Hugo de Garris set two goals for himself in his life: to develop super-intelligent machines, artefacts in his mouth, and to warn humanity about the world war that would break out because of them
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23/8/2003
An unusual guest accompanied the visit of the Prime Ministers of Japan and the Czech Republic to Prague on August 20, 2003 - a talking robot named "Asimo". Asimo can speak Czech and Japanese, walk and recognize voices. The Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, decided to bring the robot as a tribute to the Czech writer Karl Cepec who invented the word robot in his play from RUR, 1921 - Rossum's Universal Robots (in the photo: Koizumi and the robot)
The guest at the political dinner: a robot
Friday, August 22, 2003, 0:19 am by: Walla system!
The Prime Minister of Japan brought with him to Prague the most advanced human-like robot in the world, Asimo; The reason: a tribute to the Czech Republic where the word robot was invented in 1921
A talking robot named Asimo was the special guest at an official dinner held in Prague between the leaders of Japan and the Czech Republic. The robot entered the room and shook the hands of the Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, and the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Vladimir Spidela. Afterwards, Asimo said in Czech: "I arrived in the Czech Republic, where the word robot was invented, together with Prime Minister Koizumi, as a goodwill ambassador of Japan."
Advertisement Tasimo, the world's most advanced humanoid robot, speaks Japanese and Czech. He is also able to climb stairs and recognize voices. The BBC reported that the Japanese Prime Minister decided to bring with him the robot, produced by the Honda company, as a token of appreciation for the Czech writer Karel Chapek.
The writer invented the word robot in 1921, in a play in which he presented the idea of human-like creatures capable of repeating boring actions. The word robot originates from the Czech word robota, which means hard work. Koizumi's two-day visit to the Czech capital will conclude a week-long trip to Europe, during which he also visited Germany and Poland.
By Rotem Kovner
Roboconco and Asimo in the new world
12/1/2001
When he came to Japan eight years ago, Hugo de Garris immediately attracted attention. In Tsukuba, known as the Japanese city of science, word of the arrival of any new Westerner passed by word of mouth, but de Garris was different from most foreign scientists, who stayed in the city only a short time. With great self-confidence he presented himself as a key figure in the field of robot development and stated that he would settle in Japan until he finished the development of a human machine.
At the time, Japan was leading in the field of robots for industrial purposes, but after the failure of the "fifth generation" supercomputer project, pessimism spread among the Japanese development staff. The lag in the field of software and genetic engineering led the community captains to open their laboratories to foreign scientists. De Garris was one of those, and the huge sums offered by Japan for his research led him to the conclusion that only there he could complete it.
In his social gatherings, de Garris was quick to reveal his life's obsession. After a short introduction, he used to present to his interested interlocutors an article he published in 1989 in the professional journal "Al Magazine", in which he expressed his fear of the future appearance of artificial and intelligent man-made beings. De Garris, who at the time served as the head of the artificial intelligence research unit at the University of Brussels, claimed that this issue would have significant consequences for our lives already within a few years.
Based on the rate of development of computing, the decrease in the price of processors and some technological breakthroughs whose buds were already visible in the late 21s - de Garis predicted that during the 2010st century it will be possible to develop super-intelligent machines, "artifacts" (artificial intelligence), as he called them. He estimated that already in XNUMX a machine with a human memory capacity will be built, and then the performance of the parallel machine will steadily increase and its price will go up and down. The initial contact of man with intelligent machines, he claimed in the article, will begin already in the coming years; First, call systems will appear in commercial use that will be able to recognize voices and respond to simple commands from their owners. Over time, the sophistication of the machines will increase until one day mankind will realize that they have a connection and relationship with their computers.
The second area where a rapid revolution will take place will be robots for home use, which will provide a variety of services and entertainment. Stationary and mobile artefacts will be so common that our lives will be completely changed and in fact will be governed by them.
The evolution of artefacts will inevitably lead to a crisis, and DeGarris proposed two possible scenarios. According to the first, humanity will be divided into two camps. On one side will be the "earthlings", people who believe that human beings are the end and not the means, and that man should remain the ruling being on earth. On the other side will be the "Cosmics", who claim that man must allow the Artifacts to develop themselves on Earth - and escape into space himself. The ideological struggle will increase as the artifacts become more sophisticated, until at some point an all-out war may break out between the two groups.
According to the second, even more pessimistic scenario, the Artifacts will gradually take over human society. We may be ignored or treated like a pet. They may decide to exterminate us, as we do with harmful insects.
Summarizing his dramatic conclusions, de Garis called in 1989 for the convening of an international and interdisciplinary conference to discuss both the expected developments and the possible consequences of continued research in artificial intelligence. He painfully felt, he wrote, that we are unwittingly crossing the same point where atomic scientists stood during the XNUMXs, beginning to understand what lies in the nuclear chain reaction. If such a discussion had taken place at that time, he claimed, it is possible that Pandora's box would have remained sealed at a point where it was still possible to stop.
The transition from the technological description to the apocalyptic scenarios caused DeGarris' listeners to raise an eyebrow. The very fact that they were written by a professional from one of the leaders in the field made them a loud warning, but the man with the messianic zeal created a feeling of unreliability. After getting to know him further, he seemed to me to be the epitome of the eccentric and maybe crazy genius. Concentrated entirely on his scientific goals, de Garis sometimes behaved like a spoiled and egotistical child next to his wife, who was many years older than him. His technological skills were not yet proven at the time and it was evident that he lacked social and personal sensitivity. In the face of the closed Japanese people around him, his personality with many contrasts stood out from afar. For a moment he could be a gracious pianist, a thoughtful dancer and a charming socialite, and a moment later he might detach himself from his surroundings and seal off his thoughts. It is possible, it seems, that his entire obsession with the future of humanity was nothing more than a successful communication exercise serving his professional goals.
In an interview I had with him a few years ago, the question arose as to how it is possible that he, who warns against the holocaust of artifacts, came to Japan to lead their development. DeGarris didn't seem embarrassed. Artifacts are his life's dream, he stated with a smile and even admitted that if their further development is banned, he will not hesitate to go underground. Shortly after this interview he moved to work at a research institute on the outskirts of Kyoto, where he managed a team of "mind builders".
Four years later, DeGarris's warning was put to the first public test. At the beginning of 1996, the series of games between Garry Kasparov, the then undisputed world champion in chess, and the "deep blue" supercomputer of the IBM company was about to open. Before the game, Kasparov claimed that at the current rate of development the computer might beat him in 2010 and maybe never. The computer, for its part, was not impressed by its opponent's statements and won the first game while making decisions that experienced chess players defined as having "crazy odds". Kasparov eventually won the series, but the message was delivered - it's only a matter of time.
In early 1999, in an article in the Internet supplement of "Haaretz" which was based on his website, DeGarris announced that Robokunko (in Japanese - robot-cat), the artificial cat on which "the group for building brains" had been working for six years, would soon be completed. Although RoboConco's brain contains far fewer virtual neurons than originally planned for the project, DeGarris' reports suggest that the process of "growing" the artificial brain has entered an unprecedented phase, although RoboConco, which was supposed to be used only to demonstrate the technology, has remained secret until now. Meanwhile, last year there were also surprising changes in the market of robots for commercial-entertainment needs. In Japan, Sony marketed a toy puppy named Aibo. This simplistic robot that sold for $2,500 revealed the enormous potential of the market and immediately spawned countless imitators.
In the fall of this year, it will suddenly appear that Roboconco and Ivo are just a few stones in a shower of meteors and that the first phase of De Garris's prophecy is indeed beginning to take shape. More and more articles about new robots for home use were published in the press and it seems as if a hidden barrier in their development has been broken. Sony marketed the "World Friend Robot" which is not yet able to clean the house, but knows how to kick a ball and dance, and the Honda company launched "Asimo", an entertainment robot whose name is a tribute to Isaac Asimov. The media began to deal with the issue feverishly while touching mainly on the commercial aspects, but also on ethical questions related to the soul of the robots and the man's permission from the machine.
The year of the millennium was also a turning point for de Garis who left Japan, long before he had planned, on his way to lead a brain-building group at the private laboratory "Strelave" in Brussels. He does not say what went wrong in the land of endless budgets, but it is clear that he did not have much affection for Japanese society and especially for its scientific community. It is likely that the Japanese also did not like the man who publicly expressed his negative opinions about them and in an article on the Internet he even firmly stated that the Japanese do not know what multi-orgasm is. Today, a 53-year-old widower, he still passionately claims that his two goals in life are to develop artifacts and to warn humanity against the world war that will break out over the question of artifacts.
This war has actually been going on for more than a decade in the feverish mind of deGarris, who, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is doing everything in his power to develop the technology and at the same time raises superficial philosophical questions about its meaning without having any intention of presenting answers. If his prophecies come true in decades The near ones and if not, there is no doubt that robots will indeed take an increasingly active part in our world and the sharp line that separates man from machine will become more and more blurred. DeGarris has no answers on the matter; it serves only as a metaphor for the human inability to resist curiosity and materialism.
{Appeared in Haaretz newspaper, 12/1/2001}
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