ASIMO: The future?

You may have heard of (or seen) HONDA’s humanoid robot ASIMO before. ASIMO stands for “Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility” although many would argue that it is in reverence to Isaac Asimov. Currently over 100 units exist, and each costs about 1 million USD.

It has been featured in many different shows, including CES, amongst others. Many believe ASIMO to be a step forward in the progress of true AI. I have read comments on forums and on the videos themselves of people who are alarmed that they would one day take over the world. There are concerned people voicing their thoughts on humans playing god.

All of this has been going on for decades. Some of us look for answers to our creation, wanting to explore the duplication of our processes, and genuinely believing that our mind is composed of algorithms that can be replicated into a machine that can be said to be intelligent. Some of us hate the fact that we are trying to recreate life, and composed others based on our intelligence, stating that it is immoral.

Well, for those of you who are scared about your safety: Robots won’t take over the earth, nor will they turn evil as pictured in the film “I, Robot”. However I do believe the age is coming in which the creations of the imagination and creativity of science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov’s are turning into real life events. And I do believe that some day it might be possible that they could in turn right their own viruses, spyware, spam the whole internet, conduct highly specialised cracking attacks, amongst other things.

I mean, computer programs can already compile and recompile themselves, as several professional adware programmers have shown in the past. It is only a matter of time before the creation of the spark that will give life to a rational being, one that can act not only for the wellbeing of others, but for it’s own wellbeing. One that can induce creative thoughts, and produce creative output.

That will be an age in which a computer will be able to effectively upload it’s code to the web, allowing expansion over the net, replication in different programming languages, and collaboration of thousands of millions of bots infesting supercomputer clusters.

However, back to earth, back to the 21st century. I found 3 really impressive videos of ASIMO that I would like to share with you. Voice your comments back to me if it causes any interest.

A rundown on ASIMO’s main features:

ASIMO coordination intelligence and interaction with other ASIMO’s:

ASIMO conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra: