Texe Marrs - Robot Alchemy-Androids, Cyborgs, and the Magic of Artificial Life

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Especially deserving mention for helping me to produce this book are the outstanding members of my publishing team: Michelle Hallmark, administrator; Sandra Myers, publishing specialist and art director; Jerry Barrett, computer and internet manager. In the shipping department, Rosario Velsquez, manager, and Nelson Sorto are to be thanked for their excellence.
And of course there is my precious wife, Wanda, my treasure and inspiration.

Robot AlchemyAndroids, Cyborgs, and the Magic of Artificial Life
Copyright 2013 by Texe Marrs. Published by RiverCrest Publishing, 1708 Patterson Road, Austin, Texas 78733.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

Cover design: Sandra Myers and Texe Marrs

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2013904445

Categories: 1. Technology & Engineering/Robotics 2. Science 3. Computers 4. Technology & Engineering/Social Aspects 5. Technology & Engineering/Technical & Manufacturing Industries & Trades 6. Technology & Engineering/Machinery 7. Technology & Engineering/Electronics 8. Technology & Engineering/Inventions

ISBN-13: 978-1-930004-79-5

We have merely scratched the surface of the store of knowledge which will come to us. I believe that we are now on the verge of vast discoveriesdiscoveries so wondrously important they will upset the present trend of human thought and start it along completely new lines.

Thomas A. Edison
Inventor

Are robots and computers alive? Soon this question will be affirmatively answered. Yes, they are alive. Today they can walk, talk, smell, hear, and reason. In the not too distant tomorrow, robots and computers will possess emotion, awareness, and consciousness. They will be alive, super-intelligent. They will replace human beings.

Your universe will never again be the same. Ours is the last generation in which human beings have an edge. We are now in the process of building and creating our own successors.

In Robot Alchemy, you will meet thousands of robots and computerized machines. Some are jerky, clunky, and metallic. A few are people-like, with soft flesh and body parts that move smoothly and efficiently. All are fascinating relics, examples of humans yearning to become creators of life. But you will also ironically discover in these pages, humans ambitiously striving to become machinesbionic men and women who strongly desire to become more than human; to extend their lives, to become transhuman, even to become a form of God.

Eventually, the two groups, robots and bionic humans will merge. We will reach singularity. From that point, the planet will be run by artificially intelligent computer systems, some in the form of robots, which think and are far smarter than the entire human race combined.

People are slated to become inferior, obsolete. Robots will be a better breed, and this will be their world. Dr. Paul Saffo of Stanford University poignantly asks, What happens after we have truly intelligent robots? After reflection, he answers: If were lucky, theyll treat us as pets. If not theyll treat us as food.

Over twenty-five years ago in 1985, I was privileged to author the first ever book on personal and home robots, The Personal Robot Book. In that book, I stated: Surely, the recent introduction of the personal robot into the homes of thousands of families ranks among the top technological achievements of all time.

I went on to author other cutting-edge technology books, The Great Robot Book; Careers in Computers; Careers With Robots; Mega Forces; High Tech Job Finder; High Tech Careers; and Project L.U.C.I.D., the first book to explore the implantation of the biochip into human beings. I have been very busy writing other books as well.

But my mind returns once again to The Personal Robot Book, in which I wrote:

Perhaps the perfect robot has not yet been created. Maybe he or she is on the drawing board at one of the many robot research laboratories now springing up around the globe. It could be that some Einstein-like robot scientist is at this moment formulating plans and ideas that may, before too long, produce a robot equal, or superior, to the human.

In this current book, Robot Alchemy, I survey the incredible robot creation, its aftermath, and the future. Surely, we are on the precipice of creating an incredible thinking machine that will surpass the human mind and body. Will this momentous event ultimately prove to be our salvation, or it could be a Frankenstein that will end life as we know it forever?

If we could pick a date for this dramatic overturn of the human race, it might be about 2035, when intelligent robots will reach parity in technological knowledge and dexterous capability with humans. From that date on, robots will increasingly be superior, and everything will change.

I encourage all robot scientists and all peoples everywhere to carefully study this book and to ponder what we are doing and where we are headed. Your very life and that of the entire human species may just be at stake.

Texe Marrs
Austin, Texas

The truly interesting question is, what happens after we have truly intelligent robots. If were very lucky, theyll treat us as pets. If not, theyll treat us as food. Dr. Paul Saffo, Stanford University

The push is on. Everywhere, around the globe in thousands of places, men and women are stretching the outer envelope of robotics. In Japan, America, China, Germany, Russia, Brazil, theyre innovating, thinking of entirely new ways to create technological systems that walk, talk, see, speak, and communicate with each other.

In his website, Alchemy of Change, Gideon Rosenblatt recently wrote, We are sitting at the edge of the age of robotics. He noted that independent hackers had, over the past year, quickly figured out they could reuse a Microsoft Xbox Kinect 3D sensor as a low cost of machine vision, to enable machines to see. Then, said Rosenblatt, they could marry that available technology with Googles new Android Open accessory, combine it with a low-cost electric operating platform, andpresto!the robot hacker has a robotic nervous system.

Small, interchangeable pieces of robots that people can combine in endless ways. Small pieces loosely joined. That was what made Web 2.0 (the internet) rocket to lifeand its likely to do the same in the field of robotics. Hold on to your antennas. Were about to take a wild ride.

Now, whether Rosenblatt is correct or not about an imminent wild ride based on economical, intelligent robotic components that convert into vision and nervous systems, he is right on with his observation that robotic hackers are coming out of the woodwork building new types of robots.

Robot enthusiasts, including untold numbers of hackers, are joined by roboticists and scientists at distinguished universities such as M.I.T, Princeton, Carnegie Institute, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Stanford University in the U.S.A., plus dozens of universities in Europe, Japan, China, and elsewhere. Altogether, thousands of outstanding academics are constantly coming up with incredible new advances in robotics, bionics, and related fields.