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Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in robotics-the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close.
As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robo-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy-far greater precision than highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone.
But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves-goals that pose a real challenge. "While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error," says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics program at NASA, "we can't yet give a robot enough ‘common sense' to reliably interact with a dynamic world."
Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries.
What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain's roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented-and human perception far more complicated-than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer systems on Earth can't approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don't know quite how we do it. |
從人類萌發(fā)了創(chuàng)造力，他們就一直在設(shè)計(jì)各種日益精巧的工具來(lái)處理那些危險(xiǎn)、枯燥、繁重或者只是令人討厭的工作。這種不得已的行為導(dǎo)致了機(jī)器人學(xué)科的產(chǎn)生--一門(mén)將人類的能力賦予機(jī)器的科學(xué)。如果說(shuō)科學(xué)家們還沒(méi)有在機(jī)械上實(shí)現(xiàn)科幻小說(shuō)的幻想，那么他們也已經(jīng)很接近這個(gè)目標(biāo)了。
因此，現(xiàn)代世界日益充斥著各種智能裝置，雖然我們幾乎都注意不到它們，但它們的普遍存在已使人們擺脫了很多勞動(dòng)。工廠里轟鳴著機(jī)器手臂生產(chǎn)線的節(jié)奏；自動(dòng)柜員機(jī)處理銀行業(yè)務(wù)，并且用機(jī)器語(yǔ)言有禮貌地感謝你的惠顧；地鐵由不知疲倦的機(jī)器人來(lái)駕駛。由于電子器件和微觀機(jī)械的結(jié)構(gòu)不斷小型化，現(xiàn)在已有一些機(jī)器人系統(tǒng)能夠進(jìn)行精確到亞毫米的腦部和骨髓手術(shù)，其精確性遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過(guò)技術(shù)嫻熟的醫(yī)生僅僅用雙手所能達(dá)到的水平。
但是如果機(jī)器人要進(jìn)入幫助人們節(jié)省勞力的下一個(gè)階段，它們的運(yùn)行就應(yīng)該在更大程度上無(wú)需受人監(jiān)控，并且至少能夠獨(dú)立地做一些決定。這些目標(biāo)給我們提出了真正的挑戰(zhàn)。"雖然我們知道如何讓機(jī)器人去處理一個(gè)特定的錯(cuò)誤，"美國(guó)宇航局（NASA）的機(jī)器人項(xiàng)目經(jīng)理戴維·拉維里說(shuō)，"我們?nèi)匀徊荒苜x予機(jī)器人以足夠的‘常識(shí)'，使它們能夠與不斷變化的動(dòng)態(tài)世界進(jìn)行可靠的交流。"
實(shí)際上對(duì)真正的人工智能的探索已經(jīng)產(chǎn)生了諸多不同的效果。雖然在20世紀(jì)60年代和70年代人們有過(guò)一段樂(lè)觀的時(shí)期--那時(shí)候人們認(rèn)為晶體管電路和微處理器的發(fā)展似乎將使他們?cè)?010年能夠模仿人類大腦的活動(dòng)--但是最近研究人員已經(jīng)把這個(gè)預(yù)測(cè)延后數(shù)十年，甚至數(shù)百年。
在試圖建造思維模型的過(guò)程中，研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)，人類大腦中的近1000億個(gè)神經(jīng)細(xì)胞遠(yuǎn)比以前想像的更聰明，人類的認(rèn)知能力也比以前想像的更復(fù)雜。他們制造的機(jī)器人在嚴(yán)格控制的工廠環(huán)境里，能夠在儀表盤(pán)上識(shí)別毫米以下的誤差。但是人的大腦能夠掃描一個(gè)快速變化的場(chǎng)景，迅速排除98％的不相干部分，立即聚焦于森林中婉蜒道路旁的一只猴子、或者人群中的一張可疑的臉。這點(diǎn)連地球上最先進(jìn)的計(jì)算機(jī)系統(tǒng)也望塵莫及，而且神經(jīng)學(xué)科學(xué)家至今仍然不知道我們是怎樣做到這一點(diǎn)的。 |
