Tuesday, July 12, 2005

In the Future there Will Be Robots...

That Morthos Stare writes:

...and the robots came to visit today.

Shahin Maghsoudi, a former student of the Philosophy Department and Technical Director of robot-hosting.com has developed robots for use as lecturing assistants. Now I don't know about you, but to me the idea of a robot lecturing assistant fills with me with images... Images of a mighty bloodbath as an endo-skeleton war-machine marches into a lecture hall. It pauses only briefly before killing the whelps and maiming anyone who dares to run away. A deathly silence falls over the room as it crushes the lecturer between its titanium thighs before stating, in its Vin Diesel voice, that now is the time to learn about Modus Ponens...

Before spraying the room with napalm.

That is a robot.

Which is why I must report with some degree of disillusionment that the robot I cheerfully went to see today (my Department is considering implementing them) was a Half-Life 2-esque character model.

And all she did was give out canned responses when you clicked on a box.

The future is arriving and its yesterday's model.

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