Hmm.
In this experimental study, we show collective decision-making by mixed groups of cockroaches and socially integrated autonomous robots, leading to shared shelter selection. Individuals, natural or artificial, are perceived as equivalent, and the collective decision emerges from nonlinear feedbacks based on local interactions. Even when in the minority, robots can modulate the collective decision-making process and produce a global pattern not observed in their absence. These results demonstrate the possibility of using intelligent autonomous devices to study and control self-organized behavioral patterns in group-living animals.
Ha ha, silly cockroaches can’t tell that they’re following decisions made by a robot. I think I’ll point and laugh.
Wait…
Collective behavior based on self-organization has been shown in group-living animals from insects to vertebrates.
Vertebrates including people? Um, yeah. At least roaches can point out that the subset manipulating them was directed by beings about ten million times smarter than them.
***Update***
More from the Times:
Many a mother has said, with a sigh, “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?”
The answer, for cockroaches at least, may well be yes. Researchers using robotic roaches were able to persuade real cockroaches to do things that their instincts told them were not the best idea.
[…] Dr. Halloy and his colleagues worked with roaches because their societies are simple, egalitarian and democratic, with none of the social stratification seen in some other insect societies — no queen bees, no worker ants. “Cockroaches are not like that,” Dr. Halloy said. “They live all together.”
They also have weak eyes, which allowed the researchers to create a robotic roach that resembles a miniature golf cart more than an insect. In the roach world, however, looking right is not as important as smelling right, and the scientists doused the machines with eau de cockroach sex hormones.
Michael D.
I read about this today, Tim. I nearly choked!!! Still no cure for cancer!!
Jake
Pish-posh and Harrumph! If that were the case you’d see people doing really stupid things like voting for some brain-dead …
Ooops.
Sirkowski
Power to the Sheeple!
jcricket
Are you arguing that our robot overlords aren’t equally smarter? Have you been reading this blog lately?
jcricket
First they came for the cockroaches?
RSA
Sure, and the partners don’t even have to be human. Cliff Nass, for example, has run experiments (admittedly controversial) in which he takes a social science finding (e.g., people on one team will tend to view their teammates more favorably than people on other teams), substituted a computer for one of the human subjects, rerun the experiment, and determined that people behave in the same way, as long as some minimal social cues are present. Interesting stuff. (See The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Televisions, and New Media Like Real People and Places for details.)
BIRDZILLA
And before you know it PETA will strat a SAVE THE COCKROACH program
MNPundit
I don’t know…. I’m one of those a-holes who likes to face the wrong way in a crowded elevator.
Tax Analyst
A smart robot would just have all the other people turn around, too. What would you do then?
I think I’d get off at the next floor. I’ve always marched to a different robot’s orders.
Huh…take that, you cockroaches.
Winter
Honestly this doesn’t surprise me even slightly. Well, the cockroach thing does. A little. The human potential, though, should be completely obvious. Aren’t we already mostly, basically, controlled by mannequins in the form of talking heads on TV, corporate spokespeople, and various officials for government and non-profit organizations? The only difference here is that we can’t get robots to behave cleverly enough, yet, to take those jobs over. The Exxon-Mobile Spokesrobot will probably be just as convincing as whoever currently fills that position, and i’m guessing the CBS Newsrobot will be able to fill in for the various people without anyone noticing much at all.
We’re already controlled by robots controlled by various organizations and people, but since they’re fleshy robots we don’t really notice.
Not that i’m trying to put forth some vast conspiracy theory.