首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Trust Me, I Am a Robot Robot safety: as robots move into homes and offices, ensuring that they do not injure people will be
Trust Me, I Am a Robot Robot safety: as robots move into homes and offices, ensuring that they do not injure people will be
admin
2013-02-24
22
问题
Trust Me, I Am a Robot
Robot safety: as robots move into homes and offices, ensuring that they do not injure people will be vital. But how?
The incident
In 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot’s powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot.
This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behaviour was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer. The laws appeared in I, Robot, a book of short stories published in 1950 that inspired a recent Hollywood film. But decades later the laws, designed to prevent robots from harming people either through action or inaction, remain in the realm of fiction.
Indeed, despite the introduction of improved safety mechanisms, robots have claimed many more victims since 198 I. Over the years people have been crushed, hit on the head, welded and even had molten aluminium poured over them by robots. Last year there were 77 robot-related accidents in Britain alone, according to the Health and Safety Executive.
More related issues
With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. Inspired by the Pugwash Conferences--an international group of scientists, academics and activists founded in 1957 to campaign for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons—the new group of robo-ethicists met earlier this year in Genoa, Italy, and announced their initial findings in March at the European Robotics Symposium in Palermo, Sicily.
"Security, safety and sex are the big concerns," says Henrik Christensen, chairman of the European Robotics Network at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and one of the organisers of the new robo-ethics group. Should robots that are strong enough or heavy enough to crush people be allowed into homes? Is "system malfunction" a justifiable defence for a robotic fighter plane that contravenes the Geneva Convention and mistakenly fires on innocent civilians? And should robotic sex dolls resembling children be legally allowed?
These questions may seem esoteric but in the next few years they will become increasingly relevant, says Dr. Christensen. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly surpassing their industrial counterparts. By the end of 2003 there were more than 600,000 robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers — a figure predicted to rise to more than 4m by the end of next year. Japanese industrial firms are racing to build humanoid robots to act as domestic helpers for the elderly, and South Korea has set a goal that 100% of households should have domestic robots by 2020. In light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about safety and ethical guidelines now, says Dr. Christensen.
Difficulties
So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces? "Not enough," says Blay Whitby, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Sussex in England. This is hardly surprising given that the field of "safety-critical computing" is barely a decade old, he says. But things are changing, and researchers are increasingly taking an interest in trying to make robots safer.
Regulating the behaviour of robots is going to become more difficult in the future, since they will increasingly have self-learning mechanisms built into them, says Gianmarco Veruggio, a roboticist in Italy. As a result, their behaviour will become impossible to predict fully, he says, since they will not be behaving in predefined ways but will learn new behaviour as they go.
Then there is the question of unpredictable failures. What happens if a robot’s motors stop working, or it suffers a system failure just as it is performing heart surgery or handing you a cup of hot coffee? You can, of course, build in redundancy by adding backup systems, says Hirochika Inoue, a veteran roboticist at the University of Tokyo who is now an adviser to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. But this guarantees nothing, he says. "One hundred percent safety is impossible through technology," says Dr. Inoue. This is because ultimately no matter how thorough you are, you cannot anticipate the unpredictable nature of human behaviour, he says.
Legal problems
So where does this leave Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics? They were a narrative device, and were never actually meant to work in the real world, says Dr. Whitby. Let alone the fact that the laws require the robot to have some form of human-like intelligence, which robots still lack, the laws themselves don’t actually work very well. Indeed, Asimov repeatedly knocked them down in his robot stories, showing time and again how these seemingly watertight roles could produce unintended consequences.
In any case, says Dr. Inoue, the laws really just encapsulate commonsense principles that are already applied to the design of most modem appliances, both domestic and industrial. Every toaster, lawn mower and mobile phone is designed to minimise the risk of causing injury — yet people still manage to electrocute themselves, lose fingers or fall out of windows in an effort to get a better signal. At the very least, robots must meet the rigorous safety standards that cover existing products~ The question is whether new, robot-specific rules are needed-- and, if so, what they should say.
"Making sure robots are safe will be critical," says Colin Angle of Robot, which has sold over 2m "Roomba" household-vacuuming robots. But be argues that his firm’s robots are, in fact, much safer than some popular toys. But what he believes is that robot is just like other home appliances that deserves no special treatment.
Robot safety is likely to appear in the civil courts as a matter of product liability. "When the first robot carpet-sweeper sucks up a baby, who will be to blame?" asks John Hallam, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. If a robot is autonomous and capable of learning, can its designer be held responsible for all its actions? Today the answer to these questions is generally "yes". But as robots grow in complexity it will become a lot less clear cut, he says.
However, the idea that general-purpose robots, capable of learning, will become widespread is wrong, suggests Mr. Angle. It is more likely, he believes, that robots will be relatively dumb machines designed for particular tasks. Rather than a humanoid robot maid, "it’ s going to be a heterogeneous swarm of robots that will take care of the house," he says.
The Three Laws of Robotics mentioned in this passage only exited in a book of short stories.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
A
解析
根据题目中的“The Three Laws of the Robotics”定位在文章的第一部分第二段,文中叙述关于机器人的三条规定仅仅是在小说中存在,而不能在现实中产生任何作用,因此本题的叙述正确
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/CMu7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Theage-oldriddleofwhymanywomenoutlivemenhasbeensolved.It’stheirpumpingpower,Britishresearchershavefound.
Theage-oldriddleofwhymanywomenoutlivemenhasbeensolved.It’stheirpumpingpower,Britishresearchershavefound.
Ifyouweretoldthataparticularlydelicious-lookingice-creamcone(圆筒)containeddangerouschemicals,thentoldsoonaftert
Scandalsarerootedintest-basedsystems;theyexistwithorwithoutfraud.Wesellourchildrenshortwhenwesendthemtosch
Tourismreallyisabigbusinessthesedays.It’s【B1】______.Itinvolveshotels,transportation,【B2】______,shops,andthousands
Yearafteryear,theworld’snationsgathertofindwaystoreducecarbondioxide,themaingreenhousegas,withlittlemeaningf
Darwin’sgreatwork,TheOriginofSpecies,isnowgenerallyacceptedasoneofthemostimportantbookseverwritten.Butwhen
____________(由于缺乏感情交流),misunderstandingarisesandsometimesleadstothebreakupofafamily.
FourDangerstotheEuroOperatingasinglecurrencyisnotgoingtobeeasy.Europeaneconomicandmonetaryunionwillnot
Eachone____________(满足不同的观众的需求)whilebothhaveastrongfollowingfromlargegroupsoffans.
随机试题
体内应保持正氮平衡的人群是________。
患者,男,60岁。素体虚寒,近日偶遇风寒,出现胸腹胀闷作痛,胃痛,呕吐,伴有咳嗽,虚喘,腰膝酸软。医生建议选择沉香配伍应用。沉香的正确用法是
患者胃脘灼痛,痛势急迫,烦躁易怒,泛酸嘈杂,口干口苦。舌红苔黄,脉弦或弦数。该患者所患疾病的脏腑是()。
下列属于各种等级的监理单位所能承担的工程类型的是()。
金智众联咨询公司是一家专门向银行业金融机构提供风险管理、模型系统开发顾问、规划服务的专业化公司。该公司拥有众多涉及银行不同领域的专家,根据不同银行客户项目需求,抽调相关专家组成项目组提供服务。针对上述信息,下列表述正确的有()。
美术创作最重要的思维方式是()。
交管局要求司机在通过某特定路段时,在白天也要像晚上一样使用大灯,结果发现这条路上的年事故发生率比从前降低了15%。他们得出结论说:如果在全市范围内都推行该项规定会同样地降低事故发生率。以下哪项如果为真,最能支持上述论证的结论?
下列有关函数重载的叙述中,错误的是()。
SilencePleaseIfthereisonegroupofworkersacrosstheWesternworldwhowillbegladthatChristmasisover,thatgroup
IntheUnitedStates,theseatsintheSenateareallocatedtodifferentstates
最新回复
(
0
)