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
45
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.
With advancement in the field of artificial-intelligence, it will be easier to regulate the behavior of robots in the future.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
B
解析
根据关键词artificial intelligence定位在第三部分第一段,在与下一段过渡的时候文章指出将来要控制机器人的行为会更困难,并接着进行了解释
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/PMu7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
FrequentbusinesstravelerJoyceGioiaforgotmorethan$20000worthofjewelryinherhotelroominItalylastyear.Luckily
A、GiveBobaphonecall.B、GoandpickBobup.C、GoandlookforBob.D、WaitforBob.D行动计划题。男士对Bob的迟到行为表示不满,女士认为Bob可能遇到了交通堵塞,建议
A、Finishwritingasalesreportfortheboss.B、Solvethecomplaintfromaclient.C、Getreadyfortheworknextmorning.D、Chec
HowtoNegotiateaJobOffer:SalaryNegotiationTipsAjobinterviewiscomprisedofseveralaspects.Oneofthemajoraspe
Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessayentitledInfluenceofWAPPhoneonStudents.Youshouldwritea
A、Itbeginsfromacampus.B、It’sfivemileslong.C、Itgoesaroundthecityhall.D、Ittakesafewdaystocover.A推断题。浏览选项可知,选
A、Whentosignaltoturnwhiledriving.B、Whoshouldberesponsibleforthetrafficaccident.C、Whycarelessdrivingandspeedin
Tounderstandthemarketingconcept,itisonlynecessarytounderstandthedifferencebetweenmarketingandselling.Nottooma
Theteacher______expectshisstudentstopasstheuniversityentranceexamination.
A、Buysomestamps.B、Waitforthepostman.C、Mailtheletterhimself.D、Deliverapackagetothepostman.C由男士的话Ileftaletter
随机试题
A.黄连阿胶汤B.朱砂安神丸C.两者均是D.两者均非(1996年第115,116题)不寐,急躁易怒,日赤口苦,口渴喜饮,小思饮食,溲干便黄,脉弦数者,应选用()
女,30岁。在颈丛麻醉下施行了甲状腺腺瘤切除术,手术顺利。该病人返回病房后应采用的卧位是
以下关于苦参的描述,错误的是()。
根据有关法律规定,招标代理服务收费方式是()
乌尔泰投资股份有限公司(以下简称“乌尔泰公司”)持有哈尔克公司60%的股权,能够对哈尔克公司实施控制。2×21年7月6日乌尔泰公司对哈尔克公司的长期股权投资的账面价值为6000万元,当日未存有计提的长期股权投资减值准备,乌尔泰公司将其持有的对哈尔克公司长
班级管理的本质在于()。
艺术通过它的艺术质料反映现实的真实,是一种多棱镜。绘画、音乐、雕塑、语言艺术的目的就是反映人类经验的真实,把确实从经验中感受到的东西表达出来,真确地传达出来,是一种长久的,几乎是无穷无尽的努力。它通过高水平的读者的鉴赏来检验,通过艺术批评家来总结规律和发现
德国人卡尔.奔驰研制的第一台以汽油为动力的汽车于1886年获得专利,从此汽油汽车______,燃烧汽油作为动力也似乎成为________的事,然而世界经济论坛评出的“2008年科技先驱”,却赫然将细菌“开动”小汽车列人其中。我们是否正在_______汽油汽
下列行为中,属于单方行为的是()
为考生文件夹下SCREEN文件夹中的PENCEL.BAT文件建立名为BAT的快捷方式,存放在考生文件夹下。
最新回复
(
0
)