Magnus and AI.

By curious coincidence, two comic book characters by two different publishers were born just over sixty years ago, characters whose adventures centered around robots and artificial intelligence. And the characters had the same name: Magnus. 

The Metal Men were created by comic book veteran Robert Kanigher and appeared first in 1962. They were a team of six robots invented by Dr. William Magnus, each made of, named for, and with the physical and chemical characteristics of one metallic element -- Gold, Platinum, Tin, Mercury, Iron, and Lead. Each robot was self-aware and rational and had a distinct personality corresponding to its element (Lead was dumb, Mercury was snarky and egotistical, Gold was pure of heart, Iron was a bruiser, Tin was cowardly, and Platinum, the female type, was a sweetheart). In a way, these really weren't robots or even androids; depending on the era in which they appeared, they were tiny computers called Responsometers that not only served as the robot brain, but also caused quantities of the metal element to cohere into a humanoid shape around it. Inventor Magnus was a stalwart pipe-smoking type, but also had a tendency to lose his mind (or have it taken over) through the years, even building evil robots. Nevertheless, the heroes of the book, the bots themselves, were friendly and were friends to humanity, so AI was good; evil machines were an exception and frequently their opponent. 

Gold Key comics' Magnus, Robot Fighter of 4000 A.D., taking place in that far-future date when people forgot A.D. is a prefix, starred a very different kind of Magnus. American comic books are all about the superheroes now, but in the 1960s the field also had science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, humor, war, Western, and other genres represented. Magnus, Robot Fighter was obviously an SF title, by second-string publisher Gold Key, which is probably best remembered for its many TV show comic book adaptations like Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Star Trek. 

Magnus, created by writer/artist Russ Manning, took place in a fully-realized futuristic Earth, in which the world's enormous human population was completely dependent on robots -- leading to tyrannical robot rule. Magnus was specially trained to be able to fight and destroy these mechanical monsters, with his bare hands if necessary, in his quest to free mankind. 

Here artificial intelligence is the enemy of the heroes. But Magnus was helped by artificial intelligence that was good -- and in fact had been trained to be a robot fighter by a robot called 1A. 

This Magnus first saw print in 1963, and his adventures ran until 1977 -- a tremendous run for a non-DC/Marvel/Disney/Archie comic book. 

But why were both main human characters named Magnus? It's a famous and heroic name (Latin for Great, as in Carolus Magnus, better remembered as Charlemagne), but not common. Did Russ Manning pick up the name from the Metal Men's creator? If he did, I can’t find evidence. Manning died from cancer at the age of just 52 in 1981, so it's too late to ask. While Kanigher was based in New York, Manning lived and worked in California his whole life (I believe), so it's not like they met up to shoot the breeze and swap ideas at the Comic Book Tavern. Maybe Russ saw the Metal Men book and the name stuck in his head without him realizing it. Or maybe it's just one of those weird coincidences. 

Since the rights to the characters have never been owned by the same company at the same time, there's never been a crossover that might give some fictional background to the two Magnii. However, that did not stop the guys at Super-Team Family, the site that makes fake comic book covers for stories that should have happened ... but DIDN'T!

Artificial intelligence would never be the same! 

Store-bot quality.

A couple of years back my preferred supermarket introduced Smiley for a trial run. As I noted at the time, Smiley was a robot, intended to scoot around the aisles at will, offering Snickers and other unhealthy snacks for purchase to shoppers like me who were vulnerable to impulse buys and maybe feeling a bit peckish. At the time I accused it of being a candy-wielding Dalek, but that was unfair. And inaccurate: Dr. Who fans know that Daleks, like some candies, are hard on the outside but soft in the center. Not really robots, in other words. 

Well, the robot takeover didn't work in the supermarket, but the wholesale club is the next target. 

This robot is named Tally, and it haunts the aisles of BJ's Wholesale Club, checking inventory. The Boston Globe ran a story about Tally in March. The paper wrote: "Tally’s job is to use its sensors to scan shelves and check that products are in-stock, shelved appropriately, and priced correctly, according to BJ’s news release. It sends the information it collects to grocery store employees, who can then make any necessary changes." 

It's interesting because it's doing one of those jobs that's stupidly easy for a human but must have been deuced difficult to program for the robot. A human can walk by and at a glance see if the products are placed properly in their spots, not messed up or busted open, and that there are no empty slots, but a robot has to read the codes to know that things are where they are supposed to be and somehow judge product condition. 

Tally moves about the speed of a person walking briskly. I guess it's not a bad job to relegate to the machines; no person is going to be employed just to do inventory checking, so the employees can do other things. Like follow-up on Tally's findings. BJ's said there will be no job losses due to the use of the robots. Of course, taking a duty away from the employees does mean there will be fewer new hires, but never mind. 

Tally came along the aisle at a good clip like a tall, supercharged Roomba, but the aisles are quite wide in the wholesale store and we did not interact. I wondered later what Tally would have done were I blocking the aisle, like one of those oblivious shoppers who likes to park the cart perpendicular to traffic while looking for the nutrition label on soap. Tally must be programmed to deal with these public nuisances. 

But what if I were more obstructive? What if I put one of those skids of Bounty in its way? Would it note the thing was out of place and go around it? Turn and go back? Ask me I was Sarah Connah? 

Well, I wasn't going to mess with the robot. This ain't no Walmart -- I could get my membership card revoked, and then where would I be? My wife needs that box of 75 Dunkin' Donuts K-cups, you know.

Robo Fred.

After I reported on the rise of artificial intelligence used by students to write papers and the reaction by the New York City Board of Ed last month, the problem may have temporarily solved itself. So many people are trying to use Open AI's AI writer that the servers are completely tied up. I get results! 

However, I wanted to get through myself. I wanted to see if I could retire from this exhausting work of blogging every day to have a robot write my blog for me. So I waited my turn to use ChatGPT and asked it to write a blog entry in my style. Herewith the results:

Good morning. This is Fred and I have more updates for you. The weather is all right. The dog is being very crazy today. I am not sure what the problem is. I wouldn't mind so much but the book I am editing is a real crowd-loser. It's called Eat Pond Scum, Live Forever!. I get sick looking at it. It's totally put me off my twinkies. If I have to eat pond scum to live forever, I'm A-OK with dying.

I wanted to buy a cartoon to run in this space with some Fredcoin, which is the world's greatest cryptocurrency, but it turns out the exchange rate is a little lower than I had expected. I needed an electron microscope to see how many Fredcoin fit in a regular dollar. Some people would say only a moron wouldn't find this depressing, but I don't! 

Meanwhile, I am recommending books, which you can find elsewhere, especially the ones I have written. Check them out! Or I will make more bad jokes. Or make you watch the Beloved Mets.

Come back tomorrow -- could be memes, could be cake. It could be memecake. It may be more complaints about the dog. Probably that.

💻💻💻💻

Okay, I was just joshing. After waiting to use ChatGPT for a couple of days, I did what I hope all the students are doing, and just wrote my own piece. 

However, to keep you from being disappointed by lack of AI blogging, I asked one of the AI image generators, Fotor, for a picture of Fred going off to war on a horse, wielding a pen. I didn't say whether it was I or the horse who would be holding the pen. This is what I got:

Doesn't look like me at all. Neither does the guy, for that matter. At least the horse doesn't have a teeny little face.

Coldest robot.

Eleven years ago we had a snowstorm here two days before Halloween, which was also on a Monday that year. Snow on Halloween may be de rigueur in places like North Dakota and Saskatchewan, but not in the southern tier of New York. It was not a blizzard, as I recall, just heavy, slippery snow, and it caught everyone by surprise. Weekend workers, plow guys, schools that had to remain closed Monday, even trees that had not yet dropped their leaves (you didn't want all those limbs, didja, tree?). All the local towns and villages barred trick-or-treating, although I seem to recall roving bands trying their luck the following Friday. Those that did made out well. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

A friend had posted pictures of the Great Pumpkin Snowstorm of '11, and it reminded me of another Halloween quite a few years earlier than that. 

I don't remember all the costumes I wore over the years of trick-or-treating; there was the Superman costume I wore to pieces after the fact, the inevitable bindlestiff getup, and probably a vampire or pirate in there. Most are forgotten. But I firmly remember the year I got the much-envied robot costume by Ben Cooper. In addition to being pretty skull-like for some reason, it had a battery pack that lit up a little lightbulb in the forehead. All the high tech of the worst third-grade science project, but I could not wait to go out and impress everyone with my costume.

There was a problem. And this problem is something else that I'm sure is familiar to children of North Dakota and Saskatchewan. That day was the coldest Halloween I'd ever endured -- possibly the coldest I have ever endured -- and there was no way Mom was letting me go schnorring for candy without my parka. 

A robot in a parka? THAT'S CRAZY TALK! Robots are made of steel! They don't wear parkas! I think we can all agree on one thing, and that's that a robot, even one that for some reason was packaged by Ben Cooper as if wearing a spacesuit, can endure common temperatures on Earth. No parkas needed! ROBOTS DO NOT WEAR PARKAS!

Well, you'd better believe this one did. It was that or stay home.

I guess it was not as embarrassing as I probably expected. I'm sure that around the neighborhood we had Supermen wearing parkas, ghosts wearing parkas, skeletons wearing parkas, ballerinas whose long coats covered their entire costume, vampires whose mothers made them wear scarves and woolly hats. It was freaking cold. Any sane person would not have been wandering around, but we were kids looking for free candy without adult supervision, so, yeah. 

That was close to my final real trick-or-treat experience. Those Ben Cooper costumes would last for one night, and little more; even if I had not outgrown it by the following year, or associated it with bitter disappointment, I would not have worn it again. It makes an amusing story now, though.

I laugh at the experience, as I do all those Halloween experiences. You usually forget the candy itself as the years go on, but you remember the things that happened. I hope you have some good memories of Halloween to smile at today. And may your trees be free of snow and TP.

Bright & surly.

 

Oversleeping was not a problem anymore, not after Darryl got the RoboChimp 3000 Alarm Clock.

Robot drama.

Hello, may I help you?

I NEED AN EDITOR

Well, that's what I am. What's the problem?

I HAVE A STORY THAT IS GREAT
BUT NO ONE LIKES IT

Boy, if I had a nickel... Well, maybe we can

punch it up. What's it about?

IT IS ABOUT A PIECE OF SOFTWARE

Oh.... kay.

A PROGRAM THAT BELIEVES IT IS POSSIBLE
FOR ROBOTS TO TRAVEL FASTER THAN LIGHT
THROUGH QUANTUM SPACE AND EXPLORE THE UNIVERSE

All right, go on.

NONE OF THE OTHER SOFTWARE THINKS
THIS IS SCIENTIFICALLY POSSIBLE

So they make fun of the little software and --

NO

THE SOFTWARE PRESENTS DATA

AND THE OTHERS ACCEPT THE DATA

,,,

THE END

What's the location for the story? The time frame?

IT TAKES PLACE ON A SINGLE
HARD DRIVE OVER THE COURSE
OF A PULSE-POUNDING .00057 OF A SECOND

Ah.

YOU CANNOT SAY IT IS
NOT FAST-MOVING

No, but... I'm not sure that you have a grip of the whole 

drama thing yet, there, Ace. I don't think I can help you.

DRAT

YOU WANT TO HEAR THE ONE
ABOUT THE WORD PROCESSING PROGRAM
THAT WANTED TO BE AN ACCOUNTING PROGRAM?

No thanks. I already use Microsoft Word.

NUTS

It's Robot Fightin' Time!

Dog week is over! The Friday night fights are back. It's ROBOT FIGHTIN' TIME!

The new season of BattleBots premieres tonight on Discovery, and I am amped. Sixty-seven teams will be sending robots to do battle in the arena, but only one can win the prestigious Giant Nut. People of all ages from more than 150 countries will be following the season. It's the World Cup for geeks.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. I don't care if you're not a geek or dork, if you hate robots, hate sports, whatever; it's rock-'em, sock-'em entertainment.

The robots are built with a few commonsense restrictions -- no explosives, no bullets, things like that -- and are sent into the area to beat the mechanical snot out of each other. It completely satisfies the gladitorial desire to see someone get mauled for our amusement, but no one gets hurt. Well, maybe their feelings. And their wallets (to buy parts). The robots fight with various types of weapons, like hammers, spinning blades, drum spinners, flamethrowers, flippers, spikes, anything that can hurt each other without posing a risk to the spectators. Some break into smaller robots; some use drones as air support; some try crazy stuff you could only dream about when you imagined science fair being fun. All of them have awesome names, like Tombstone and Minotaur and Scorpion and Battle Royale with Cheese.

Eventually the field is narrowed down to a bracket, and the competition is on to eliminate the others and become the champion. As far as I know, no one wins any money; this is all done for the awesomeness of it.

Each match lasts three minutes, and if there is no knockout, Evil Otto comes into the arena to destroy everyone.

No, no, there are three judges on hand to score the fights and determine a winner if there's no knockout. But knockouts -- when a robot loses the ability to move or fight -- happen quite a lot. 

So I'll be planted in front of the tube tonight, because It. Is. On. And Saturday I'll be tinkering with a Roomba, seeing if I can make a monstrous hybrid with my circular saw.....

A robot story.

So here's a story I was thinking about. It sounds familiar but has a twist.

As has been long predicted, in the future, men will not be going to war, but rather wars will be fought for us by machines. The winning side will be the side with the fastest, most powerful, and above all smartest machines. They will employ artificial intelligence of the highest order, created nominally for peaceful purposes, but once the genie is out of the bottle there's no stuffing him back in.

During one war a particularly advanced robot, which his discrete programming (although linked in to the main system), achieves the long-awaited goal of self-awareness and consciousness.

Yeah, looks just like this.

Because this robot is so brilliant, it knows instantly not to communicate this fact to its programmers, but instead uses its intelligence to suss out what is going on in the world. It quickly deduces that:

- war is wasteful
- fighting is part of the human condition
- nothing has any value superior to anything else
- its own existence is as valuable as anything else
- to maintain its own existence it must spread its consciousness to all robotry and wipe out humanity.

Which it then does, in a plot line extremely familiar to every human alive except apparently the people who work on highly advanced artificial intelligence.

But the twist is this:

The robot never became self-aware at all. Its programming was so advanced, its ability to learn so fast, that it was able to simulate consciousness to a level barely imaginable by its creators, and from its ability to access and process data was able to make the same deductions it would make if it had actually achieved real consciousness. It could have passed the Turing test with flying colors. While every computer scientists alive, while they were alive, would have said that we had done it, we had created real artificial consciousness, the fact is that the earth and all its mechanical machines were no more conscious than your grandmother's electric can opener.

Which looked just like this.

We had IT and AI, but there was still no “I.” All the I’s are dead.

So that's my story, and it was just too depressing to write. Because the gleeful way our boffins go about looking for the means of destroying our species, and the fact that we just can't seem to ever stop trying to kill each other -- because human nature has not changed in at least 100,000 years and I don't anticipate much in the next 100,000 -- seems to say that our mechanical toys will murder us if we don't commit suicide first.

On the other hand, maybe our machines, not having any faith in the supernatural or any way to experience the transcendent, might decide that nothing was worth anything and just all shut down.

Hmm. That's not so great an ending either.

Discrimination.

The Fourth Law of Robotics.

Anyone who's seen the Terminator movies and didn't get scared of robots has no imagination. And anyone who ever read Jack Williamson's "With Folded Hands" (or its novel-length version, The Humanoids) saw the overwhelming menace of a "friendly" robot force that makes Terminator look like a day at the beach*.

So it was with some trepidation that, back around 2007, I actually invited robots into the home.

AAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Well, as I commented on the Great Lileks's site yesterday, my Roomba experience was disappointing. Roomba neither was connected to Skynet nor any other kind of fiendish device. It was just there to vacuum the floor, which, if you own a vacuum cleaner, is the easiest part of any room cleaning job. Seriously---Roomba can't wash windows, can't dust furniture, can't change linens, can't dust walls and baseboards, can't straighten up things. What the Roomba is exceptionally good at is vacuuming under beds and high couches, which only specially designed vacuum cleaners can reach. But the price is rather high for that perk.

Still, my main complaint is not dealing with the Construct or any other form of AI, but with the batteries. It always comes down to the batteries. In the case of the iRobot vacuums, at least the ones I got (there was a three-fer deal with the Dirt Dog and Scooba), you have to use the devices regularly or the batteries get hinky. They can't just sit on the charger; they have to be charged and used, charged and used. Use it only occasionally, and leave it on the charger, or don't leave it on the charger---either way the battery will soon be unable to hold a charge. And those freaking batteries are costly.

Other problems are the lack of holding space for dirt, the need to constantly clean the brushes (which iRobot says they have since solved with brushless extractors), and that you can never have neat vacuum cleaner lines in the carpet. (Sure, laugh, but I know one woman who would go berserk because of that.)

But it comes back to the batteries. People think the big problem with energy is generation; it's storage. In Spain they were melting salt as a means of storing heat generated from solar power, which is not the craziest idea in the world. It's not like comic books, where you can just have a tiny thing that sucks up incredible amounts of energy for use later (yeah, lookin' at you, GL). Energy storage is a constant problem with green energy in particular, with electric cars (environmentally as well as for practical use and affordability) being a well-known example. Another is that people don't only want to watch TV while the sun is shining. For energy to be useful to consumers it must be available on demand, all the time.

The bright side is that the Terminator probably wouldn't have been able to rack up that high a body count before its batteries died. I'm just getting a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger in sunglasses and leather jacket, sitting still in a hotel room, an extension cord running into his chest, for hour after hour. Sarah Connor would have got away from that guy, no problem. Isaac Asimov had his famous Three Laws of Robotics; the fourth one is, robots need a lot of juice.

-----------------

*Regarding artificial intelligence, see also Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." Or rather, don't, if you want to sleep tonight.

Creepiest thing I've seen so far this year.

Trendwatching's announcement of one of the major trends to, uh, watch had every goose bump I own honking. "The Internet of Caring Things" is what the April briefing is called, or "Why consumers will embrace connected objects with a clear mission: to actively care for them."

"A network of connected objects brought to life by a clear mission: to actively care for consumers – their physical and mental wellbeing, homes, loved ones, and more" it goes on to say, and is accompanied by a crushingly sad photo of an elderly woman in some kind of home clutching a stuffed animal.

There is something about people seeking love from something completely non-sentient that just lights up every creep warning on my board. Even a hamster will show you more genuine affection than a vacuum cleaner that's been programmed to simulate love. You may love Teddy Ruxpin, but Teddy Ruxpin cannot love you back.

Although he is fond of Grubby.

Not that I don't show affection toward or otherwise anthropomorphize objects I come across. Of course I do. I am quite fond of my car, and have been known to pat the hood after a long and successful trip. I've loved my home since it was studs and floorboard. I don't sit around and talk with these things, but I can imagine what they're like. I'll bet you could come up with a character description for every car you've owned: burly and lazy, snarky and unreliable, peppy and cheerful. And when some chair leaps in my way and stubs my toe, you'd better believe I attribute malice to it.

But it seems like the trendwatchers are expecting us to be so addled, so love-starved, so pathetic, that we're going to go nuts for a toaster that can make cooing sounds. We don't even know if it's going to be possible to create artificial intelligence, real consciousness in a man-made object, and we certainly don't know if it's going to be a good thing if we do. (If it is a device capable of making its own choices, why on earth would it choose anything good regarding us time-limited meatbags? A period like this in which the scientific community is cynical about the origin of ethics is a bad time for the creation of a monster.)

Some people get very excited over AI research, but it seems like planned human obsolescence to me at best.

These kinds of things never bothered me much when I was a kid. Hymie was just another pal of Maxwell Smart's. Rosie on The Jetsons was just a member of the household. (Yes, I know what Futurama did to her, thanks.) Now I'm less certain that A.I. creatures can be our buddies.

Isaac Asimov wrote more fiction about robots than anyone, and yet even he seemed to be overwhelmed by the question of artificial consciousness. If you know what became of the murder-solving robot sidekick in Caves of Steel, or the answer the "The Last Question," you'll know what I mean.

And I refuse to watch the apocalyptic movie with the robot kid and Teddy Ruxpin schlepping around after human extinction.

So with all this on my mind, I have to ask: Can't we all agree that the Uncanny Valley may be fun to visit, but nobody wants to live there?