Teaching robots to find "food" and share it with others seems like a fairly worthwhile and noble endeavor, no? Well, it apparently wasn't quite enough for a group of researchers from Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, who had the bright idea to augment said robots with a new artificial neural network that let the robots learn a host of new abilities -- namely, scheming, lying and deceiving. Apparently, in their younger days, the robots would flash a light whenever they found food to let their buddies know where it was, but that of course caused the food to dwindle a lot quicker. After a bit of trial and error and a few tweaks from the researchers, however, the robots apparently discovered that they could keep more of the food for themselves if they didn't flash the light, and it seems like its been
Lord of the Flies on an incredibly tiny scale ever since.
[Via
Switched]
posted Aug 22nd 2009 7:32AM
...And so it begins. ._.
Open the pod bay doors, HAL!
Yeah, who honestly thinks this is a good idea?
We already have one of these...in the White House.
I'll be waiting for them to lie better than a reich-wing politician.
Training the robots to be selfish is not a good idea. Selfish leads to lying. But it's a great discovery.
They get more like us every day.
Skynet
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Place the robot near McDonalds... What would happen? Food or not food O.o
Researcher - Robot can you lie?
Robot - ...no.
Researcher - ...
Robot - ...
Robot - OM NOM NOM NOM
LOLOL
holy shit the funniest thing on the internet
I rarely leave comments let alone respond to them. I actually laughed out loud reading your comment =)
I, for one, welcome our dishonest robot overlords.
I semi-LOLed.
Liar!
when they say "we want peace", they might be lying
I like where this i going.
So where is you going?
Lol, yea, Skynet is inevitable.
Robotic poker player ?
Bastards! First they mow my lawn and hide. Now they DON'T mow my lawn, hide AND lie about it!
I don't think these guys can deny any longer that they're deliberately trying to bring about the Robot Apocalypse.
And so it is that engadget shall pass into a time of two days where there shall only be posts about really crappy gadgets. And it shall be called Weekendgadget...
Evil Computer:loading
Computer Engineer: Its ok its loading
Evil Computer: Kidding
(Massacre and Missile Launch)
This will take us closer to understanding the female mind.
Nah, chick don't lie about finding food. They lie about wanting food.
maybe the plan was to deceive people out of their food to give to the homeless...gotta think about the bigger picture
These researchers may know a lot about building and programming robots but they don't seem to have any common sense or self-preservation instincts.
ಠ_ಠ welcome.....
you Rocks with ur Robo..............
so there is no good ai..there is no evil ai....there will just ai...which will make us like herds of animals......to help them suit their needs...
Way to post news from last year...
Article from January 2008:
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jan/robots-evolve-and-learn-how-to-lie
Yeah, I could have sworn engadget already made a post on this before.
wow that whole article, no matter how old is really amazing. i wonder if they've kept up the evolution and what has become of them.... care to email and get us an update engadget?
GREA T SCOTT! So these researchers could be evem FURTHER ALONG IN THEIR PLAN TO CREATE CYLONS????!!!!!??????????????!!!!!!!!!!?????????
... cinap I llahs?
Skynet
Oh Kryton, it took you thousands of years before you were able to lie about the colour of an orange!!!
This is surely some twisted basic false logic programming. Otherwise, where would all the calculators go???
Kryton? Kryten, I think. ("Kryton" is from Star Trek, IIRC, not Red Dwarf!)
Lister: "Kryten, I'm gonna teach you how to lie and cheat if it's the last thing I do. I want you to be unpleasant, cruel, and sarcastic. It's the only way to break your programming, man - make you independent!"
Kryten: "Well, I'm truly grateful, sir. Don't you think I'd love to be deceitful, unpleasant, and offensive? Those are the human qualities I admire the most!"
Horribly butchered Google translation ah!:
Us is that I speak Well, you do not change how these foreign birds head ah! Our version of the Celestial Empire not change ah! Editors not to engage in the Secretary, and to find ways to ah.
We will be working for these robots after they win the war.
I am now convinced that these "scientists" are nothing but cyborgs from the future who are here to coerce us into a robotriarchal future.
My satnav can already lie to me. It told me a reservoir was a race track. Trying to kill me it is. Eh chap?
they were just trying to give the fembot a personality
TEH CAKE IS A LIE!!!11!
Oh man, how did I miss the chance for that reference?
I don't think it is lying. It's just not reporting food.
Lying would depend on the understanding that it would always report any and all food it finds. Given the same scenario, if it's 'understood' that the robot would only report if it finds a certain amount, or that it just doesn't report at all, it's not lying. They don't have agreements with other robots, they're only follow their programming. They're not lying.
And besides, this is no more lying than a virtual cd-rom drive is lying to an operating system, or a modchip is lying to a console.
It actually is lying. If you read the report, the robots produce light randomly, as more and more find a food source the amount of light grows in in that area. The robots learned to stop producing light when they found food.
But it says in the article that the robots had signed contracts with the other robots. Probably forged then.