Self-Organization and Human Robots

Abstract

Humans are rather funny things, we often tend to imagine that we are so ?special?, so divorced by our supposed ?intelligence? from the influences of the ?natural world? and so unique in our ?abstracting? abilities. We have this persistent delusion, evident since ancient Greek times, that we are ?rational?, that we can behave as ?disinterested observers? of our world, which manifests in AI thought today in a belief that, in a like manner, we can ?design?, God like, from afar, our replacements, those ?super-robots? that will do everything that we can imagine doing, but in much ?better? ways than we can achieve, and yet can avoid doing anything ?nasty?, i.e. can overcome our many human failings - obeying, I suppose, in the process, Asimov?s three ?laws of robotics?. Such human naiveté proves, in fact, to be quite amusing, at least to those of us ?schooled? in AI history. When we look at the aspirations and the expectations of our early ?pioneers?, and compare them to the actual reality of today, then we must, it seems, re-discover the meaning of the word ?humility?. Enthusiasm, good as it may be, needs to be moderated with a touch of ?common sense?, and if our current ways of doing things in our AI world don?t really work as we had hoped, then perhaps it is time to try something different (Lucas, C., 1999)?