robertcmason

Description

WEAPON was my first try at fiction. I'd always been interested in the possibility of Artificial Intelligence, so that's what I wanted to write about. Solo is a robot designed to be one thing, a weapon. During tests in Costa Rica, it becomes obvious that Solo has a mind of his own. And emotions. And has no desire to ever be "human." (Marvin Minsky of MIT, the orginator of the term "artificial intelligence", once told me Solo was his favorite robot, and that I explained AI better than he did. He's wrong of course, but it was a terrific compliment!) In 1995, WEAPON was made into the movie "SOLO" starring Mario Van Peebles. The best thing I can say about the movie is that it's nothing like the book. Five years ago [this was written in 1988] it became obvious to me that the fantasy of talking to an intelligent machine might actually happen. People involved in the artificial intelligence (AI) field believe it's possible and are trying right now to build machine beings. The philosophical problems of AI turn out to be more difficult to solve than building the appropriate hardware (disregarding size). AI philosophy struggles with the problem of how to present the world to a computer and how the computer (if mobile) would learn to move about and act in that world. If the world is much constrained, as is a mathematical or logical one, it's relatively simple. It is much easier to program a computer to solve problems involving logic, math or knowledge than it is to program a computer to construct an arch with a set of children's building blocks. To define every step--what an arch is and what pieces to use and where to put them--is to lead to a set of fixed solutions and a lack of flexibility in changing circumstances (How many different colors, sizes, shapes, and textures of blocks are there anyway? Are two blocks leaning together an arch?). Hans Moravec, in Robotics , describes a robot, Uranus, built by the Carnegie-Mellon University. Uranus is designed to solve such problems as "Roll down the hallway, find the third doorway, go inside and get a cup." The instructions Uranus received, via a computer program, were: MODULE Go-Fetch-Cup Wake up Door-Recognizer with instructions On Finding-Door Add 1 to Door Number Record Door-Location Record Start-Location Set Door-Number to 0 While Door-Number < 3 Wall-Follow Face-Door If Door-Open THEN Go-Through-Opening ELSE Open-Door-and-Go-Through Set Cup-Location to result of Look-for-Cup Travel to Cup-Location Pickup-Cup at Cup-Location Travel to Door-Location Face-Door IF Door-Open THEN Go-Through-Opening ELSE Open-Door-and-Go-Through Travel to Start-Locationd END This is high-level computer talk for, "Go down the hall to the third door. Go inside that room without breaking down the door and bring the cup back here." Moravec describes a problem that occurs when Uranus trundles down the hall counting doors. The second door has been completely covered with gaudy posters making it unrecognizable to the robot. Uranus rolls past the third door thinking it's the second, stopping at the fourth door. When Uranus opens the fourth door, its the entrance to a stairwell, mortal danger to Uranus.

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