In a time when we’re inundated with talk of an impending AI apocalypse it’s nice to see an AI that’s intentionally useless. That AI is HAL 9000. No, not the conflicted HAL from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey but the World’s Biggest AI Useless Machine HAL built by [Rafael], [Mickey] and [Eyal] for GeekCon 2016 in Israel.
Standing tall, shiny and black, the box it’s housed in reminds us a bit of the monolith from the movie. But, in a watchful position near the top is HAL’s red eye. As we approach, HAL’s voice from the movie speaks to us asking “Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?” as the eye changes diameter in keeping with the speech’s amplitude. And at the bottom is a bright, yellow lever marked ON, which of course we just have to turn off. When we do, a panel opens up below it and a rod extends upward to turn the lever back to the ON position.
Behind the scenes are two Arduinos. One Arduino manages servos for the panel and rod as well as playing random clips of HAL from the movie. The other Arduino uses the Arduino TVout library to output to a projector that sits behind the red diffuser that is the eye. That Arduino also takes input from a microphone and based on the amplitude, has the projector project a white circle of corresponding diameter, making the eye’s appearance change. You can see all this in action in the video after the break.
Paradoxically, useless machines serve the purpose of being fun and we’ve seen other fun ones in the past, such as one that snuffs out a candle the moment you light it and another that turns the pages of a book and scans them, with wooden eyes. So check them out while not wasting time having fun.
switch doesnt have much of a throw, plus that placement looks more like you are simply molesting it. i guess at least the switch isn’t red/pink.
:) you are right. we refered the toggle switch as “the dildo” for the entire weekend.
well.. the geekcon weekend is at an isolated area and we had to improvize with what we have.
AI wise, is it even as smart as a fruit fly? If we interpret it as capable of reacting to danger and taking action to survive, with flipping it’s erm, appendage, back on.
“AI” is widely misappropriated. All we can do is live with that.
once AI could be a talking car at “knight rider”. nowdays its waze plus siri and we just call them by their name. its all a mater of perspective.
So gay. Playing with a dildo. And a machine to getting it up to boot.
at one of the first demonstrations, the useless machine failed to even do its one single thing. and one of the guest viewers suggested that we will give the bot a viagra.
Maybe it’s can’t be turned on by people!
Yes, androids dream of electric sheep.
fufme?
I’ll have a vegetable garden on Neptune before humans make generic reliable A.I algorithms.. Enjoy all those back-data algorithms or “A.I.”