People and Robots can achieve More together

"People and robots can achieve more together in teams than they can alone". So says Heather Knight on Fareed Zacharia's Sunday Morning show on CNN. She was one of Fareed's guests on his Sunday September 4th show on CNN on TV here in the U.S.

She  brought with her "Data" her (looks like about 3 to 4 foot tall robot) that she takes on stage to do comedy performances through. It is a way for the robot to interact with the audience and to learn how to be more beneficial for the audience and for itself. Heather also said that though we are not at the moment at the "Singularity" where robots are smarter than people that it is definitely coming especially after "Watson" won that game on TV while playing with champion humans. Since Watson is a supercomputer that can speak it has access to almost unlimited databases instantly. So, it would be pretty hard to defeat in some games such a computer.

I see the whole thing in a much different light. To me, robots are the most useful when they can directly interact with us like C3PO or R2D2 or beyond that like a member of the family, sort of a combination of a pet and a machine friend. This has already been happening since the invention of the home microcomputer to where people think nothing of laptops, Iphones and Ipods and other robotic like devices that give us communication and information at the touch of a touch screen. Even when cars and bicycles and helicopters and planes are more capable of independent thought through artificial intelligence I think they will be our friends and companions and even traveling companions more than anything else.

Later: However, it is always important to realize that one bad subroutine or program within any robotic (lifeform?) could be fatal to anyone. So until there is some way to protect against malware all the time, having Artificial intelligence robots in your life could be problematic.

Malware- my personal definition of malware would be any program, subroutine, or physical robot or computer that is programmed to do harm. In its own way malware is like a loaded gun in the wrong hands or a driverless moving car through a busy intersection full of people.

How does an average person detect malware in any program, subroutine, physical robot or computer? Most people wouldn't be able to detect malware. And even those that could likely wouldn't be allowed to when malware is present in any form. This is the rub of malware whether it is completely accidental or whether it is directly malevolently done by specific programmers and hackers.