<a href="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/artificial-intelligence.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-4664 " src="http://pigyard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/artificial-intelligence-e1512396171737-300x270.jpg" alt="" width="271" height="244" /></a>I'm not sure how close we are to a robot emulating a human being. Some roboticists claim it could be within the next 20 years but I'm very dubious about these claims. Most of the machines demonstrated so far are "one trick ponies" or rely largely upon big data to answer foolish questions.

They can beat a human playing Go but can the same computer <a href="https://youtu.be/gy5g33S0Gzo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fold the towels</a> (it takes 100 minutes to fold 5 towels) or load the dishwasher? I don't think so. Humans are complex organisms and there are some things we do, like catching a fast-moving ball, that we don't even know how we do it. And then we come onto the ethical issues (always assuming we can program a computer to think ethically) - the philosophical debate as to what is "good", what is the "right" thing to do. After all we asked 65 million people as to whether we should leave the European Union and we couldn't come up with the right answer.

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When we program robots to learn will they learn to behave like us? Will they absorb the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins" target="_blank" rel="noopener">seven deadly sins</a> and display: Lust; Gluttony; Greed; Sloth; Wrath; Envy; or Pride. Who knows? We need to get this stuff sorted before too long. We cannot rely on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics.</a>

Ultimately what's good for the planet might be the demise of the human race and robots might make that decision - would they be wrong?

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