An Experiment with the Free Will of Robots

 

What does a robot possess? Is it the same material that a human can hack with and be hacked with? Do robots have a soul, demons, viruses, desire, self-awareness, a free will, etc.?

Click on the link below to read an essay about the relationship between humans and machines that were created with a free will.

http://www.positiveliberty.com/2004/10/evil-robots.html

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Robots can evolve to communicate with each other, to help, and even to deceive each other, according to Dario Floreano of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Floreano and his colleagues outfitted robots with light sensors, rings of blue light, and wheels and placed them in habitats furnished with glowing “food sources” and patches of “poison” that recharged or drained their batteries. Their neural circuitry was programmed with just 30 “genes,” elements of software code that determined how much they sensed light and how they responded when they did. The robots were initially programmed both to light up randomly and to move randomly when they sensed light.

To create the next generation of robots, Floreano recombined the genes of those that proved fittest—those that had managed to get the biggest charge out of the food source.

The resulting code (with a little mutation added in the form of a random change) was downloaded into the robots to make what were, in essence, offspring. Then they were released into their artificial habitat. “We set up a situation common in nature—foraging with uncertainty,” Floreano says. “You have to find food, but you don’t know what food is; if you eat poison, you die.” Four different types of colonies of robots were allowed to eat, reproduce, and expire.

By the 50th generation, the robots had learned to communicate—lighting up, in three out of four colonies, to alert the others when they’d found food or poison. The fourth colony sometimes evolved “cheater” robots instead, which would light up to tell the others that the poison was food, while they themselves rolled over to the food source and chowed down without emitting so much as a blink.

Some robots, though, were veritable heroes. They signaled danger and died to save other robots. “Sometimes,” Floreano says, “you see that in nature—an animal that emits a cry when it sees a predator; it gets eaten, and the others get away—but I never expected to see this in robots.”

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jan/robots-evolve-and-learn-how-to-lie

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A lone group of Swiss scientists have been using scattered LEDs, neural circuity, and an army of miniature robots to explore the very basis of good and evil.  No, you aren’t reading the back cover of a DVD in the “one dollar each, please get this trash out of our store” bin of your local blockbuster -this research is very real and very, very awesome.

Dario Floreano and his team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology built a swarm of mobile robots, outfitted with light bulbs and photodetectors.  These were set loose in a zone with illuminated “food” and “poison” zones which charged or depleted their batteries.  Their programming was initially random, so the first generation staggered around the place like bunch of concussed puppies.

At intervals, the robots were shut down and those that had the most charge left in their batteries were chosen as “successful”, and their neural programming was combined to produce the next generation of the robots.  These offspring are downloaded into the same mechanical bodies their parents inhabited, forming an closed-circuit Buddhist system which might be an extremely efficient method of maintaining a stable population, but will provide a serious headache for any robot philosophers who might turn up.

Which could happen before long.  Within fifty generations of this electronic evolution, co-operative societies of robots had formed – helping each other to find food and avoid poison.  Even more amazing is the emergence of cheats and martyrs.  Transistorized traitors emerged which wrongly identified poison zone as food, luring their trusting brethren to their doom before scooting off to silently charge in a food zone – presumably while using a mechanical claw to twirl a silicon carving of a handlebar moustache.

You might be upset by this result, scientific proof that those who say “Evil is utterly fundamental to human nature” actually understates the scope of the problem, there were also silicon souls on the side of the angels.  Some robots advanced fearlessly into poison zones, flashing warning lights to keep other robots out of harms way.

At this rate of evolution, how long before we start to see other behaviors?  Maybe polarized priests, warning other robots not to eat any food so that they may receive infinite food after they’re switched off.  Or actorbots, given huge quantities of food because they can pretend to be turned off by poison really well?

Source:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/01/will-robots-evo.html