When Robots Go Rogue
My first robot was a four-wheeled affair with a significant battery pack to power not only the front motors but also a complete x86 mini-ITX motherboard running Linux. As a precaution, before turning it on for the first time, I removed the battery pack, concerned that a rapid discharge could start a fire. Instead, I decided to connect it to a wall adapter for initial testing.
I carefully programmed the Linux system to make my robot go around in a little circle to test the motor control. When the day of the big test came, I carefully set everything up, booted the robot, and pressed the big red "Go" button. The robot shot off at high speed and hid under a chair. I tried to retrieve it from the back side of the chair, but then it spontaneously took off again, heading for an open door.
Here is where my superior intellect prevailed over the dumb robot. As it was tethered to a power outlet, its escape was "short-circuited" as it unplugged itself, bringing the entire game to an end. I decided to stop making robots after that incident.
To this day, I have no idea why the robot didn't go around in a slow circle as programmed. I am now wondering what would have happened if I had used a LLM to control the robot.
A giver and proven Tech Entrepreneur, NED, Polymath, Real Private AI and Circular Economy (community wealth building food, metal & energy hubs).
1 年Didn't you play with Meccano when you were knee high? Granted they had a tiny pcb and did limited things but the great thing was you could work out a way of joining two or even 3 together and get it working even with lots of spare parts left on the work bench. I then did the dancing world cup gorillas that ran off an eprom activated into a 25 second dance with a hand clap. Then an Xmas gift from the Ex a millennium robot butler. Then a year in after everyone had become bored with him my two elder sons and I took took him apart and couldn't put humpty together again although the motor still worked and the now dystopian figure ran amock. Totally agree on the LLM side the other concern is this obsession with humanoid form. They should be preprogrammed to help not equipped to replace us.