Robots Teach Each Other to Sing, Argue About Who Is Off Key
OK, so they don't argue yet. But here's a pretty snazzy experiment in cultural development involving warbling robots:
Eduardo Miranda shuts the door of his study, leaving two "warbling" robots to their own devices. He has programmed them to blurt out sequences of random notes, and two weeks later, he returns to find that the robots are still cooing in their eerily human voices, but they have now "evolved" to sing a repertoire of 20 sounds together.
The robots have microphones for ears and cameras for eyes. One makes a series of sounds based on the human voice, and the other does too. If the first robot judges the sounds to be similar, it nods its head and they both add the sounds to their repertoire. Thus they learn to make beautiful(ish) music together.
Since only those sounds that both robots know about are recorded, gradually their memories fill up with similar sounds Miranda likens this to the emergence of a very simplistic, shared culture.
Feeling replaceable yet? No? How about these nano Obamas (nanobamas?) to convince you that the Singularity is Near?
