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British scientists believe it will take about 30 years for robots to start mating with one another to produce offspring, which will be even more advanced than their robotic parents intellectually, technologically and functionally. But just how far-fetched this picture of our not-so-distant future is? Russian engineers and futurologists have answered this question to the Voice of Russia.
Alexander Pelt: Russia has grown skeptical of endless finds that British scientists seem to be constantly coming up with. And indeed it is getting increasingly harder to believe in all those fantastic – bordering on absurd – discoveries that make headlines in the UK, the most recent being math-doing plants and homely women that can be bad for your liver. Now a British artificial intelligence engineer and novelist George Zarkadakis has revealed that in the near future androids could have sex, though not for pleasure, but essentially to reproduce and create “super” offspring. This may indeed happen, Russian futurologist Maxim Kalashnikov says, although the process will probably be very different from human procreation. “Robots don’t need to have sex as we know it to self-replicate. Robots are sexless as they are, so there’s probably no need to make them imitate human reproductive behavior. A robot with an artificial intelligence will be able to switch on production lines and build more of its kind.” Hence, we can’t really expect robot sex and birth-giving to resemble those typical of humankind. One of the possible ways for robots to self-replicate could be to have them swap software and print out their “children” on a 3D copier, which means the entire cycle from robotic “conception” to birth would take minutes. George Zarkadakis also says that sex could protect robots from viruses and make them more robust. The British visionary even predicted that robots might breed with humans, creating powerful hybrid species that could potentially have new amazing capabilities. Does it mean that Darwin’s evolution theory can be true for machines as well as mankind? Eduard Proidakov, an analyst with the Russian technological NGO Modernization, says this idea is too far-fetched because the human race itself has not been properly studied yet. “A human as a machine is a biological system that requires in-depth study. Thirty years is a short span. I suspect we are in for tremendous breakthroughs on how the human organism works. Perhaps we will be able to print out organs in 10-15 years. As for these hybrids, I don’t think it's a viable thought. They would be sort of cyborgs. I don’t think the human race will go that way.” In this sense, it’s worth remembering how ideas of Jules Verne were viewed during his time. His novels about travelling to the Moon and underwater exploits of the boat Nautilus were merely smiled at by 19th century scientists. So don’t be too surprised if you meet a hulking man in the street who will tell you in a metallic voice: “I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.” That’d just mean that British scientists have guessed something right for once and robots got their hands on 3D printers. Source: http://sputniknews.com/
