Information Technology Reference
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FIGURE 10.4
The Stanford Racing Team converted a Volkswagen Touareg into an autono-
mous vehicle named Stanley that successfully followed a 128-mile course through the Nevada
desert in 2005.
(© Gene Blevins/Reuters/Corbis)
desert in 2005 (Figure 10.4). Stanley was the fastest vehicle to finish the race, av-
eraging about 19 miles per hour [22].
.
In February 2011, an AI program named Watson, running on an IBM supercom-
puter, easily defeated the two most successful human
Jeopardy!
champions in his-
tory: Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter (Figure 10.5). At the end of the three-episode
competition, Watson had won $77,147, compared to $24,000 for Jennings and
$21,600 for Rutter.
Moravec believes these innovations are just the beginning of a new era in auto-
mation. In 30 years, inexpensive desktop computers will be a million times faster than
today's models, allowing them to run sophisticated AI programs. Moravec writes, “In the
[21st] century inexpensive but capable robots will displace human labor so broadly that
the average workday will have to plummet to practically zero to keep everyone usefully
employed” [15, p. 131]. Moravec predicts humans will retire to a world of “luxurious
lassitude” [15, p. 136].
Perhaps Moravec has a grossly inflated view of what robots may be able to do in
40 years, but what if he is right? The changes he is predicting would profoundly affect
