It sounds great. There’s only one problem. It doesn’t work:
Despite apparently violating fundamental laws of physics, Steorn planned to demonstrate its machine to the public Wednesday at the Kinetica Museum gallery in London.
Steorn, however, ran into a minor problem — Orbo isn’t working.
Steorn posted a note on its Web site:
“We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London. Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting. We have commenced a technical assessment and will provide an update later today.”
Yes, of course. Camera lighting. I’m sure that’s it.
The robot’s biologically-inspired control software uses a functional model of “place cells”. These are neurons in an area of the brain called the hippocampus that help real rats to map their environment. They fire when an animal is in a familiar location.
Alfredo Weitzenfeld, a roboticist at the ITAM technical institute in Mexico City, carried out the work by reprogramming an AIBO robot dog, made by Japanese firm Sony, with the rat-inspired control software.
When placed inside a maze, the robot learnt to navigate towards a “reward” in a remarkably similar way to real rodents, using landmarks to explore.
Randall Parker has a list of consequences when the cost of individual gene sequencing comes down (as it inevitably will). I found this one interesting:
Discovery of genetic variations that contribute to appearances such as genes for eye and hair color, complexion, hair texture, facial shape, and other attributes that contribute to visual desirability.
Physical desirability is a two-way street. We are bred to appear desirable, but we’re also bred to view desirable people as desirable. I wonder if some people might not figure out how to rearrange their genes to change what is desirable to them? That’s probably a much tougher problem, though.
…recycling is no way to reduce global warming. In fact, by increasing energy use, it worsens it.
[Update mid morning]
Someone asked in comments in this post if I made up the phrase “Green Man’s Burden,” and if it was the first usage. Well, it turns out that I wasn’t first (though I did come up with it independently). Here’s an instance of it at the Competitive Enterprise Institute back in 2000. And here’s an instance on Usenet from 1991. Great minds think alike, I guess.