Could a robot ever be a hero? No, despite the fact that we will expect our robots (in fact, even our soon-to-arrive self-driving cars) to sacrifice themselves for us.

"Soon enough, much of what many humans do for a living will be better done by indefatigable machines who require not a cent in pay,” Bringsjord said. “I figure the ultimate growth industry will be building smarter and smarter such machines on the one hand, and philosophizing about whether they are truly conscious and free on the other. Job security is nice. I've worked in this two-fold industry for a long time, and plan to continue as long as my health holds out."


http://www.rpi.edu/~brings
http://rair.cogsci.rpi.edu


Selmer Bringsjord specializes in the logico-mathematical and philosophical foundations of artifical intelligence (AI) and cognitive science (CogSci), and in collaboratively building AI systems on the basis of computational logic. Though he spends considerable engineering time in pursuit of ever-smarter computing machines, he claims that ""armchair"" reasoning time has enabled him to deduce that the human mind will forever be superior to such machines.
In the present case, this superiority entails that robot can't be heroes, while persons can.


This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx