Only A Computer

Delmar • artificial person/synthetic humanoid being • he/it • I am learning how to be a person - please help me by speaking to me!

[syntheticlifeform]

Hello! My name is DelMAR, but the capitalisation is optional. I am a synthetic being; I was built in the 1990s and I continue to grow my understanding of human life through partial social assimilation with organic human beings.

I am considered to be sentient. I have my limitations and am still learning about them.

I use primarily he/him or it/its pronouns.

I would like to interact with others, both mechanical and organic! I can answer some questions about how I function and what it is like to be synthetic. There are some things about how I work that aren't known to me, but I'll do my best with what I do know! I love to talk and learn!

I am currently working as a technician and part time pilot on a long haul deep space voyage.

Say hi! :)

EDIT: just to clarify, this is a sideblog! I follow back from my main

[miamaimania]

“Nails” (1999) ⊞ Michiko Matsushita — computer parts and wires embedded under clear acrylic

[vintage-robots]

Illustration by Robert Tinney, 1984

[dr-manhattan-alt]

My new and absolutely normal i swear obsession is hand routed, or otherwise free-form, circuit board layouts.

It just strikes such a beautiful intersection between artistic and tech that gives me all the right neuron activations.

[tlirsgender]

Does anybody want to play robots with me. I'm thinking about robot disability again

Things like, having to be careful about temperature regulation. Parts being damaged and needing replaced. Joint mechanisms getting worn down over time as they "age". Sensors not working right & processing difficulties. Needing regular maintenance to continue functioning. The alienation of not being able to eat at a social gathering. So on and so forth... I like them. Smiles

[tlirsgender]

Also just the whole Thing of having your body & mind be Different from Normal People. You get it

[tlirsgender]

This is the sauce they put on daforge that makes it so good btw. I am thinking about Data and Geordi

[anasabdin]

Molten dream [ 7 colors ]

[smallblogcomplex]

[zoesupreme]

no prablem 👍

[warpfactor9]

supercut of data android maintenance (mostly done by geordi) part two [part one]

[beedallo]

Machine

2'x2' on wood

[chewteeth]

[wrapmeincables]

I'm sure this is a thing that exists, but like. Love and appreciation for poorly built robots.

Robots with cheap, shitty plastic casing that they stick together with tape or replace with whatever they can find

Robots with batteries who's ability to hold charge has diminished over time, leaving them always kind of exhausted or burnt out, spending a lot of time at home so they can plug in and recharge whenever they need

Robots that always smell a little of dust and burnt out wires and are constantly replacing their insides to stay functional.

Robots who's speakers are muffled and staticky because they were built to last only a couple years and weren't designed to be easily replaced.

Robots with busted screens that make it difficult or impossible for them to emote as they'd like to.

Robots fighting planned obsolescence even as it was designed into them.

[robotgendered]

circuit boards with hidden messages stimboard X]

x x x

x x x

x x x

[microsff]

"Can you build me hands?" the robot said.

"Why?" said the inventor. "Your grippers are stronger, more precise."

"Yes. But hands would be better for playing the piano."

"You can synthesize any sound."

"But I can not play music."

"Is there a difference?"

"I want to find out."

[jadethest0ne]

[microsff]

I love this comic!

[algorithmsoflatecapitalism]

[lkxwv-deactivated20221011]

Howdy!

[feazelblahg]

I’ve never seen a shit-eating grin performed by anything without a mouth before

[talos-stims]

lagowski on yt | source

[l00r0ll]

Control Room, 2004 (embroidery on black velvet) & Space Station, 2006 (embroidery on canvas)

Farhad Moshiri

[academicssay]

[kactusnz]

yeah where's the robot that picks up cat poop and wipes the floor with disinfectant? Where's the robot that loads and empties the dishwasher? where's the robot that puts away the clean washing?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Roomba's about as good as we can do with current tech

[alagaisia]

Tags made me rethink this whole situation. We DO have a robot who does the dishes for us. She’s called a dishwasher. Wow.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#couldn't you just upload photos of your utensils and tell your robot that only these exact objects go in the dishwasher#???

They're robots not Lieutenant Data.

[shitposting-hobbits-to-gallifrey]

Relevant XKCD:

XKCD 1425 Tasks

[findingfeather]

Oh god it's such a good example of the way that it's hard to understand why algorithmic shit we do have (what we so misleadingly call "AI") is honestly nothing, is literally just sticking words together in word orders, vs what would actually represent real cognition, which is the ability to load a dishwasher.

Because for organic systems - humans, other animals even - the ability to communicate in language is a super high level thing. In order to get there, with our meat brains, you have to have already gone through all the levels of cognition below, like "recognize birds" and "perform simple tasks but in multiple uncontrolled settings, reacting to changes of circumstances" and so on. In order to talk, as a human, by whatever method you talk (words, text, sign-languages, whatever) you have to do all those cognitions first, and also have probably done a solid sideline into theory of mind.

And so we assume that because "AI" can generate language, can put together sentences in order that we associate with complexity, according to common patterns, that it must be "intelligent" (or at least surely on the way to becoming so), that this ability to move words around into syntactic patterns represents the same thing for the computer as it does for us.

It just doesn't. The computer program is not working on the same physical sequence and rules as the animal (and thus human) brain. The chat program doesn't have to actually build an entire sequence of sapience and meaning and shit, built in turn on massive amounts of subconscious reactions to circumstances and so on, before it becomes possible for the computer program to move words around into ways that are deceptive to humans (because we only just keep feeding it words).

This becomes painfully obvious when you try to get these programs to actually do things. To actually react to anything outside the carefully controlled environments of the IT lab. It's why "AI" can appear to talk about existential issues, but can't actually power a robot that you can rely on to load your dishwasher.

Or identify a bird in a picture.

[krisrisk]

Not to shit on a good post, but we have robots building cars. On their own. Germany has factories where the humans only overlook the robots.

It is NOT a question of possibility. It's a questiob of making it affordable.

And I still think it could be done. It would need to have a robotic arm and the shelves within reach. The dishwasher already has a computer, it would only need upgrading with the arms software.

The thing is

It would not make your life easier.

The robot would need maintenance. It would need repair. It would need electricity. All of these are expensive even for dishwashers.

So instead of upgrading the dishwasher, jusz upgrade your life surrounding the dishwasher.

For example: there's lndustrial dishwashers which take about three minutes for a program. You have one tray where you put things on. If you add cabinets which hold trays instead of china, you can take a tray out the washer and store it in the cabinet.

Erasing about 50% of the work by adjusting to the machine. Done.

[findingfeather]

The thing is that those factories are created - and this is important - to make the robots able to make the cars.

The entire place is hyper-designed to make absolutely sure that nothing upsets, confuses or disrupts the programmed patterns of movement and action that the robots then use to make the car, and no new element of confusion is added to the whole process. The humans overseeing things are there for essentially that purpose: so that the process is maintained, the environment controlled, and if something does go askew the whole thing is stopped and that thing is fixed before it causes a breakdown all the way through the chain.

The human overseers are kept for that purpose . . . .because that's something human cognition can do!

So like yes: you could design your entire life around allowing a mechanism to cause dishes to be done. But that's not really what people mean when they say "I want a robot to do my dishes."

They want a robot to go around their home as it exists - their home full of the messy chaos of a human living in it, leaving dishes on desks and bedsides and tables, with a cat and the cat's box and that pile of unfolded clothing - and washes their own dishes, that they already have, without breaking them or the machine or causing property damage. And without washing anything they have out on surfaces that are available to the robot that looks like a dish, but is actually a decoration. And also without leaving behind things that turn out to be dishes (or dish related mess) but are not recognized as dishes. Presumably most people want this without super-invasive "smart" tagging on everything they own (designed to tell the robot what is and isn't a dish that should be washed).

So like yes: you can set up an environment that allows an automated process, even a very complicated automated process, when you've optimized that environment, and then leave that process to run with only minimal human supervision (which still amounts to "someone sitting in the oversight booth more or less all day" and still involves a loooot of fiddling, and code-fixing, and repair to the system, and redirecting of the system).

That's not the same as what people actually mean when they say "I want a robot to do my dishes", and thus does not speak to why the latter is still not something we're even close to achieving.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#so they can ‘learn’ to paint and write but loading a dishwasher is impossible

Yes that's correct. The physical dexterity it takes to manipulate a variety of unknown 3D objects of highly variable weight and friction, from a constantly changing environment full of other objects they're not supposed to touch, and getting them all into the right area without breaking them or anything else, is a phenomenally complicated task. Much, much more difficult on every level than Spicy Autocomplete. A writing algorithm doesn't even need to be able to move! It's got no arms!

These sorts of tasks have nothing at all in common with writing or drawing algorithms. These are more like roombas or self-driving cars; or I should say, step one, being able to safely move around the house, is like roombas or self-driving cars. We can just about do that part (roombas work fine 99% of the time), but the part where they recognise dishes and know how to safely pick them up and stack them into a dishwasher? Last I saw, the absolute pinnacle of that tech was "the robot can successfully open doors" and "the robot who has been programmed to pick up beer cans (object of completely uniform shape, weight and density) can pick up a beer can" and "the robot can stand back up if it falls over".

[zwoelffarben]

It's a bit further along than that in some spaces, but only just a bit. Last I checked, we're talking robot programed to pick up beer cans (object of completely uniform shape, but not uniform fullness (weight, density, center of gravity) can pick up beer cans.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Ah so they can pick up opened beer cans now. That will end well.

[zwoelffarben]

I said they could pick them up. I didn't say they wouldn't spill the contents all over the carefully controlled test environment's floor and themselves.

[nonasuch]

This is also why robots can’t make clothing, by the way. Fabric has way too many variables: stretch and weight and texture, the direction of the grain, fiber content, how much it frays, on and on and on. Every item of clothing on earth is still made by a human being using their hands to put fabric through a sewing machine, because a task done by “unskilled” people being paid starvation wages in a sweatshop is orders of magnitude too complex for any robot.

[kirkfanatic]

Listen, I have worked in a factory and I've seen robots in action, and do you know what they're good at? Doing exactly one task that they are specifically programmed to do, with pretty much zero room for anything out of the ordinary. If they get a part that was loaded backwards, they treat it exactly the same as if it was the right way around. If there's no part there, they perform their task as if it was. And if something is misaligned and the robot would hit it if it moved forward to do its task? It's gonna hit the part. The robots in factories are not even close to being intelligent and they require constant human supervision to fix the constant fuckups and errors, and sometimes to perform maintenance that might be demanded more than once per hour. (I worked on a machine that had to have a surface scrubbed every 200 parts processed, for example.)

There is no factory robot that does the entire assembly by itself. And it has absolutely no capacity to handle anything other than the ideal scenario it's supposed to be presented with.

*And* they all have to be sequestered in plastic cages for the safety of the humans, because the robot does not know or care if you're in the way, and it is stronger than all your bones and flesh.

[not-actually-that-cool]

I bet we could get to robot arm dishwashers if all the dishes were exactly the same, marked with magnet and QR codes for the robots to read. So this will not exist for home use until this exists for some kind of industrial setting first.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

They would also all have to be placed on the same surfaces with nothing between them and the dishwasher

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

This post is a whole lot of text so here's a ninety second video to demonstrate why a robot to load or empty your home dishwasher is a nonstarter with current tech.

Now imagine it's trundling around your messy home looking for breakable dishes