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title = "21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories - Brian David Johnson"
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date = 2020-07-04
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["books", "reviews", "david johnson", "robotics", "it", "2 stars",
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"books:2020"]
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[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16087659-21st-century-robot):
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When companies develop a new technology, do they ask how it might affect the
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people who will actually use it? That, more or less, sums up Brian David
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Johnson's duties as Intel's futurist-in-residence. In this fascinating book,
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Johnson provides a collection of science fiction prototyping stories that
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attempt to answer the question.
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{{ stars(stars=2) }}
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This is a hard book to read. Not due its writing style or large paragraphs of
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something of the kind, but because you have no idea what what is real and what
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is not.
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There are some stories about the "21st Century Robot Foundation", which is a
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foundation to give free, open source access to robot designs and code. Problem
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is, some of those are interleaved with fiction stories that has a character of
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the same name of someone in the foundation and then you never know if that's a
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cool extended thingy, actual coincidence or just plain... laziness (although I
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reckon that's a strong word for this).
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There are some things that pissed me off. For example, saying "the robot brain
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is the hardware and software, what we call artificial intelligence, or AI". AI
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is way more than just hardware and software, you have to _train_ something to
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make it an AI, or it is just a bunch of reactive code with not actual
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"intelligence". Maybe it was dumbed down to reach the general population
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instead of going with proper terms, but it just annoys people that _do_ know.
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And talking about "apps to extend the robot personality" also seems a bit
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far-fetched in how AI works.
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So, maybe the idea is great and all, but ideas without backing facts are just
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dreams. And for someone running a foundation, lacking the facts feels...
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weird.
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