[alicebot-aiethics] Greetings

[Richard Wallace]

Wow, we are delighted to have a celebrity on our Ethics committee.  For
those who don't already, Robby Garner won the Loebner prize in 1998 and
1999.  His work on chat robots and his courage to work "outside the system"
were a big inspiration to me and a big influence on the development of ALICE
and AIML.

Robby and I also implemented (with the help of Paco Nathan) what was
probably the first bot-to-bot conversation over the web.   His bot Barry met
an early version of ALICE in early 1998 in what we called "The Forbin
Project", and their conversation was quoted in the New York Times!

Incidentally, Robby Garner's Robitron mailing list was formerly the home of
many good "AI Ethics" discussions too.

I think everyone here will join me in giving a big warm welcome to Robby
Garner!

Rich

Donate to the ALICE A.I. Foundation "Cooler than Humans" -- TIME
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robby Garner" <meo1@bellsouth.net>
To: <alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2001 8:40 AM
Subject: [alicebot-aiethics] Greetings


> Hi All,
>
> My name is Robby Garner, and I've been interested in chatterbots for many
> years now. At Rich's suggestion, I've joined this list to participate, and
> to ease my way back into the ALICE community.
>
> I see that gun control has raised it's controversial head on the list, but
> can only add that hanguns in America are like a pandora's box, because
they
> are everywhere already.
>
> There is something fundamentally wrong in our society where people are
> becoming more and more tightly wound like springs.  There is a sense of
> urgency to get from place to place, evidenced by road rage, etc.  We've
gone
> from a primarily agrarian society to the information age in just 200
years,
> and I don't think people have adapted their priorities yet to the new
> demands placed on families, where both parents work, children are
delegated
> to a TV nanny, and schools are just prisons.  Oh, and the prisons! We have
> more people in jail than any country in the world, and as a solution we
just
> build more jails? Okay, so back to AI ethics!
>
> Here are some of my recent thoughts about whether robots will unemploy us.
> These may seem unpopular views right now since most of us would like to
put
> a bot in every workplace, but I must assert that I am merely taking a
> counter position to stimulate discussion.
>
> I don't believe bots will unemploy us. They'll find their own niche the
way
> people do. Early Sci-Fi authors toyed with the idea that robots would give
> humanity more free time and reduce the amount of menial labor that we do.
> But in the reality of now, it takes people to build bots, the bots don't
> self-produce. That means even more jobs for human beings. And the human
mind
> is incredible. Don't expect to see it duplicated soon. But imitation is
the
> sincerest form of flattery.
>
> The information age brings with it more work. In converse to what one
would
> expect, the computer did not revolutionize the workplace, it merely
created
> more things to do, to support them, to sell them, maintain them, to use
> them, to learn how to do new things. So in terms of robots ever putting
> people out of work, it may be that some jobs will become obsolete, just as
> there are few blacksmiths around any more. The computer/robot/android will
> integrate into society to perform tasks that may or may not already be
> performed by human beings. So I think it is more accurate to say that the
> job market may change as it always has, but not because robots are putting
> people out of work. Rather the job market will change because people are
> doing new things, new jobs that may not exist yet. This is very little
> sollace to someone who is displaced and out of work. But the indispensible
> tool rules.
>
> Also, I think that if you say robots will unemploy us, that has bad
> connotations, and might scare people.  To me, a better sales pitch is that
> it makes jobs easier to perform, helps people, or makes hard jobs more
easy
> to do.
>
> Thanks for the invitation Rich! I know you open source guys probably frown
> on most of my current work, but I still have some open source projects of
my
> own, and I applaud all of your efforts in the ALICE project. I just work
in
> the same area, down the street.
>
> In closing, I have to say that every advance that ALICE makes in
> legitimizing the gainful use of chatterbots, helps us all and vice versa.
> You guys have postured yourself against commercial chatterbot companies,
and
> rightly so, since price is one of your strong assets, but we commercial
> companies are not all the evil empire. My company, HuMimics, Inc.is
closely
> tied to a non-profit organization that I co-founded called the Institute
for
> Mimetic Science.  Much like the ALICE AI Foundation, we promote the study
of
> human imitation, including projects like ALICE where being human-like is
the
> name of the game.  IMS is still in it's infancy, with a newly selected
board
> of directors.  Hope to have a web page up soon, but for now we are just
> working behind the scenes to establish the thing.
>
> Thanks, and Best Regards,
>
> Robby Garner
> Chief of Research
> HuMimics, Inc.( http://www.humimics.com )
> Institute of Mimetic Science ( http://www.mimetics.org )
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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