R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262371898
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life by : Karel Capek

Download or read book R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life written by Karel Capek and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-01-16 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new translation of Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.—which famously coined the term “robot”—and a collection of essays reflecting on the play’s legacy from scientists and scholars who work in artificial life and robotics. Karel Čapek's “R.U.R.” and the Vision of Artificial Life offers a new, highly faithful translation by Štěpán Šimek of Czech novelist, playwright, and critic Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots, as well as twenty essays from contemporary writers on the 1920 play. R.U.R. is perhaps best known for first coining the term “robot” (in Czech, robota means serfdom or arduous drudgery). The twenty essays in this new English edition, beautifully edited by Jitka Čejková, are selected from Robot 100, an edited collection in Czech with perspectives from 100 contemporary voices that was published in 2020 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the play. Čapek’s robots were autonomous beings, but biological, not mechanical, made of chemically synthesized soft matter resembling living tissue, like the synthetic humans in Blade Runner, Westworld, or Ex Machina. The contributors to the collection—scientists and other scholars—explore the legacy of the play and its connections to the current state of research in artificial life, or ALife. Throughout the book, it is impossible to ignore Čapek’s prescience, as his century-old science fiction play raises contemporary questions with respect to robotics, synthetic biology, technology, artificial life, and artificial intelligence, anticipating many of the formidable challenges we face today. Contributors Jitka Čejková, Miguel Aguilera, Iñigo R. Arandia, Josh Bongard, Julyan Cartwright, Seth Bullock, Dominique Chen, Gusz Eiben, Tom Froese, Carlos Gershenson, Inman Harvey, Jana Horáková, Takashi Ikegami, Sina Khajehabdollahi, George Musser, Geoff Nitschke, Julie Nováková, Antoine Pasquali, Hemma Philamore, Lana Sinapayen, Hiroki Sayama, Nathaniel Virgo, Olaf Witkowski

Karel Čapek's R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780262371902
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (719 download)

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Book Synopsis Karel Čapek's R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life by : Karel Čapek

Download or read book Karel Čapek's R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life written by Karel Čapek and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A new translation of Karel Capek's 1920 play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), with essays from contemporary writers and scientists"--

Rise of the Self-Replicators

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030482340
Total Pages : 121 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (34 download)

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Book Synopsis Rise of the Self-Replicators by : Tim Taylor

Download or read book Rise of the Self-Replicators written by Tim Taylor and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-30 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible to design robots and other machines that can reproduce and evolve? And, if so, what are the implications: for the machines, for ourselves, for our environment, and for the future of life on Earth and elsewhere? In this book the authors provide a chronological survey and comprehensive archive of the early history of thought about machine self-reproduction and evolution. They discuss contributions from philosophy, science fiction, science and engineering, and uncover many examples that have never been discussed in the Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life literature before now. In the final chapter they provide a synthesis of the concepts discussed, offer their views on the field’s future directions, and call for a broad community discussion about the significant implications of intelligent evolving machines. The book will be of interest to general readers, and a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and historians engaged with ideas in artificial intelligence, artificial life, robotics, and evolutionary computing.

R. U. R.

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.E/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis R. U. R. by : Karel Capek

Download or read book R. U. R. written by Karel Capek and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Tales from Two Pockets

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Publisher : Smith Press
ISBN 13 : 9781447459903
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (599 download)

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Book Synopsis Tales from Two Pockets by : Karel Capek

Download or read book Tales from Two Pockets written by Karel Capek and published by Smith Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Reaching for Immortality: Can Science Cheat Death?

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Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1666736740
Total Pages : 96 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (667 download)

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Book Synopsis Reaching for Immortality: Can Science Cheat Death? by : Sandra J. Godde

Download or read book Reaching for Immortality: Can Science Cheat Death? written by Sandra J. Godde and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-04-01 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the forefront of science and technology there lie competing ideologies as to the nature of humanity and the future of human flourishing. Will technology become the ultimate savior, or has the work of salvation already been accomplished? Are we only creatures of mind and body or are we spiritual beings at our core? Reaching for Immortality bravely examines the agenda and ideals of the transhumanist movement, and compares and contrasts these with the biblical vision of a physical resurrection and a divine upgrade of the entire created order. Which vision of the future will inspire you, and capture your allegiance? This book is a primer to provoke deep thought about the impact of technological change on human personhood, and asks crucial questions facing our age: •What does it mean to be human, in light of exponential technological growth? •What is transhumanism and where is it leading us? •How important is embodiment for our personal identity? •How would the biblical understanding of personhood survive in a posthuman future?

Advances in Artificial Life

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Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 354044811X
Total Pages : 744 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis Advances in Artificial Life by : Jozef Kelemen

Download or read book Advances in Artificial Life written by Jozef Kelemen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-06-30 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is the question of the di?erence between living and non-living matter - tellectually so attractive to the man of the West? Where are our dreams about our own ability to understand this di?erence and to overcome it using the ?rmly established technologies rooted? Where are, for instance, the cultural roots of the enterprises covered nowadays by the discipline of Arti?cial Life? Cont- plating such questions, one of us has recognized [6] the existence of the eternal dream of the man of the West expressed, for example, in the Old Testament as follows: . . . the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis, 2. 7). This is the dream about the workmanlike act of the creation of Adam from clay, about the creation of life from something non-living, and the con?dence in the magic power of technologies. How has this dream developed and been converted into a reality, and how does it determine our present-day activities in science and technology? What is this con?dence rooted in? Then God said: “Let us make man in our image. . . ” (Genesis, 1. 26). Man believes in his own ability to repeat the Creator’s acts, to change ideas into real things, because he believes he is godlike. This con?dence is – using the trendy Dawkins’ term – perhaps the most important cultural meme of the West.

AI Narratives

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198846665
Total Pages : 439 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis AI Narratives by : Stephen Cave

Download or read book AI Narratives written by Stephen Cave and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real Artificial Intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing pre-history of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first-centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerge alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI's social, ethical and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphisation, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.

Artificial Life After Frankenstein

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812297725
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Artificial Life After Frankenstein by : Eileen Hunt Botting

Download or read book Artificial Life After Frankenstein written by Eileen Hunt Botting and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-11-20 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artificial Life After Frankenstein brings the insights born of Mary Shelley's legacy to bear upon the ethics and politics of making artificial life and intelligence in the twenty-first century. What are the obligations of humanity to the artificial creatures we make? And what are the corresponding rights of those creatures, whether they are learning machines or genetically modified organisms? In seeking ways to respond to these questions, so vital for our age of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, we would do well to turn to the capacious mind and imaginative genius of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851). Shelley's novels Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) and The Last Man (1826) precipitated a modern political strain of science fiction concerned with the ethical dilemmas that arise when we make artificial life—and make life artificial—through science, technology, and other forms of cultural change. In Artificial Life After Frankenstein, Eileen Hunt Botting puts Shelley and several classics of modern political science fiction into dialogue with contemporary political science and philosophy, in order to challenge some of the apocalyptic fears at the fore of twenty-first-century political thought on AI and genetic engineering. Focusing on the prevailing myths that artificial forms of life will end the world, destroy nature, and extinguish love, Botting shows how Shelley modeled ways to break down and transform the meanings of apocalypse, nature, and love in the face of widespread and deep-seated fear about the power of technology and artifice to undermine the possibility of humanity, community, and life itself. Through their explorations of these themes, Mary Shelley and authors of modern political science fiction from H. G. Wells to Nnedi Okorafor have paved the way for a techno-political philosophy of living with the artifice of humanity in all of its complexity. In Artificial Life After Frankenstein, Botting brings the insights born of Shelley's legacy to bear upon the ethics and politics of making artificial life and intelligence in the twenty-first century.

The Quest for Artificial Intelligence

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139642820
Total Pages : 644 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (396 download)

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Book Synopsis The Quest for Artificial Intelligence by : Nils J. Nilsson

Download or read book The Quest for Artificial Intelligence written by Nils J. Nilsson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-30 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artificial intelligence (AI) is a field within computer science that is attempting to build enhanced intelligence into computer systems. This book traces the history of the subject, from the early dreams of eighteenth-century (and earlier) pioneers to the more successful work of today's AI engineers. AI is becoming more and more a part of everyone's life. The technology is already embedded in face-recognizing cameras, speech-recognition software, Internet search engines, and health-care robots, among other applications. The book's many diagrams and easy-to-understand descriptions of AI programs will help the casual reader gain an understanding of how these and other AI systems actually work. Its thorough (but unobtrusive) end-of-chapter notes containing citations to important source materials will be of great use to AI scholars and researchers. This book promises to be the definitive history of a field that has captivated the imaginations of scientists, philosophers, and writers for centuries.

Robot Visions

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Publisher : Gollancz
ISBN 13 : 9780575601529
Total Pages : 511 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Robot Visions by : Isaac Asimov

Download or read book Robot Visions written by Isaac Asimov and published by Gollancz. This book was released on 1997 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of THE BICENTENNIAL MAN and ROBOT DREAMS, a collection of thirty-six robot stories and essays. From Robbie, Asimov's first robot story, to human and robot detectives Lije Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw.

Artificial Life

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 9780679743897
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (438 download)

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Book Synopsis Artificial Life by : Steven Levy

Download or read book Artificial Life written by Steven Levy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1992 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This enthralling book alerts us to nothing less than the existence of new varieties of life. Some of these species can move and eat, see, reproduce, and die. Some behave like birds or ants. One such life form may turn out to be our best weapon in the war against AIDS. What these species have in common is that they exist inside computers, their DNA is digital, and they have come into being not through God's agency but through the efforts of a generation of scientists who seek to create life in silico. But even as it introduces us to these brilliant heretics and unravels the intricacies of their work. Artificial Life examines its subject's dizzying philosophical implications: Is a self-replicating computer program any less alive than a flu virus? Are carbon-and-water-based entities merely part of the continuum of living things? And is it possible that one day "a-life" will look back at human beings and dismiss us as an evolutionary way station -- or, worse still, a dead end?

Virtual Organisms

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1466874309
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis Virtual Organisms by : Mark Ward

Download or read book Virtual Organisms written by Mark Ward and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harmless artificial life forms are on the loose on the Internet. Computer viruses and even robots are now able to evolve like their biological counterparts. Telecommunications companies are sending small packets of software to go forth and multiply to cope with ever-increasing telephone traffic. Protein-based computers are on the agenda, and a team in Japan is building an organic brain as clever as a kitten. Welcome to the startling world of Artificial Life. Artificial Life scientists are taking inanimate materials such as computer software and robots and making them behave just like living organisms. In the process they are discovering much about what drives evolution and just what it means to say that something is alive. Virtual Organisms traces the origins of this field from the days when it was practiced by a few maverick scientists to the present and the current boom in Alife research. Leading technology correspondent Mark Ward presents a fascinating survey of current ideas about the origins of life and the engines of evolution. Through interviews with leading developers of Artificial Life, and through his own compelling research, Ward shows how the convergence of technology with biology has enormous implications. In an accessible, entertaining manner, Virtual Organisms reveals an unexplored avenue in predicting the future of Artificial Life, and whether new forms of Alife may be evolving beyond their designer's control.

Capek Four Plays

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1408148560
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis Capek Four Plays by : Karel Capek

Download or read book Capek Four Plays written by Karel Capek and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There was no writer like him. . . prophetic assurance mixed with surrealistic humour and hard-edged social satire: a unique combination" (Arthur Miller) This volume brings together fresh new translations of four of his most popular plays, more than ever relevant today. In R. U. R., the Robot - an idea Çapek was the first to invent - gradually takes over all aspects of human existence except procreation; The Insect Play is a satirical fable in which beetles, butterflies and ants give dramatic form to different philosophies of life; The Makropulos Case is a fantasy about human mortality, finally celebrating the average lifespan; The White Plague is a savage and anguished satire against fascist dictatorship and the virus of inhumanity.

The American Robot

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 022669271X
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (266 download)

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Book Synopsis The American Robot by : Dustin A. Abnet

Download or read book The American Robot written by Dustin A. Abnet and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As Dustin Abnet shows, the robot-whether automaton, Mechanical Turk, cyborg, or iPhone, whether humanized machine or mechanized human being-has long been a fraught embodiment of human fears. Abnet investigates, moreover, how the discourse of the robot has reinforced social and economic inequalities as well as fantasies of social control. "Robots" as a trope are not necessarily mechanical but are rather embodiments of quasi humanity, exhibiting a mix of human and nonhuman characteristics. Such figures are troubling to dominant discourses, which cannot easily assimilate them or identify salient boundaries. The robot lurks beneath the fears that fracture society"--

Technology, Literature and Culture

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745637280
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology, Literature and Culture by : Alex Goody

Download or read book Technology, Literature and Culture written by Alex Goody and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology, Literature and Culture provides a detailed and accessible exploration of the ways in which literature across the twentieth century has represented the inescapable presence and progress of technology. As this study argues, from the Fordist revolution in manufacturing to computers and the internet, technology has reconfigured our relationship to ourselves, each other, and to the tools and material we use. The book considers such key topics as the legacy of late-nineteenth century technology, the literary engagement with cinema and radio, the place of typewriters and computers in formal and thematic literary innovations, the representations of technology in spy fiction and the figures of the robot and the cyborg. It considers the importance of broadcast technology and the internet in literature and covers major literary movements including modernism, cold war writing, postmodernism and the emergence of new textualities at the end of the century. An insightful and wide-ranging study, Technology, Literature and Culture offers close readings of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Ian Fleming, Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, Jeanette Winterson and Shelley Jackson. It is an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike in literary and cultural studies, and also introduces the topic to a general reader interested in the role of technology in the twentieth century.

Robot Rights

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262551578
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Robot Rights by : David J. Gunkel

Download or read book Robot Rights written by David J. Gunkel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-03-19 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative attempt to think about what was previously considered unthinkable: a serious philosophical case for the rights of robots. We are in the midst of a robot invasion, as devices of different configurations and capabilities slowly but surely come to take up increasingly important positions in everyday social reality—self-driving vehicles, recommendation algorithms, machine learning decision making systems, and social robots of various forms and functions. Although considerable attention has already been devoted to the subject of robots and responsibility, the question concerning the social status of these artifacts has been largely overlooked. In this book, David Gunkel offers a provocative attempt to think about what has been previously regarded as unthinkable: whether and to what extent robots and other technological artifacts of our own making can and should have any claim to moral and legal standing. In his analysis, Gunkel invokes the philosophical distinction (developed by David Hume) between “is” and “ought” in order to evaluate and analyze the different arguments regarding the question of robot rights. In the course of his examination, Gunkel finds that none of the existing positions or proposals hold up under scrutiny. In response to this, he then offers an innovative alternative proposal that effectively flips the script on the is/ought problem by introducing another, altogether different way to conceptualize the social situation of robots and the opportunities and challenges they present to existing moral and legal systems.