27 thoughts on “Humans Versus Robots”

  1. “Most of what we do in space could be done better with robots,” says Cynthia Phillips, a planetary geologist at the SETI Institute.

    Of course, the things we are currently doing in space are better done with robots — because they are (mostly) done with robots. The things that can’t be done with robots are not even attempted. This is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  2. Not only the pointless robot/human debate, but the assumption that a human Mars mission will necessarily be a national prestige exercise.

    The Sputnik-to-Apollo meme continues yet, at least among some.

  3. See look at this. Matt Damon in an SF movie named Elysium about rich people living in space colonies “with strict border control to preserve their standard of living”. As a commenter described the concept art, “So some kind of mixture between O’Neill space colonies, class warfare and just a dash of Wall-E, eh?” (The wheel space station looks like a cross between Space Station V from 2001 and a Stanford Torus).

    The plot is summarized as “Set in the year 2159, where the very wealthy lives on a man-made space station while the rest of population reside on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.”

    The left is siezing the narrative on private space development. Why is the Dixon/Mead SSI concept art brought to life as a perversion?

    http://io9.com/5925315/elysium-concept-art-shows-off-matt-damons-perfect-future-world-in-space

    (The article has the link to the movie viral site wrong. It is: http://www.itsbetterupthere.com/)

    1. Wow, I’m torn on that one. It’s written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, who did the incredibly subversive District 9. Can he fly another one under the Progressive radar? We can only hope.

      1. What’s up with District 9? I missed it totally. All I see is that Ebert gave it 3 stars, which counts heavily against it.

          2. Yes, watch it – aside from the main gimmick which I thought was lame, it was pretty cool.

    2. Reminds me of of an anime called Blue Gender. It’s about some genetic experiment that results in rapidly evolving man-eating bugs that grow to massive sizes and eat everybody because well, they are man-eating. There are apparently a chosen few who get to go up onto space stations to preserve the human race. And it lays it on thick that all the people on the space are SO LUCKY and it AIN’T FAIR. But I think there are some animated boobies in there somewhere so it’s all good.

    3. Yep, the 1% are going to the stars and the 99% are left on a planet looted for its resources. But then gloom and doom is what sells.

      But it also illustrates the failure of space advocacy in that the “O’Neill” vision they have been selling since the 1970’s is seen by many as abandoning Earth instead of making it possible for the Earth to survive and support a larger population in greater comfort then it does now.

  4. Mars will be developed when, and only when, there are people going for their own reasons and not subject to mob decision.

    1. John,

      Yep, that has historically been how ALL new lands have been settled by humans. The one danger is that one of the NASA missions may find life there and its put off limits to humans. Which is why the ending of funding for Mars exploration is probably a good thing for Mars Settlement instead of something bad as many space advocates believe. Pity that folks like Dr. Zubrin who see NASA as a giant tax payer funded piggy bank for their ambitions don’t recognize that.

  5. It’s a little bit late for this debate.

    Considering Moore’s Law, by the time a human-crewed Mars mission could be ready, robots will be almost as smart as humans anyway.

        1. Many years ago, I had to validate the command databases for 3 satellite families, some 60,000 commands. Each single command was a 7 digit octal number and block commands were composed of multiple single commands.

          At the end of that project, I came to the conclusion that octal is for losers who can’t count to F.

          1. I don’t know why…it’s quite simple: after a while, all you see in the Matrix code is blonde…brunette…redhead…

      2. The Singularity may or may not be near, but it doesn’t matter. Semi-intelligent computers are near, or certainly near enough for this topic.

        Unless you think there’s something magic in human intelligence, you have to conclude that it’s going to happen eventually.

        I wasn’t going to say it, but I did once write about this exact topic:
        http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue60/ambitions.html

  6. Should humans, or robots, explore the solar system and beyond?

    The problem is right there in that sentence. Robots don’t explore anything. Would it make sense to ask if hammers explore? They’re tools. They are not sentient. They are not likely to become sentient for a long time, perhaps forever.

    We use tools precisely because they are better than us (in whatever way they happen to be.)

    Humans are the only explorers (well, and other animals.) Of course they should do it in person when that’s viable. It is cheaper to send robots in most cases. However, once a settlement is established anywhere, humans are much more efficient in most cases.

    This argument is silly. We should be concentrating on human settlement and let robots be the tools we use to make that easier. Try pounding a nail with your naked hand.

    1. At some point, humans will need to leave the solar system. Of course, by then they might have already sent their artificial descendants into the stars. It would make a good story — a human fleet leaving the solar system only to discover that the rest of the galaxy has already been populated exponentially by their artificial descendants — a riff on the first contact trope. It might already be written somewhere.

        1. Naw, that was the reverse — humans colonize and a single robot just floats along ’till it becomes smart enough to possess some bald chick.

          1. No, there was an entire civilization of intelligent computers. You were obviously distracted by the bald chick.

      2. More like the Beserker series:

        “a series of space opera science fiction short stories and novels by Fred Saberhagen, in which robotic self-replicating machines intend to destroy all life. These Berserkers, named after the human berserker warriors of Norse legend, are doomsday weapons left over from an interstellar war between two races of extraterrestrials. They all have machine intelligence, and their sizes range from that of an asteroid, in the case of an automated repair and construction base, down to human size (and shape) or smaller.”

  7. My comment didn’t post???

    I said, the progressives are the singularity. They just want to take care of us so they need all the power. We won’t ever need to leave the earth.

  8. Pointless debate indeed. Even the telerobitics from orbit proposal is at least 17 yeas old.

    “Most of what we do in space could be done better with robots,” says Cynthia Phillips, a planetary geologist at the SETI Institute. “If you took those dollars [from researching manned spaceflight] and spent them on a fleet of robots, sure they’d be slower, but they’d do more science.”

    Oh Cynthia. Cutting dollars from manned spaceflight wouldn’t mean more money for robotic exploration. As Geoffrey Landis once wisely wrote,

    “Arguments to cancel space projects are eagerly picked up in Congress, by people who have agendas and pet projects that have nothing to do with space. Further, attacking space projects has the result of making enemies out of allies. When we attack someone else’s project, we can count on having them attack ours. The result is that the arguments against both projects will be remembered by a money-starved Congress.”

    “It is not true that manned missions eclipse funds for unmanned science missions. In fact, there is an excellent case to be made for precisely the opposite correlation: the presence of large manned missions increases the funding and opportunities for unmanned science missions. Historically, the science budget of NASA has been a roughly constant fraction of the total
    budget; any major new initiative which increases the overall space budget is likely to increase the funding for science.”

  9. Singularity or cognitive AI has very little to do with robotic capabilities, or usefulness thereof. I am not sure why many people think it does.

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