“Although I do firmly believe that the brain is a machine, whether this machine is a computer is another question” —Rodney Brooks PHOTO CREDIT PHOTO 70 NA • IEEE SPECTRUM • JUne 2008 WWW.SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG WWW.SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG JUne 2008 • IEEE SPECTRUM • NA 71 TH E S I N GUL A RIT Y | S P E CI A POWERFUL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGenCE WON’T SPRING A FROM A SUDDen TECHNOLOGICAL “BIG BanG”— L R IT’S ALReaDY EVOLVING SYMBIOTICALLY WITH US E BY RODneY BROOKS PORT I, Rodney Brooks, Am a Robot am a machine. So are you. ¶ Of all the hypotheses I’ve held during my 30-year career, this one in particu- lar has been central to my research in robotics and artificial intelligence. I, you, our family, friends, and dogs—we all are machines. We are really sophisti- cated machines made up of billions and billions of bio- Imolecules that interact according to well-defined, though not completely known, rules deriving from physics and PREVIOUS SPREAD: CHRISTIE BRYAN DESIGN; SETH THIS RESNICK/ PAGE: chemistry. The biomolecular interactions taking place inside our heads give rise to our intellect, our feelings, our sense of self. ¶ Accepting this hypothesis opens up a remarkable possibility. If we really are machines and if— this is a big if—we learn the rules governing our brains, then in principle there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to replicate those rules in, say, silicon and steel. I believe our creation would exhibit genuine human-level intelligence, emotions, and even consciousness. G ETTY I MAGES PHOTO CREDIT PHOTO 70 NA • IEEE SPECTRUM • JUne 2008 WWW.SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG WWW.SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG JUne 2008 • IEEE SPECTRUM • NA 71 SPECIAL REPORT | SOCIABLE MACHINES: Founded by Rodney Brooks, mit’s Humanoid Robotics Group develops robots capable of interacting and cooperating with people. Aaron Edsinger built Domo [left] to explore dexterous manipulation and visual perception. Mertz [right], created THE SINGULARITY by Lijin Aryananda, is a robotic head able to learn from its environment. Cynthia Breazeal designed Kismet [below] to study human- robot social interactions. PHOTOS, FROM LEFT: AARON EDSINGER; PETER MENZEL/ PHOTO RESEARCHERS; LIJIN ARYANANDA I’m far from alone in my the rates of progress in various tech- conviction that one day we will nologies and how and why those rates create a human-level artificial of progress are changing. Their argu- intelligence, often called an ments are plausible, but plausibility is artifi cial general intelligence, or by no means certainty. AGI. But how and when we will My own view is that things will get there, and what will happen unfold very differently. I do not after we do, are now the subjects claim that any specific assumption of fierce debate in my circles. or extrapolation of theirs is faulty. Some researchers believe that Rather, I argue that an artifi cial intel- AGIs will undergo a positive- ligence could evolve in a much diff er- feedback self-enhancement until their cal augmentation of the brain, genetic ent way. In particular, I don’t think there comprehension of the universe far sur- engineering, [and] ultrahigh-resolution is going to be one single sudden techno- passes our own. Our world, those indi- scans of the brain followed by computer logical “big bang” that springs an AGI into viduals say, will change in unfathomable emulation” are some of their ideas. They “life.” Starting with the mildly intelligent ways after such superhuman intelligence don’t believe this is centuries away; they systems we have today, machines will comes into existence, an event they refer think it will happen sometime in the next become gradually more intelligent, genera- to as the singularity. two or three decades. tion by generation. The singularity will be Perhaps the best known of the peo- What will the world look like then? a period, not an event. ple proselytizing for this singularity— Some singularitarians believe our world This period will encompass a time let’s call them singularitarians—are aco- will become a kind of techno-utopia, with when we will invent, perfect, and deploy, lytes of Raymond Kurzweil, author of humans downloading their conscious- in fi ts and starts, ever more capable sys- The Singularity Is Near: When Humans nesses into machines to live a disembodied, tems, driven not by the imperative of the Transcend Biology (Viking, 2005) and after-death life. Others, however, antici- singularity itself but by the usual eco- board member of the Singularity Institute pate a kind of technodamnation in which nomic and sociological forces. Eventually, for Artificial Intelligence, in Palo Alto, intelligent machines will be in conflict we will create truly artificial intelli- Calif. Kurzweil and his colleagues believe with humans, maybe waging war against gences, with cognition and conscious- that this super AGI will be created either us. The proponents of the singularity are ness recognizably similar to our own. I through ever-faster advances in artifi cial technologically astute and as a rule do not have no idea how, exactly, this creation intelligence or by more biological means— appeal to technologies that would violate will come about. I also don’t know when “direct brain-computer interfaces, biologi- the laws of physics. They well understand it will happen, although I strongly sus- 72 NA • IEEE SPECTRUM • JUNE 2008 WWW.SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG WWW.SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG JUNE 2008 • IEEE SPECTRUM • NA 73 pect it won’t happen before 2030, the engage in a dialogue using complete years ago someone asked me at a talk I year that some singularitarians predict. clauses and can handle irregularities, was giving, “Isn’t the brain just like the But I expect the AGIs of the future— idiomatic expressions, a vast array of World Wide Web?” embodied, for example, as robots accents, noisy environments, incom- We use these metaphors as the basis that will roam our homes and work- plete utterances, and interjections, and for our philosophical thinking and even places—to emerge gradually and sym- they can even correct nonnative speak- let them pervade our understanding of biotically with our society. At the same ers, inferring what was really meant in what the brain truly does. None of our time, we humans will transform our- an ungrammatical utterance and refor- past metaphors for the brain has stood selves. We will incorporate a wide range matting it. Most of these capabilities are the test of time, and there is no reason of advanced sensory devices and pros- still hard or impossible for computers. to expect that the equivalence of current thetics to enhance our bodies. As our n The manual dexterity of a 6-year-old digital computing and the brain will machines become more like us, we will child. At 6 years old, children can grasp survive. What we might need is a new become more like them. objects they have not seen before; manip- conceptual framework: new ways of And I’m an optimist. I believe we will ulate flexible objects in tasks like tying sorting out and piecing together the bits all get along. shoelaces; pick up flat, thin objects like of knowledge we have about the brain. playing cards or pieces of paper from Creating a machine capable of effec- ike many AI researchers, I’ve a tabletop; and manipulate unknown tively performing the four capabilities always dreamed of building objects in their pockets or in a bag into above may take 10 years, or it may take the ultimate intelligence. As a which they can’t see. Today’s robots can 100. I really don’t know. In 1966, some longtime fan of Star Trek, I have at most do any one of these things for AI pioneers at MIT thought it would wanted to build Commander some very particular object. take three months—basically an under- LData, a fully autonomous robot that we n The social understanding of an graduate student working during the could work with as equals. Over the 8-year-old child. By the age of 8, a child summer—to completely solve the prob- past 50 years, the field of artificial intel- can understand the difference between lem of object recognition. The student ligence has made tremendous prog- what he or she knows about a situation failed. So did I in my Ph.D. project ress. Today you can find AI-based capa- and what another person could have 15 years later. Maybe the field of AI will bilities in things as varied as Internet observed and therefore could know. The need several Einsteins to bring us closer search engines, voice-recognition soft- child has what is called a “theory of the to ultraintelligent machines. If you are ware, adaptive fuel-injection modules, mind” of the other person. For exam- one, get to work on your doctorate now. and stock-trading applications. But you ple, suppose a child sees her mother can’t engage in an interesting heart-to- placing a chocolate bar inside a drawer. grew up in a town in South Australia power-source talk with any of them. The mother walks away, and the child’s without much technology. In the late We have many very hard problems to brother comes and takes the chocolate. 1960s, as a teenager, I saw 2001: A Space solve before we can build anything that The child knows that in her mother’s Odyssey, and it was a revelation. Like might qualify as an AGI. Many problems mind the chocolate is still in the drawer. millions of others, I was enthralled by have become easier as computer power This ability requires a level of perception I the soft-spoken computer villain HAL has reliably increased on its exponential across many domains that no AI system 9000 and wondered if we could one and seemingly inexorable merry way.