Robotic Art (1096)The term Robotic Art was coined by Eduardo Kac in 1997 to “describe artistic projects based on or developed around robotic technologies. Kac himself is an artist, primarily interested in bio art and transgenic art, incorporating biotechnology, politics and aesthetics into his art. He notes his thoughts on contemporary changes in art in Foundation and Development of Robotic Art. “As artists continue to push the very limits of art, traditionally defined by discrete and inert handmade objects, they introduce robotics as a new medium at the same time as they challenge our understanding of robots.” The general civilian view of robot art too often focuses on the concept of the robot as the artist, or creator of the work of art, and less on considering the robot itself as a work of art, or part of an art installation. Robots created as works of art differ from “traditional” robotics, whether anthropoid robotics that seek to imitate and improve humans, or non-humanoid robots created for warfare purposes, surgical aid, or simple household tasks. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe idea behind considering the robot as an artist is that it seeks to achieve the final aesthetic ideal through the creation of a work of art with code embedded in its software. The most direct example of the robot that is an artist and a work of art at the same time, or rather of the robot as an artist that is part of this particular Robotic Art installation is “5 Robots Named Paul” by Patrick Tresset. In this particular installation, five robots were placed in a gallery or museum space on a table, with a chair in front of them where the visitor could sit and proceed to observe the sketch of their face made by “Paul”. The general public desire to observe the robot as an artist is not as widespread among artists, because, as Christopher Kroos explains in “The Art in The Machine” – “Even within a contemporary technoscientific and non-religious context, the ability to create a robot (in the sense of an autonomous machine) is much more compelling – not to mention enchanting – than the product of the robot's activity. ”Many artists, unlike the public, agree with Kroos that creating a robot is art in itself. Furthermore, creating a robot in an artistic sense differs from creating a robot in a purely technological sense, as artists tend to focus not on the practicality and precision of a machine that would replace and improve human labor, but rather on the relationship between a human individual and biotechnological machine. The relationship between science and art in the field of robotics is further explored by Penny, who states in his opinion that "the central theoretical problem of the era of digital art has been the radical opposition between the culture of information technology and the culture of arts precisely on this theme. ”He believes this happens because computing deals with the abstract world displaced by matter and time, while art embraces the human experience. This is where the importance of art is shown: it deals with both the abstraction of the machine and the materiality of human existence. Further on, Penny notes that robotics in art encourages the design of modes of interaction and the need for a theory of robotic art. Where robots in engineering are modeled to function with maximum efficiency, optimality, speed, safety and survivability, robotic works of art are more concerned with the aesthetics of behavior. This is particularly evident in his work Petit Mal, a robot that does notit has a humanoid shape but works on the idea of ​​aesthetics of behavior - it is intended to "fascinate" the viewer. The robot has two wheels and a camera and cannot communicate verbally with its recipient, but the way it moves through space - its "sensing-thinking-acting" abilities reminds the viewer of something familiar in otherness. It is less a speech and more a dance between man and machine, a non-verbal interaction of the senses in an environment. However, non-humanoid robotic artworks do not necessarily have to be interactive with humans or their environment: they can also be a representation of an environment, such as one of the first contemporary robotic artworks, Homage to New York, by Jean Tinguley. It's made of collapsed scrap metal, pipes and the like, a piece of reluctant robotics, a kind of scrap metal yard that reflects not humanity itself but the way a society moves and interacts in a chaotic city like New York. Another robotic art work that is concerned with creating the environment, rather than simply interacting with it was The Telegarden, a robotic art installation designed by Ken Goldberg with the help of Joe Santarramana and a team of collaborators at the University of Southern California in 1994, as a follow-up to an installation from earlier that year titled Mercury Project. The premise of The Telegarden combines webcams with a telerobotic arm operated via the Internet. “The Telegarden contrasts the historical and natural rhythm of planting and cultivation with the desire for “instant gratification” and immediacy promised by the Internet. ”Visitors to the installation could register with a password that would allow them to participate in watering the garden and planting their own seeds. “The garden was a metaphor for the promise of new communities made possible by the Internet; he also raised philosophical questions regarding the nature of telerobotics and introduced the concept of telepistemology, the study of knowledge acquired at a distance. 49” The question, when it comes to humanoid robots, is whether this is the highest form of narcissism and arrogance of the human race. PW Singer in the book Wired for War writes that the humanoid form, for now, could be the most convenient one in terms of field combat in wars. There is really no limit in imagining a robotic form: for now some possibilities only exist in films and video games, since the cost to build them is too high and, due to the complexity of their form, the period of time needed to building them That's still too long, but who's to say what kind of robotics humans will create in the next century. The humanoid form, in a sense, could be that of humans trying to play Prometheus; a benevolent god who creates biomechanical beings in his own form, but the current understanding of AI, its potential, and the different levels of intelligence it could achieve is still unknown. Robotics in science fiction based on three examples of anthropoid robots (1000) Robots in science fiction often take anthropoid forms: this is how future authors imagined from the 18th century onwards. There are various types of robots, from the autonomous robotic cars in Transformers to the all-powerful computers in Space Odyssey: 2001, however this essay is about the androids and gynoids featured in the HBO series Westworld, juxtaposed with their depiction in the BBC series Humans and Phillip's novel K. Dick Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This type of robotic science fiction is often classified as the cyberpunk genre. WESTWORLD“The one-hour drama series Westworld is a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin. Set at the intersection of the near future and the reinvented past,explores a world where every human appetite, no matter how noble or depraved, can be satisfied. Westworld is a futuristic amusement park for people with different kinds of desires and frustrations, which are often illegal in the real world. This park is populated by AI robots, called hosts. Each host is assigned a location, a background story, and a daily route. The series is shown from two perspectives: the laboratories where the robots are created and tested, and the park where we follow the narratives of different robots, and the visitors along the way. Westworld is also, in both the first and second seasons, presented in distorted timelines: it does not follow a linear narrative and it is up to the viewer to decipher what belongs where and, more importantly, when. As a result, one of the most important concepts in Westworld is memory. The robots' memories are erased after completing each lap or after their death in the park – they are reset, with no memory that it was any day other than today – they are told background stories, false memories implanted in their brains, which ensure their reality. The problem is that some hosts start to remember things: at first you wonder if this is due to a memory write error, but it becomes clear that it is due to "a mistake in the code" that allowed some of the hosts older than him to start developing a form of consciousness. Rayhert Konstantin writes that he analyzes the philosophy of artificial consciousness as it appears in Westowrld and states that the possibility of this lies in how the two scientists who created the hosts, Arnold Weber and Robert Ford, imagined their artificial intelligence. Their theory assumes that “consciousness really exists and that human consciousness can be a prototype for modeling consciousness in a carrier of artificial intelligence. "It further explains that Arnold Weber modified his artificial intelligence on "Julian Jaynes' conception of consciousness as the basis for artificial consciousness, which means that artificial consciousness must have the following characteristics: 1) artificial consciousness must be the result of breakdown of the bicameral mind (apparently modeled within artificial intelligence), the mental state in which cognitive functions are divided into two parts, a "speaking" part and an "hearing" ("obedient") part, until the breakdown which makes the bicameral mind the unified mind; 2) artificial consciousness must be a mental space based on language and characterized by introspection, concentration, suppression, consilience and an analog “I” that narrates in the mental space. In connection with this, attention can be focused on the bearers of the two "main" narratives of the story: Dolores and Bernard. Both Dolores and Bernard are hosts, however Dolores is a guest in the park, and Bernard is the head of the programming division and, as is later shown, an exact replica of Arnold Weber, who personally created both Dolores and Bernard as hosts. experience the mutual growth of artificial intelligence. Both Dolores and Bernard have a certain code within them that allows them to question each other the way humans working for Westworld question hosts when reviewing their performance. Their narratives differ, and as they evolve, their opinions about what should be done in terms of the park and the “trapped” guests do not always coincide. Stephen Garner examines the theme of "humanity" in his essay "Vision: Altered Carbon and Westworld" saying, "If the humans in Westworld are depicted as giving up something of their humanity, then the robot characters are attempting to gain it or, more correctly, to become authentic people. Some robots discover that they are creations, while othersthey simply want to be able to make sense of the world they find themselves in. In both cases, the robots push to discover how much free will they truly have and how much their lives are preordained by their programs and the narratives in which they have been set. The questions they ask are the same ones we ask ourselves: how much freedom do we have in telling our stories? How do our nature and culture shape our character and our future? And what is the relationship between us as creatures and our creator? " Westowrld juxtaposes the degradation of humans with the evolution of artificial intelligence, in a way that seems as if humans within the park become machines trapped in their own cycles of inhuman behavior, while guests who begin to develop consciousness become increasingly concerned with “human” things, such as their universal rights or the injustice towards theirexistence depends on the pure will and desire of human visitors. This may lead to the introduction of another type of cycle which Singer writes in Wired for War. This particular “loop” focuses on war, but can also be applicable in this scenario “loop” is conceived as the relationship between man and machine – the human being creating a machine AI and teaches it how to act and behave, which leads the AI ​​machine to evolve into something beyond human possibilities and functions, and thus the AI ​​machine becomes the new “creator”, from which man must now learn , or rather he must study to understand his actions. The role of the human controllers “in the loop” was to veto power, and when that power is suddenly transferred into the “hands” of the machine, the human is free. Therefore today's engineering has not yet found itself faced with the human being "out of the loop", it is just a larger loop. But the question remains: what happens when the car gets autonomous energy? In a way, Westowlrd is the answer to that question. HUMANS The BBC series Humans offers a similar, but more “realistic” narrative, as it seems less “other” to imagine: with the boom in iRobot vacuum cleaners, we already have robot helpers in our homes. The premise of the series is that humans have developed robots that are aesthetically pleasing and, in every respect, useful; they become the never tired waitress, the janitor, the bartender, the mechanic, the driver. These robots, called "synthesizers" in the series, help humans in every way imaginable and, as their advertising announces, become part of your family. As a result, when a family purchases a synthesizer, it turns out that this particular synth was a special series created by the original synthesizer creator, designer, and engineer who wrote code that allows synthesizers to become conscious. He did this after his wife's death, when the only way to keep his son alive was to implant parts of synth technology into his brain, creating a sort of cyborg. Subsequently, he created a family for his son, five conscious AI forms that all took on the roles of family members and guardians of his son's life. Unlike Westowrld, which keeps its hosts in a safe, confined space under constant human supervision, the world of Humans is freely populated with synths. This makes the “burst of consciousness” more difficult to control than the one in Westworld. Aside from that, some of the Westworld hosts seemed to “gain” consciousness on their own – recalling “memories” from previous loops, and thus starting to question, as Dolores says “the nature of their own reality,” while the synths in The Beings humans who were not given the "code" for consciousness like the original five - Niska,.