UTMC

I post this here in ref. to the 5th definition of "politics" in Merriam-Webster, "the total complex of relations between people living in society".

I think you all are gonna find this...interesting (at least part is "new news". It seems surrogates, ala the Bruce Willis flick, are actually coming on faster than I at least had been aware of (and, per the flick, already looking younger and more fit than their "daddys"):




"Danish scientist Henrik Scharfe (gray suit foreground) demo'ed Geminoid-DK (seated in black suit), a shockingly realistic robot version of himself. While its movement and speech is limited, the robot's technology is likely to evolve quickly.

And so it seemed that it wasn't only in jest that Scharfe said, 'Ten years from now, I'll be at home having a beer in Denmark and the robot will come to TED to give a talk.'" --buried at the bottom of a CNN article on the TED conference

I find this has been advancing since about 2005...and that faux Henrik isn't the only one around...




"In the spring of 2010, a new geminoid was created. The new robot, Geminoid-F, was modelled after a young female (hence the name) and was a simpler version of the original HI-1.

Geminoid-DK is the 3rd in the geminoid series, and the first to be modelled after a Caucasian face. Geminod-DK was commissioned in 2010 at Kokoro, and completed in 2011.

Geminoid-DK is situated at Aalborg University in Northern Denmark.

I wonder how long it might be before "high value" humans (politicians, business tycoons, media types, religious figures) begin using such robots as a personal protection tactic when necessity dictates personal public exposure and accompanying threat?

The prospect of any sort of expansion (and perfection) of this tech certainly raises some interesting possibilities while speculating about what society in developed areas of the world may look like in a hundred years hence or so... I'll have to have a re-look at Bruce's flick i think.

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Bladerunner!

a) Bruce's flick sucked arse, bigtime.
b) The problem is hardly to make a machine that can fool one into thinking one is facing a human, at least mechanically. The problem is what will control it.
Surrogacy, like in the Willis flick and the comic book that came before that, might be one way of doing that, I can see that being useful not just for threatened politicians but also in hostage negotiation situation, a substitute for video-conferencing and the like. But people using that would be faced with buffering. Imagine the middle of your important speech and your connection throws a wobbly, your surrogate freezes....like a rockstar on stage being caught using playback rather than performing. Could a politician risk that?
As for surrogacy, there are many a legitimate use, like people who are bedridden being able to go about their business and the like.
But few of these situations would require a robot that is sophisticated in the manner shown here.
Until someone figures out how to transmit physical sensations beyond sight and vision into a human receptor, the use of such surrogates would be severely limited.
Might help chain-stores offer 24 hour service, with a small number of operators taking care of hundreds of locations in the middle of the night.
But until all physical sensations can be transmitted, that technology is largely window dressing, really.
Hardly the great technological hurdle to overcome before we all get surrogates like in that movie. Someone not able to go shopping or the like wouldn't need a perfect human-replica, a C3PO would be enough to remotely control for that.

Good points but I am not assuming (and neither i think are the people behind these things) today's tech limitations (bandwidth etc).

"how to transmit physical sensations beyond sight and vision into a human receptor,"

There is a whole field devoted to just this (through brain/tech interfaces) and a crapload of money behind it as well (microsoft has been actively pursuing this for years). I am confidant this problem will be essentially solved before too many years pass under the bridge...

"Someone not able to go shopping or the like wouldn't need a perfect human-replica, a C3PO would be enough to remotely control for that."

I try not to underestimate human vanity. The presentation would be a style issue inevitably wrapped by economic considerations and perceived need. Surrogates that are lifelike representations of how people *wished* they looked would be the "high end" of the market...the units that are more mechanistic (C3PO) would be more downscale or appeal to the nerdy set...lol Funny just speculating on this--what would *your* dream robot surrogate be like? (assuming one even wanted one...)

Public figures subject to assassination attempts that are already typically "robot-like" in human form (think of the popes) would be early adopters I think. They could probably replace the current one tomorrow (maybe they already have? <g>) On second think "democratic" politicians would probably require the most sophistication (speechifying, press the flesh etc) and that will likely take many decades to achieve. Autocrats less so.

Anyway, the freaking weirdness of it all is what caught my attention..my son Nik just looked at the post and was "No freakin' way!"---thought it was a net scam of some sort! <g>

what a world...

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