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LIFE IMITATING ART? WRITING BY >< SCOTT SECKEL
Roboticist offers reality check on ‘Westworld’ arrival Heni Ben Amor
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estworld” — the HBO show about a technologically advanced, Westernthemed amusement park involving synthetic androids — riffs on questions about humanity, artificial intelligence and science. Is anything like the tech in the show in the pipeline? To find out, we talked to Heni Ben Amor, a roboticist at Arizona State University and an assistant professor in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering. Q: How far are we from creating what you see in the show? A: Very far away. I think there are some underlying assumptions that are too far away from what we have at the moment. One of the things depicted there are sentient robots, robots that actually have a very good idea of what they are and what the environment is and what the emotional state of a human partner is. All of these things are not tackled by robotics at the moment. We are too far away from that, especially this aspect of having sentient robots with self-awareness and a goal or a mission that is their own Q: Can a machine act intelligently? A: Definitely. Machines can solve problems humans cannot solve. For example, take the Rubik’s Cube, which for a long time was seen as a tricky task only smart people with dexterity and motor skills can solve. Nowadays
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robots are much better than humans at that. There are some tasks where robots can achieve super-human results but I think what is so unique about human beings is that they are so adaptive and versatile. Q: One thing that strikes me in talking with you is that when you study robotics, you’re studying humans in a way. A: We are very much inspired by biomechanics in order to figure out how humans manipulate the world, how we walk in the world. It’s very similar to how aerospace engineers study birds in order to get inspiration and basic principles. Once you have those basic principles, you can create an engineered solution and follow the same approach. We as roboticists look at humans in order to get inspiration about modularity. A human being is not one big piece; it’s not this monolithic thing. There are millions of pieces inside that work together in synchrony. Creating synchrony among millions of pieces is actually really tricky. Even the smallest mistake can completely offset the system and make it fail. Despite that, we human beings seem to work perfectly. If I need a robot for a manufacturing environment, then its appearance and behavior needs to be completely different from a robot that roams around the desert to find water. SCOTT SECKEL is a reporter for ASU Now.