Human uniqueness - what the Robot would find difficult to acheive

You are unique - that is your strength

There is only one you

Machine learning robots can study humans and learn from them, but can they become unique or adopt uniqueness traits?

Another way of looking at this is Cybernetics. A method of control. What will a Robot assess as 'normal' behaviour? When or will it determine a behaviour trait is not 'normal' and disregard copying it?

These questions are at the crux of developing humanoid robots.

We are all unique

This is what makes us as humans different from each other. Sure, many of us follow set paths of conduct, but just how much is conditioned and how much 'burned in' from the start?

Although we are all genetically coded, it is the variations of the genetic code that make us unique, not just from appearance but as chemical bipeds, variations in the coding vary our chemical balance.

'Nature' seems to have got it right in most cases, but perhaps social conditioning is the key to how we turn out.

If we take the American Indian people, they had no crime, no prisons and did without money, taxes and laws. How? Because the people co-existed in a group where none of these values was necessary to ascribe to.

Look at the world outside of theirs and even with these 'values' it is imperfect and really a failure, in that it ascribes to a set of values it can not achieve - zero crime, no law breaking, all tax due paid.

Boundaries and Cybernetics

So, what boundaries do 'normal' humans adhere to that make them 'normal'? What makes seemingly 'ordinary' people resort to things like fetish behaviour, lawlessness, addiction?

Cybernetics - a sort of natural control mechanism is the key. Essentially it is a check and control method of maintaining a situation within agreed parameters.

Say we enact laws, their tenets are 'cybernetic control' in that they set out 'containment boundaries' that adherence to is crucial for the law to hold true.

Without 'feedback' that is data coming back from the object you are interacting with, there is no control over the situation. With no  limits you are in a state of anarchy.

It is as simple as hammering in a tack, at a certain point you stop when the tack is flush and to go on merely damages what you are hammering. This is a simple 'feedback loop'.

Essentially we and computers use this logic as a basis of operation, things can go wrong though.

What is 'normal'?

'Normal' is difficult to define, but in simple terms, everything conforms to certain outcomes. Once those boundaries are exceeded, damage is done.

The Robot might have to be pre-programmed to observe certain cybernetic conditions, but it relies on cold, program logic.

It has to have consciousness and empathy to be like Humans. This level of consciousness and empathy has to be set and an algorithm pattern regulated back to certain parameters of what is 'acceptable.'

Essentially, the Human that sets the parameters for the Robot, and sets its behaviour, its cybernetic boundaries of what is acceptable or not.

So, what the Robot adheres to is dictated by us, it  is the 'what' we direct to it to conform to that is the question and we have yet to see if the Robot decides its own path, something that may end up being against our values.

Consideration

The questions are when does the Robot stop from creating a harmful situation? If the Robot cannot consider Human feelings, its interactive usefulness is limited to us at a social level. If it cannot compute when 'enough is enough,' or 'reasonable boundaries' then harm might ensue.

This applies across the board in almost any activity from dispensing medication, work, sex, the situations are likely endless.

As Humans, we find these boundaries recognisable, yet we do not always adhere to them ourselves or prevent situations becoming unpleasant by continuing an action - with the attendant consequences.

Some individuals go beyond what is 'normally' acceptable, which may be a result of their own egomaniacy or boundaries being different to the accepted normalcy.

Multi-level awareness

As Humans, we are different from any other creature because our brain is developed for language. Comparing the Chimpanzee brain to a Human brain is a fruitless exercise, we are not the same animal and our genetic difference at 10% is a universe away.

When extrapolated over the millions of variances, plus the obvious anthropological differences between Humans and Chimpanzees with which we cannot breed, yet Humans can with an Almas which occurs in Asia and is closer as a relative species therefore.

Language drives our brain to operate on 3 planes - Past - Now - Future. Our thinking brain even before we speak, is 'modelling' the scenarios and end-games of what we will say and do, we do not appreciate what is going on here in general because our brain has developed this as a core function.

(The best scenario is then established and potentially actionable, the end result does come down to 'what is acceptable' as the end action, this potentially varies from Human to Human as to the outcome and the consequences of such.)

We don't need to know how our heart works in brain terms because the brain 'manages' that 'background' stuff. Like in our cars, we don't have to manually pump the fuel, cause the spark interval whilst also trying to drive the car and negotiate road hazards, that 'management' is done in the background, leaving us to just drive.

This is the 'plate spinning' scenario that the computer has to do and can do to essentially operate like 'us.'

Brain V Computer

The 'wetware' Human brain is massively complex for what it is, yet to replicate that capacity in silicon chips and switchgear would take a massive computer, at present.

Each day that passes, we go further down the road of achieving a Robot in Human form, something that we have been trying to do for millennia.

Within the next 30 years we may have Humanoid robots in society. We can now capture data and video from our brains so it may be possible to create some hybrid that will be a new sub-species.

The half way may be to create remote Human Robot entities which receive data instructions from super computers, ethereally.

What must be achieved is to assess the outcome of what we are trying to create and how we perceive that to become, if we get it wrong, it could be very serious for us, potentially.

We need to ask the basic question - 'What are we trying to achieve'? and we need to obtain a consensus on the thing we are trying to create, if we get this wrong it could be potentially disastrous. We need a strategy of what we are going to build in and what we are going to ensure is not built in.

LAPD Hollywod Crime Fiction franchise for sale

Gangster Hotel: Just one of the LAPD based novels in the franchise

Crime fiction author Ed Van Meyer has decided to sell the successful crime fiction franchise he has based in the Los Angeles and Santa Monica areas of California.

The franchise majored with the movie length leviathan novel 'The Olivia Pages' case, a 360+ page epic which the real life tragic events surrounding Marilyn Monroe's untimely death in 1962 provided some inspiration for.

Ed Van Meyer said of Olivia, "I have always had a great regard and admiration for Marilyn Monroe and having read much about her life and seem many of the documentaries about her, provided me with much reference material. However, I wrote my own story in 'Olivia', those events of 1962 helped provide useful inspiration for me."

'Olivia,' twists and turns through a 1962 Cuban Missile crisis America, with the action taking place in San Francisco, Malibu and Los Angeles areas. It starts with a something or nothing burglary and attempted arson and twists out into a pacy all meat and no gristle hard boiler which concludes explosively in a 'modern' day 2002 Los Angeles.

Ed Van Meyer uses a core of characters who often crop up across his books. "My LAPD Detective 1200 series started because I bought a film prop LAPD Detective badge with the 1200 number on it. I was in the police years ago before an injury halted that career." Van Meyer states.

"So I looked at the badge in my hand and said 'tell me your story,' and it went from there. I fleshed out a location in Santa Monica, gave my small Detective Bureau a purpose, revisiting cold cases and responding to crime generally, so as no to limit it. I often use personal ideas, things I read about or draw on my own police experience in my work. Most writers never walked a beat or smelt crime close up. I have. That's the difference, I'm not getting this stuff secondhand, I lived it!" Van Meyer states.

The Detective 1200 books spawned a collection of  11 short stories, essentially written for television adaption as a series of three-quarter hour length programs, with an hour and a half feature length 'Christmas special'. No stranger to the spotlight as a musician for many years, his parents met whilst working in British Television at the BBC in the 1960's.

A second series of LAPD 1200 stories exists as a written out storylines ready to be made into new material. "They are never samey, I made the choice to ensure every storyline was different, the only common linking factors were crime and policing." He adds.

Spin off characters like LAPD Homicide Detective 1009 Baumer from some of the other LAPD works get their own books, two spinoff feature length books designed to be adapted as a mini series of hour and a half length films were written. 'The Fall and rise of Frank Lafferty,' features Baumer and uses a California law test case from 1945 in respect of a person who was presumed to be dead, but is he?

Similarly, in the follow up novel, Detective Baumer is dropped into a completely unfamiliar world of the underground world of BDSM, Gay fetish and Nazi fetish establishments to catch a serial killer stalking the Los Angeles Gay Community.

The novel called 'The Fagot of Herbs,' aka 'A fistful of Dildoes,' is an exploration of investigating an often off the track world and the need to apprehend killers quickly who hide in the unfamiliar masses.

"Fagot of Herbs is the name of a fictional restaurant in the book, I saw a cooking program on TV some years back in England and a visiting American chef was doing a recipe, live. He then said 'toss in a fagot of herbs' and I thought ' that might be useful' "

Van Meyer continues, "It wasn't a slant at the gay community, it is the sort of thing they do, send themselves up. I was certainly a fan of Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry charachter and had him in mind when I wrote the story, the race against time theme as was explored in that first film using that character. Also the film about Harvey Milk provided me with another useful character, in this book, a Gay Mayor exploiting the killings for publicity." Van Meyer continues

 "I wanted to try and build the tension and action I had seen in films like Bullitt and Dirty Harry. You have to watch Bullitt about three or four times to really work out what is what and who is the Chalmers character really working for?" Van Meyer inquires.

As someone interested in history, Ed Van Meyer who has written about the Korean War and WW2, subjects he has long held an interest in, is no stranger to literary time travel.

"That is true, often I skip between the past and present in my works, it brings extra dimension to the work, often referencing historical footnotes and incorporating them into the work is satisfying." Van Meyer believes.

The most recent outing for his LAPD Detectives came with the 'The Gangster Hotel case' a nourish book set in early 1962 Los Angeles, also published as The Blue Hotel case. It features LAPD Policeman 744 who teams up with a young LAPD Detective Will White who later appears in the Olivia Pages book.

"The most satisfying comment came from a native Angeleno now living in Germany who said that reading my books was like being back at home, that was great to hear." He states. So why does Ed Van Meyer write we ask?

"I was retired from the Police due to an injury on duty, whilst I was looking for another job I started writing and cranked out 2 books in two months. My English teacher always said I was good at writing a story, so it just seemed a natural thing to do." He states.

"It will be sad to move the franchise on but I have other projects to do and also work with helping the American Indian peoples situation which is very worthwhile for me on a personal level and which I am hoping the sale of this will help to finance." Van Meyer states. 

The published works can be seen on Amazon's Kindle site.