Picture by itstrulyrandom.com

Robots have learned to lie. Is the fate of humanity in jeopardy?

From Discover Magazine, Dario Floreano of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology set up an experiment with robots that resulted in some of them becoming liars:

By the 50th generation, the robots had learned to communicate—lighting up, in three out of four colonies, to alert the others when they’d found food or poison. The fourth colony sometimes evolved “cheater” robots instead, which would light up to tell the others that the poison was food, while they themselves rolled over to the food source and chowed down without emitting so much as a blink.

Some robots, though, were veritable heroes. They signaled danger and died to save other robots. “Sometimes,” Floreano says, “you see that in nature—an animal that emits a cry when it sees a predator; it gets eaten, and the others get away—but I never expected to see this in robots.”

Talk about a Robot rumble! Wait, no one talks about that. It’s amazing that robots would change in such a way that some would lie! Unflinchingly even, as they did it with “emitting so much as a blink,” which is apparently equivalent to a person pausing for a moment or shifting their eyes nervously.

Can you ever trust your iRoomba again? Would a lazy vacuum robot just say your floors are clean when they are really not? It’s a small step from lying and being good samaritans to becoming unionized or possibly millitant. Right?

[Discover Magazine]

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