Robot in 2016 and beyond

If you ask Hollywood, the world teeming with robots and artificial intelligence is a no-brainer. Movies like “The Terminator,” “WALL-E” and “Blade Runner” have all cast intelligent automata as the wings upon which the future — mostly dystopian — swoops in.

In fact, some very big names in science and engineering have recently joined voices in cautioning against unchecked intelligence development. Tesla’s Elon Musk and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking have both predicted catastrophe should we make dumb choices when building smart machines.

Of those sounding a much less ominous tone are many of the people actually working on the cutting edge of robotics. While progress needs to be carefully considered, they say, prognostications of malevolence overlook the very real benefits the machines have already started to produce. No matter what you believe on this subject, there’s no doubt that smart machines are firmly planted in the global zeitgeist these days.

“You’ve got people painting a very dark picture of robotics,” says John Lizzi, who heads GE’s research lab on distributed intelligent systems. “The concept of AI taking over is interesting, but getting anywhere near that type of capability is very far away. And while the rest of the world is dreaming up these science-fiction futures, we’re taking the technology and solving real problems today.”

Since the first robots started working on factory floors 55 years ago, a significant number of smart machines have come on the market and are now under development. In recent years, several have grabbed attention for how they promise to improve work and home life. These include Google’s self-driving cars as well as humble domestic helpers like iRobot’s Roomba. The still-unwritten future of the robots rising from the DARPA Robotics Challenge could one day potentially save lives after disasters.

“Transformation will come in the form of learning — when we can get the robots to start learning like children do, and we get their memory to be more episodic like humans,” says GE’s Brad Miller.