Coming soon: a thinking, feeling robot: Just like humans: Inventor
working on genetic code for 'artificial species'

National Post
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Page: A3
Section: News
Byline: Sarah Staples
Source: CanWest News Service

A renowned Korean robot inventor claims to have found a way to build machines that would be capable of human-style evolution.

Jong-Hwan Kim, noted author and journal editor, and director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Center at the Korea Advanced Institute
of Science and Technology (KAIST), says he is testing the world's first robotic "chromosomes": a set of computerized instructions for creating robots that can think, feel, reason, express desire or intention, and could ultimately reproduce their kind, and evolve as a distinct species.

Mr. Kim, who Barons' once named one of its 500 key leaders of the 21st
century, said scientists have been so preoccupied with inventing robots that jog, wiggle fingers, shake hands and otherwise behave in ways that are eerily "human," they have not spent enough time seeking the essence of "what it means to be robot."

"It's time to think about the origins of an artificial species," he
told CanWest from KAIST's offices in Taejon, South Korea.

Fourteen robot chromosomes are the result of years pondering which
mechanized "traits" may, like a genetic inheritance, be passed on.
They describe some of the essential components of human decision-
making, such as the desire to avoid unpleasantness, to achieve intimacy and control, to satisfy curiosity or greed, and prevent boredom.
Feelings of happiness, sadness, anger and fear, and chromosomes related to states of fatigue, hunger, drowsiness, round off the list
representing the beginnings of a "robot genetic code," which engineers
could manipulate in order to imbue machines with "life."

All are embodied in "Rity": an intelligent software "pet" shaped like a cute dog, which "lives" inside the virtual world of a PC, but can
interact with real humans based on stimuli it receives from its "sensory organs" -- cameras, sensors and sound systems.
Rity reacts "emotionally" to its environment, learns and makes reasoned decisions, based on an individual "personality" derived from short sequences of programmed code akin to human DNA.

Unlike intelligent software games developed since the 1960s, such as
the famous The Game of Life, that have mimicked biological evolution;
Rity actually perceives the real world and interprets it.

And unlike previously devised mathematical algorithms that associated
stimuli with responses and therefore created a false semblance of
emotion or reason, Rity's chromosomal coding contains a sophisticated
weighting system -- a kind of programmed favouritism for one subtle
shade of emotional or rational response, over another.

"Internal relationships" created by the weighting system allow Rity to
be an individual capable of more that purely mechanistic response.

The robot dog perceives 47 different types of stimuli and can respond
with 77 different behaviours. In testing, no two "Ritys" reacted the
same way to their surroundings.

Some were bored; others panted and expressed "happiness" at the sight
of their human handlers "because they have a different personality; it
totally depends on its genes," Mr. Kim said.

The discovery, described in a keynote speech Mr. Kim delivered at a
recent conference in New Zealand, and due to be submitted to a
scholarly journal this winter, is expected to give fresh urgency to
questions that have been debated among academics for decades, and are
the backdrop of the science fiction film classic I, Robot.
At what point, for example, might robotic helpmates for the elderly be
considered slaves? And would the obsolete deserve burial rites at the
end of their useful existence?

Humans will become godlike, with moral and ethical responsibility
toward machines they bring into some kind of intelligent existence, he
said. "We will have to treat them as we would take care of our pets."

Rity's chromosomes may be sent via the Internet to other computers and
pieces of hardware, becoming a sort of wirelessly transmissible "soul"
that would invisibly control the actions and desires of future
interconnected appliances, from devices in a "smart" home or office, to cellphones or security cameras.

The robot dog incorporates only 14 chromosomes totalling some 2,000
bytes of data. But future species will be endowed with complex
"genetics" and many more chromosomes.

Mr. Kim is now working on the equivalent of X and Y chromosomes that
would confer sexual characteristics, "so that if male and female like
each other, they could have their own children."

Using artificial chromosomes to design brilliant, but mild-tempered and submissive robots might be one way to ensure humanity doesn't end up enslaved by its creations as they evolve, said Mr. Kim, who is
renowned, among other things, as the "father of robotic soccer."

Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain
View, Calif., described the notion of "[thinking] robots that could
reproduce," as "a very interesting experiment you'd want to keep in
your computer, not let loose in downtown Baltimore."

Mr. Shostak called the work "maybe a step on the road" to the very real possibility that software-based robots could soon evolve beyond

"machinery that puts on a pretty good show" of emotion, into self-
aware, potentially threatening artificial species.

Unlike human reproduction, which is slightly error prone and therefore
fallible, intelligent machines could design themselves to be flawless,
and therefore vastly our superiors, possibly even correcting any pre-
existing instructions to remain tame, he said, "and now you had better
have a good lock on the lab door."

Inventor and philosopher Jordan B. Pollack, a professor of computer
science at Brandeis University, in Massachusetts, cautioned however,
that the need to develop defences against scheming robot overlords is
far from urgent.

"We have these supercomputers, and not one of them [indicates] the kind of advance that would be a harbinger of a significant increase in
[machine] intelligence," Mr. Pollack said.

"We would see it coming, and we don't."

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Origin of the artificial species: Korean inventor claims he can create
robots with 'genes' that will think, feel, and even reproduce

The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Page: A1 / FRONT
Section: News
Byline: Sarah Staples
Source: The Ottawa Citizen

Inventor says he's on track to build human-like, thinking robots:
Machines would reproduce and evolve, he says
Times Colonist (Victoria)
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Page: A3
Section: News
Byline: Sarah Staples
Source: CanWest News Service

Inventor claims 'human' robots drawing near: Devices feel emotions,
evolve and reproduce

The Daily News (Nanaimo)
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Page: B12
Section: Discovery
Byline: Sarah Staples
Source: CanWest News Service
Inventor says robot able to evolve: Rity the dog has 14 robot
'chromosomes'

Calgary Herald
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Page: A7
Section: News
Byline: Sarah Staples
Source: CanWest News Service

Korean inventor says he can build human-style robots

The Leader-Post (Regina)
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Page: A2
Section: News
Byline: Sarah Staples
Source: CanWest News Service

Coming soon: 'human' robots: 'Chromosomes' tested. Inventor says
machines would feel, reason, desire - and reproduce

Montreal Gazette
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Page: A22
Section: News
Byline: SARAH STAPLES
Source: CanWest News Service

Inventor claims he can build virtually human robots

The Kingston Whig-Standard
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Page: 9 / FRONT
Section: National / World
Byline: Sarah Staples
Source: CanWest News Service

'Genetic code' for robots tested: Korean inventor gives dog-shaped
software 'Rity' personalities from DNA-like programming

Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Page: A2
Section: News
Byline: Sarah Staples
Source: CanWest News Service