Word: controller
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...salvaging from SALT II. Once they reached "reasonable agreement" on at least some principles, it might be possible to begin a new set of negotiations, Percy told the Soviets. "I would be surprised if both sides do not agree to sit down at an early date to discuss arms control," said Percy...
...lift up a bedridden patient, while a nurse changes his sheets, and tuck him back into bed. M.I.T. Computer Scientist Marvin Minsky visualizes a day, about 20 or 25 years from now, when a surgeon will be able to slip on a pair of special gloves connected by remote control to a pair of mechanical hands that can perform surgery for him in a hospital hundreds of miles away. Fighting crime? The Advanced Robotics Corp. is advertising a mechanical sentinel that can speed to the site of any breakin, sternly ask an intruder, "What are you doing here?" and temporarily...
Reprogrammable and multifunctional are the key words. Factories have long used automatic machines (like bottle cappers) to mass-produce goods, but these devices could only perform one task at a time. New work routines required new machinery or extensive retooling. The industrial robots now being installed have control and memory systems, often in the form of minicomputers. These enable the robots to be programmed to carry out a number of work routines and, when necessary, to be reprogrammed to carry out even more...
...from the specific problem of lost jobs, Shaiken warns of more intangible difficulties. "The use of robots has social costs that are not being addressed by anyone in the U.S. today," he says. "By designing a production process that minimizes human participation, you freeze out the worker's control and you freeze out his initiative. We often overlook the impact of robots on the jobs that remain. Today, if a worker assembling components has a daily quota of 100 units to fill, he can, for example, work flat out and assemble 60 in the first half of a shift...
Just as there is a romantic tradition that robots are inherently diabolic creatures that will rebel against human control, there is an equally romantic tradition that machines are inherently benign, symbols of progress and perfectability. Isaac Asimov epitomized that view in a famous story titled Robbie, in which a much mistrusted robot baby sitter of that name rescues its ward from a speeding tractor. Asimov then went on to formulate, in Runaround (1942), what he decreed to be, in the world of science fiction at least, the Three Laws of Robotics: "1) A robot may not injure a human being...