By 2030 … each time a robot learns a fact or masters a skill, it will be able to pass its knowledge to other robots as quickly and easily as sending a program over the Net. This way, the task of understanding the world can be divided among thousands or millions of robot minds. As a result, the machines will soon develop a deeper knowledge base than any single person can hope to possess. Within a short space of time, robots that are linked in this way will no longer need our help to show them how to do anything … there’s no doubt that systems that can analyze their world, deduce generalizations, and modify their behavior will have a major impact on society … By around 2040, there will be no job that people can do better than robots.
Predictor: Moravec, Hans
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Charles Platt, author of “The Silicon Man,” interviews Hans Moravec, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and the author of “Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence.” Platt writes: ”By 2030, according to Moravec, we should have a third-generation universal robot that emulates higher-level thought processes such as planning and foresight. ‘It will maintain an internal model not only of its own past actions, but of the outside world,’ he explains. ‘This means it can run different simulations of how it plans to tackle a task, see how well each one works out, and compare them with what it’s done before.’ An onlooker will have the eerie sense that it’s imagining different solutions to a problem, developing its own ideas … each time a robot learns a fact or masters a skill, it will be able to pass its knowledge to other robots as quickly and easily as sending a program over the Net. This way, the task of understanding the world can be divided among thousands or millions of robot minds. As a result, the machines will soon develop a deeper knowledge base than any single person can hope to possess. Within a short space of time, robots that are linked in this way will no longer need our help to show them how to do anything … there’s no doubt that systems that can analyze their world, deduce generalizations, and modify their behavior will have a major impact on society. ‘The robots will still be in our thrall,’ Moravec points out, meaning that we will still be designing and programming them to serve and obey us. ‘They’ll learn everything they know from us, and their goals and their methods will be imitations of ours. But as they become more competent, efficiency and productivity will keep going up, and the amount of work for humans will keep going down. By around 2040, there will be no job that people can do better than robots.'”
Biography:Hans Moravec was a professor at Carnegie Mellon university’s Robotics Institute who caused a lot of consternation with the book “Mind Children: The Future of the Robot and Human Intelligence,” in which he predicted the rise of machines and extinction of humans. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Superhumanism: According to Hans Moravec, by 2040 Robots Will Become as Smart as We Are. And Then They’ll Displace Us as the Dominant Form of Life on Earth. But He Isn’t Worried – the Robots Will Love Us
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/moravec_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney