A news story in the online edition of the Guardian is reporting that a Korean professor has developed ‘artificial chromosomes’ that will allow robots to fell ‘lusty’ and have their own emotions and personality.
It sounds like some good PR for what seems to be nothing more than a genetic algorithm approach to artificial intelligence. Certainly interesting, but not new and hardly likely to lead to machine lust or emotion.
Nevertheless, Professor Kim Jong-Hwan would not be the first computer scientist to get a little overexecited about the possibilities of AI.
A certain Alan Turing suggested his ‘mechanical brain’ might eventually produce some fairly unusual things way back in 1949…
The following is an excerpt from the 1950 Whitaker’s Almanack (p1023), the annual reference and micro-encyclopaedia of the past year’s happenings.
I have no idea what the “300 year-old sum” was, but it’s good to see the art of unlikely optimism has a long and proud tradition.
Mind Hacks 