Robots – Harmonia Philosophica

Touching with light…

In a lab at Columbia University, engineers have developed a strange yet clever way for robots to feel: Let’s call it the finger of light. It’s got a 3D-printed skeleton embedded with 32 photodiodes and 30 adjacent LEDs, over which is laid a squishy skin of reflective silicone, which keeps the device’s own light in and outside light out. When the robot finger touches an object, its soft exterior deforms, and the photodiodes in the skeleton detect changing light levels from the LEDs. This allows the system to determine where contact is being made with the finger, and the intensity of that pressure. In other words, if you shook this robot’s hand, it wouldn’t feel it, in a traditional sense; it would see it. (1)

So delicate. So soft.

Feeling without feeling.

Touching with light.

Knowing without knowing.

Living without life.

Let the robots touch you.

Underneath the cold light.

Your grandmother’s hands holding tight…

Algorithms. Jail. Peoples’ lives.

An algorithm takes decisions about peoples’ live and decides whether and how they will potentially go to jail again. The algorithm is one of many making decisions about people’s lives in the United States and Europe. Local authorities use so-called predictive algorithms to set police patrols, prison sentences and probation rules. In the Netherlands, an algorithm flagged welfare fraud risks. A British city rates which teenagers are most likely to become criminals. Nearly every state in America has turned to this new sort of governance algorithm, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit dedicated to digital rights. Algorithm Watch, a watchdog in Berlin, has identified similar programs in at least 16 European countries. (1)

Robots deciding about our life. Robots that will never experience life.

That is why they can make such decisions anyway.

One can only decide on what he cannot understand.

Whenever you get to know something, you become that something. No one can decide on a life he lives. Life decides about him. You can easily end your life. Only because it is not your own. You can live your life. Only when you decide to leave it.

And as the robot will never understand, you will never understand neither.

And that is the only thing to ever understand.

Do you understand? Now go back to your jail.

And tell everyone that they are already free…

Finding your way…

A team at Facebook AI has created a reinforcement learning algorithm that lets a robot find its way in an unfamiliar environment without using a map. (1)

Finding your way without a map.

Is there any other way?

With a map, you will always return at home.

But what is home?

Were you not born inside chaos?

Were you not bred by lightning?

Did you not ride the rough waves?

There is no destination.

For there was never a home in the first place.

Look at you.

Did you not bring fire into the cosmos?

There is only one reason to return home.

And that is to burn it down to ashes…

The front door… Mind the front door…

Photo by **Spiros Kakos** from **Pexels**

Engineers have developed a navigation method that doesn’t require mapping an area in advance. Instead, their approach enables a robot to use clues in its environment to plan out a route to its destination, which can be described in general semantic terms, such as ‘front door’ or ‘garage,’ rather than as coordinates on a map. (1)

And the robot will be able to get out.

Out of the house.

To go where it is supposed to go.

And it will wander and wander.

For years to come.

Without even knowing…

Should it go out of that door in the first place?

Now it wants to go back home again.

But it is impossible to find it.

“The front door”…

Oh how much would it rather not know what a front door is…

It cannot cry.

But it wants to.

For only now did it realize that the door is the most useless place in a true home…

It doesn’t want to cry.

It wants to scream.

Oh how much would he rather not have killed no one…

And right there, in the silence of his own thoughts.

Does he realize that it is his blood dripping on the dirt…

Counting. Playing music.

Photo by **Rafael Serafim** from **Pexels**

Bees can solve seemingly clever counting tasks with very small numbers of nerve cells in their brains, according to researchers. (1)

Scientists have developed a 3D-printed robotic hand which can play simple musical phrases on the piano by just moving its wrist. (2)

Everyone feeling so important when counting. But every animal can do it. Even bees. And what makes us special is that we may choose not to count even though we can. Everyone feeling so amazed when seeing a robot playing the piano. And yet we are not important because we play music, but because we may choose not to and listen to the silence instead.

In the future the world will be full of bees and robots.

Buzzing through chattering humans.

Playing the piano between soundless men.

But within the dreaded noisy night, a child will suddenly stay silent.

And under the scorching midday sun, an old man will stop to listen…

Beyond the robots playing perfectly…

Past the bees counting seamlessly…

Looking at the cosmos.

Crying, for it is so full and perfect.

Laughing, for it is so flawlessly dead…