Gigaom AI Minute – September 6

Transcript

Trying to wrap our head around what’s missing in that vast gulf between machine and human intelligence, consider how Rodney Brooks, the renowned Australian roboticist, views a similar question. He thinks there is something in biology about living systems that we simply don’t understand. Something really big.

He termed this missing something as “the juice” and demonstrated it by talking about the difference between a robot trapped in a box who methodically goes through a series of steps to escape, versus an animal that very desperately wants to free itself. Robots, in his view, lack passion for anything, and that passion (the juice) is vitally important and meaningful. Brooks, incidentally, is convinced it is purely mechanistic, and categorically rejects any notion that “the juice” is somehow an attribute beyond normal physics.

What do you think “the juice” is, and can a machine get it?