh.