In an effort to teach robots how to avoid hurting human beings, professor Borut Povse in Slovenia taught robots how to hurt human beings. The logic behind it states that robots won’t know how not to hurt human beings without knowing our pain threshold, at which point they can realize when to stop.
All I want to know is: Stop doing what to me?
The experiment is actually quite humorous. Professor Povse has six test subjects being punched by a robotic arm until they can’t take it anymore. That’s pretty much all there is to it. The threshold of pain is recorded, which Povse believes will help teach robots when to stop doing things to us before they cause pain, but doesn’t exactly explain why we’d be in a situation where a robot needs to know our pain threshold to begin with.
This also teaches robots at exactly which point we’re overcome with physical anguish, basically giving them a torture-meter. Good work, professor!
We just can’t figure out why scientists are intent on their own species’ eventual downfall and subsequent slavery, but we like to cover this kind of thing in order to say “We told you so!” right before a T-1000 stabs us through the eye.
(New Scientist via news.com.au via Engadget)
