The invincible Robot
Location: Tokyo highway
Year: 1971.
This is the story of a mighty robot that saved the world from an evil robot invasion. A robot whose
signature was a Rocket Punch.
Today miles of cars are lined up, crawling through Tokyo's highway. A man is driving his car in the
queue, yet he is not resigned to spend all the day in the traffic. Suddenly, a vision appears in his
mind: he can see a pair of giant feet and hands popping out of his car, which becomes the cabin of a
robot! Now he can fly free from the traffic. This man is Go Nagai, and his fantasy just fabricated
Mazinger Z, the first of many to come “super robots” which are called such because of their size
and also because physics does not apply to them.
This robot was such a huge hit that even a statue of Mazinger Z was erected in a remote suburb
called "Mas del Plata" in Catalonia, Spain. While the suburb was never finished, the robot remains
there, the witness of that lucky traffic jam.
This amazing robot finds its roots in an ancient culture. Indeed, Mazinger’s plot is, behind the
hoods, related to classical Greek mythology. From a distant—yet unforgotten—past, Greek
mythology tells us about automatones, that is to say, animated metal statues of animals, men, and
devils crafted by the divine Hephaestus and the Athenian Daedalus. The best of them could even
think and feel like men. That is one of the oldest tales about thinking machines, albeit not the only
one.
The summer of 1816 was exceptionally cold and rainy and came to be known as the “year without a
summer”. What caused this ghastly weather was a massive eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch
East Indies, which led to incidences of famine, political unrest, and disease across the globe.
This summer is also remembered as one of the most productive ones in the history of English
literature: this is not least because the well-known author Mary Shelley and her family had a social
affair with the scandalous and eccentric poet Lord Byron.
They spent an awful lot of time writing, boating, and talking late in the cold summer nights. One
evening, Byron proposed a sort of writing contest, which was about ghost stories. A discussion
upon the principle of life lit a spark in Mary Shelley, who went on a “waking dream.” As in every
horror story, it’s a thundering stormy night, but that night a corpse is going to be reanimated. A
scientist apparently discovered a way to create life, but is shocked to find that he cannot control his
creation:
As you can see, crafting intelligence has been a nail in our head for a very long time; however, as
long as computers were off the shelf, most contributions by writers and philosophers were not
scientific but semantic.To start talking about intelligent machines, we must first agree on what this term means. Artificial
Intelligence (AI)—and all the different, sometimes adverse, ideas that word conjures—was initially
intended to bring human-like intelligence into a machine. But in practice, it gave rise to conflicting
expectations that still influence the way we think about intelligence.
For example, some people claim that a robotic vacuum scurrying around the sofa is intelligent.
Some people, instead, believe that a machine able to defeat a Chess grandmaster is intelligent.
Finally, most of us think that a truly intelligent machine poses a threat to our lives, like a modern
Frankenstein. Therefore, if we want to progress on this matter, we must at first define what
intelligent machines are.
In general terms, machines which are operated based on a programmed manner, in a well-defined
environment, are not regarded as intelligent machines. Therefore, to be considered as intelligent, a
device should be able to interact with its environment autonomously. Interacting with the
environment requires learning from it and adapting to its changes. That is the precise edge between
“ordinary” machines and “intelligent” ones. A dishwasher machine has a peculiar set of well-
programmed tasks which it can execute accordingly, hence it is not intelligent. On the other hand, if
you can build a machine that has a goal to achieve, and it is equipped with a learning mechanism to
reach the desired goal, then you have crafted an intelligent machine.
The upshot of all this is that an intelligent machine should be able to mimic the human thinking.
Our next challenge will be precisely this question: “Can machines think?”
Year: 1971.
This is the story of a mighty robot that saved the world from an evil robot invasion. A robot whose
signature was a Rocket Punch.
Today miles of cars are lined up, crawling through Tokyo's highway. A man is driving his car in the
queue, yet he is not resigned to spend all the day in the traffic. Suddenly, a vision appears in his
mind: he can see a pair of giant feet and hands popping out of his car, which becomes the cabin of a
robot! Now he can fly free from the traffic. This man is Go Nagai, and his fantasy just fabricated
Mazinger Z, the first of many to come “super robots” which are called such because of their size
and also because physics does not apply to them.
This robot was such a huge hit that even a statue of Mazinger Z was erected in a remote suburb
called "Mas del Plata" in Catalonia, Spain. While the suburb was never finished, the robot remains
there, the witness of that lucky traffic jam.
This amazing robot finds its roots in an ancient culture. Indeed, Mazinger’s plot is, behind the
hoods, related to classical Greek mythology. From a distant—yet unforgotten—past, Greek
mythology tells us about automatones, that is to say, animated metal statues of animals, men, and
devils crafted by the divine Hephaestus and the Athenian Daedalus. The best of them could even
think and feel like men. That is one of the oldest tales about thinking machines, albeit not the only
one.
The summer of 1816 was exceptionally cold and rainy and came to be known as the “year without a
summer”. What caused this ghastly weather was a massive eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch
East Indies, which led to incidences of famine, political unrest, and disease across the globe.
This summer is also remembered as one of the most productive ones in the history of English
literature: this is not least because the well-known author Mary Shelley and her family had a social
affair with the scandalous and eccentric poet Lord Byron.
They spent an awful lot of time writing, boating, and talking late in the cold summer nights. One
evening, Byron proposed a sort of writing contest, which was about ghost stories. A discussion
upon the principle of life lit a spark in Mary Shelley, who went on a “waking dream.” As in every
horror story, it’s a thundering stormy night, but that night a corpse is going to be reanimated. A
scientist apparently discovered a way to create life, but is shocked to find that he cannot control his
creation:
“Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human to mock the
stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.” (“Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley, 1818)
As you can see, crafting intelligence has been a nail in our head for a very long time; however, as
long as computers were off the shelf, most contributions by writers and philosophers were not
scientific but semantic.To start talking about intelligent machines, we must first agree on what this term means. Artificial
Intelligence (AI)—and all the different, sometimes adverse, ideas that word conjures—was initially
intended to bring human-like intelligence into a machine. But in practice, it gave rise to conflicting
expectations that still influence the way we think about intelligence.
For example, some people claim that a robotic vacuum scurrying around the sofa is intelligent.
Some people, instead, believe that a machine able to defeat a Chess grandmaster is intelligent.
Finally, most of us think that a truly intelligent machine poses a threat to our lives, like a modern
Frankenstein. Therefore, if we want to progress on this matter, we must at first define what
intelligent machines are.
In general terms, machines which are operated based on a programmed manner, in a well-defined
environment, are not regarded as intelligent machines. Therefore, to be considered as intelligent, a
device should be able to interact with its environment autonomously. Interacting with the
environment requires learning from it and adapting to its changes. That is the precise edge between
“ordinary” machines and “intelligent” ones. A dishwasher machine has a peculiar set of well-
programmed tasks which it can execute accordingly, hence it is not intelligent. On the other hand, if
you can build a machine that has a goal to achieve, and it is equipped with a learning mechanism to
reach the desired goal, then you have crafted an intelligent machine.
The upshot of all this is that an intelligent machine should be able to mimic the human thinking.
Our next challenge will be precisely this question: “Can machines think?”
