Word: robotics
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...nightmare of man being destroyed by a creature of his own making has always been with us. The first robot in literature was the Golem, a clay man made by the High Rabbi Lev Ben Bezalel of Prague in the 16th century. Animated by a slip of paper bearing the name of God, it murdered the Rabbi when he made it work on the Sabbath. The Biblical analog is the Tower of Babel, the presumptuous construction that called down God's wrath on man. But the Golem and the Tower of Babel are myths. Computers are real...
...someday they will be able to do that too. One long-range goal of the technicians in the Artificial Intelligence Lab is to build an "intelligent automaton" that could substitute for men on a Mars expedition. Carrying enough fuel to get to Mars and back seems impossible, so robots will have to go, explore, report back to earth and stay there (safely out of harm's way?). And since there would be a four-minute or worse radio time lag between here and there, communication would be difficult and the robot would have to be able to make...
There are basic worries and baroque worries, and a scheme for a robot-astronaut is decidedly baroque. The chief programmer at the Artificial Intelligence Lab, William Henneman, says, "We're still working at things kids have solved by the time they're two years old." What the research on intelligent automata is currently involved in is providing computers with "eyes" and "hands...
...another sector of Nixon's politico-cybernetic system, still more machines type automatically "personalized" letters composed by dialing a selection from some 70 paragraphs by Nixon. Robot typewriters transform coded commands from a tape into letters that answer questions raised by concerned citizens. To a voter worried about the cities, for example, the robots write: "Of the many challenges facing America today, none seem more critical than solving the crisis that faces our cities and urban areas." The letters are mailed to voters who have given the candidate a tape-recorded three-minute piece of their mind...
...from the moment they enter. At the door, they find that their bodies have been sighted by an electric eye, which in turn triggers the computer-generated voice that welcomes them in a deep monotone. They may be approached by R.O.S.A. (Radio Operated Simulated Actress) Bosom, a roving electronic robot who actually appeared with live performers in a 1966 London production of The Three Musketeers (R.O.S.A. played the Queen of France...