Book review: 21st Century Robot

content/reviews/books/21st-century-robot.md

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